I am confused about this explaination. I realize that just because you took the picture does not mean that you can use it anyway you want, such as recognizable people without a model release or consent. But even without the release you must own copyright. IIRC in Canada anyways the moment you create a piece of art or take a photograph you own the copyright and do not even have to register it (not the case in the US I believe). But there certainly is a difference beween commercial useage and copyright is there not?
John's explaination seems to explain commercial rights but to me anyways not the wordage of the Pentax manual as posted. Is the Canadian or UK manual wordage the same? Ivan -----Original Message----- From: John Francis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: August 5, 2005 1:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: The *istDS Copyright Statement On Fri, Aug 05, 2005 at 12:37:03PM -0400, Glen wrote: > What on earth is this about? I just read the inside cover of my *istDS > Operating Manual, ("page 0?"), and it states the following: [snipped] > It seems to be saying that I don't own the copyright to my own images?! Well, you don't. Or, at least, you don't hold all the rights. Copyright law is complicated, and more than one person can own copyright to an image. It's warning you that some subject material is copyrighted, so you can't publish or sell images of those subjects. Furthermore, if you use images for certain purposes (most commercial use) then you're also going to need permission from any people in the images. > I know that some cheaper versions of certain computer software is limited > to "personal use only", and the Pentax *istDS does contain some internal > software embedded into the camera. Could they possibly be so bold as to > mean that the use of the Pentax *istDS camera is only licensed for > "personal use only", like some cheap piece of freeware or shareware? There's nothing in the disclaimer that supports your belief that Pentax are asserting any ownership and/or copyright on the images. All they are doing is warning you that just because you took the photograph isn't enough for you to use it in certain (unspecified) ways. > I live in the USA, and perhaps they had copyright laws from some other > country in mind? Nope. Most countries where people can afford digital cameras are signatories to the Berne convention on international copyright law. > Whatever they meant to say, they worded it very poorly. Does anyone know > exactly what they are talking about? I absolutely hate vague legal > statements! If they spelled out what you could (and couldn't) do in enough detail to be actually useful, it would more than double the size of the manual. -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.338 / Virus Database: 267.9.7/60 - Release Date: 28/07/2005
