Re: filmscanners: Importance of Copyright on Images

[SKID Photography <skid@bway.net>]

After reading what seems like a million posts on the copyright issue, *and* a 
prestigious amount of typing,
I'm just going to try to give my opinion and (hopefully) leave it at that.  :- )

I fear everyone is thinking in the very short term here (regarding search 
engines and the web).  Web
resolution is now only 72 dpi (some new monitors are up to 125 dpi), but 
eventually, our screen resolution
will be the same as paper reproduction.   It might only take a year or 2, or 
longer, but eventually the
resolution will be up there with traditional printed material.  For example, 
who could have predicted, 10
years ago that 20 gig hard drives would be the norm, or that modems would be 
performing at the speeds that
they do, or that processor speeds would have gotten so far so fast, so as to be 
considered 'supercomputers'.?

What ever becomes the normal operating procedure, with web search engines, will 
stay.  For example, typewriter
keyboard layout is a constant reminder of how 'first on the scene' rules.  The 
original (keyboard layout) was
put together to *slow* down the fingers, to allow the slow mechanics of the 
*original* typewriters to work.
But these days we want a faster type pattern.  Several companies tried to 
introduce better layouts, some years
back, but the original was too ingrained into our world, and these 
*improvements* failed.

Think MP3 technology.  Nobody in the recording industry worried about it in the 
beginning when there was no
such thing as common broadband internet service...But that's not true anymore.  
And stealing copyrighted
musical (intellectual) property is now a *very* hot legal item.  I maintain 
that the same will be true of
imagery on web search engines.

Napster, et al, tried to say that it was not their responsibility to regulate 
what was done with their file
sharing software....The law has proven this to be a false argument.  I think 
that the same will, finally, be
true of the image search engines as well.  None of what we say, or think makes 
any difference, the cases that
will decide these issues are currently working their way through the courts (in 
the US), and within a few
years....All will be revealed.

Beyond all of the above:
We don't like it when our images are appropriated.

The search engines, while only posting thumbnails, directly link to the 
original websites.

It is frustrating to think that we can *only* post thumbnail sized images on 
our website, or need to disfigure
them with our copyright or watermark, (for fear of theft)...There must be a 
better way.

People that *should* know about copyright issues, don't.  Just last week, a 
national magazine that we work
for, thought that they could take one of our photos (that we shot to illustrate 
an editorial article) and use
it for a national ad campaign for another business that they owned.  When these 
people don't know, why should
we expect the rest of the world to understand copyright issues?

'Editorial' and 'educational' uses:  Images cannot be appropriated for either 
editorial or educational uses
without compensation.  A textbook cannot 'appropriate' one of our images 
without compensating us for said
image, nor can a professor copy (like on a Xerox machine) a chapter of a 
textbook, without compensating the
publisher (et al) of that book.  (We collected $10,000 from a tv 'news' show 
for lifting our images from the
NY Times, using them out of context and without our consent or permission.)

Harvey Ferdschneider
partner, SKID Photography, NYC