Re: filmscanners: Importance of Copyright on Images

[SKID Photography <skid@bway.net>]

Laurie Solomon wrote:

> While I generally agree with you on several points in your response to
> Harvey, I have to say that screen resolutions right now are way beyond 800 X
> 600.  I am able to get screen resolutions as high as 1600 x 1200 using some
> video cards and a little higher using other video cards.
>
> However, all this discussion about a future which none of us are able to
> accurrately foresee or predict does not respond to the points in question
> which are concerned with what is happening in the hear and now.  The search
> engine people are not concerned with structuring their cautions based on
> future possibilities but on current realities; so I doubt if  they would
> find such rationalizations very pursuasive when it comes to what they will
> or will not include in their search engines.

Again, I'm not making myself clear.  I don't care about the rationalization of 
the search engines...What I'm
saying that it is important for *us* to realize that this is just the beginning 
of a process that will change
over time.  And further, it's to our benefit to get everything right (from our 
point of view) *NOW*...Not 10
years from now, when the opposite is accepted policy, and it will be harder to 
change.  It's always easier to
change policy before it becomes  'the way it's done'.

<snip>

> As for Harvey's comments concerning fair use and editorial use in connection
> with copyright, he does not make it clear if his legal action against TV
> news shows or any other media outlet were in Federal or state courts, based
> on copyrigth infringement or other state laws concerning appropriation of
> images.  If the legal action was brought in state courts it was not for
> copyright violation since that can oly be brought in federalcourt in that
> the law is a federal statute.  If it was brought in the state courts then
> the action was based on state laws which are not technically copyright laws
> and the caution that the images are copyrighted would not apply as a caution
> aginst the sorts of actions that were being brought in the state courts and
> would vary from state to state.
>

Actually, we never needed to go to court at all.  All it took were a bunch of 
phone calls and the *threat* of
legal action.

We did speak with a lawyer, (who did not want to take the case on, we suspect, 
he felt it was not worth his
while), who told us we were within our rights to pursue it, and that it was a 
'Federal' matter.

I think they settled because our asking price ($10,000) was just right.  
According to Federal copyright law,
they could have been penalized up to $100,000 per infringement (there were 2), 
and that it would have cost the
parent corporation the $10,000 just to defend themselves.....Oh, and also 
because they were *clearly* in the
wrong.  :- )

Harvey Ferdschneider
partner, SKID Photography, NYC