Stealing is stealing...

It was not a student who stole an image, but a teacher (who organized the contest) at the university who used a copyrighted image without permission as the image used for posters, letterheads, etc. for the contest promotion, etc.
 
furcafe said:
Have you seen this thread?:

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117686
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Careful!

When one begins equating eating a hamburger to murder, it is 1) extreme, 2) an insult to victims of murder, and 3) diluting the issue.

Things aren't absolutely black and white, and a long argument cannot be reduced to a headline sentence. It is exactly this kind of fallacy which leads to the other end of the spectrum: "if you're sharing online...you shouldn't charge for sharing".

Extremes hate nuances. Not to mention those who exploit nuances... :bang:


Not all things are the same to all other things.
 
While I blame the college professor for her lack of oversight (and apparent lack of concern for the law), I have to add that teaching values to the "kids" these days is next to impossible. They are either incapable of understanding that intellectual property is the result of LABOR, and deserves compensation, or they choose not to understand that because it would interfere with their downloading experience.

Their attitude is supported by some members of academia who claim that ownership of ideas is an illusion, and by members of the mainstream press who write gee-whiz articles about how "different" the internet has made everything, so much so that the stodgy "old rules" don't apply anymore. There was an example of this sort of thinking in the New York Times recently that incited a lengthy thread on RFF.

Randy
 
Somewhere along the line, someone forgot to teach a generation or three about a value system.

Several years ago--before I ever owned a digital camera--a summer intern where I used to work saw some of my pictures hanging in my office and asked about them. During the short conversation, he mentioned he liked photography and often went online to Flickr and other sites and downloaded photos to use in brochures and presentations for his church and its affiliates. I said something to the effect that he really should obtain permission before using someone else's photographs but he obviously didn't even understand the concept. Here's an intelligent high school kid who is apparently involved in his church and no one had ever instilled in him the fact that "stealing is stealing".

I'm afraid there is no solution to this problem in the foreseeable future. Too many people believe they are entitled to anything and everything without regard to anyone else.
 
kshapero said:
I have lost faith years ago in the university community teaching young people any real values. Case in point.
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It is definitely not the university's job to teach values. The problem is not the university: it is people who think it's the university's job; namely, the parents and the surrounding community. If you don't have values by the time you go to college, it's way too late. Parents no longer parent, elementary teachers no longer teach, TV . . . well, I can't watch TV at all, because of the values it projects, and if I had kids they would not be watching it.

After reading the whole thread, I see the same old suspects popping up arguing against values, anyway: people who don't understand property, don't understand theft, and don't understand copyright. Along with one person who apparently blames the victim for making nice pictures when there are so many people who want to steal them, and thinks that once something is stolen, the person who stole it now is the owner.
 
This may seem to be a snarky comment, but I assure you it is not:

The original article uses a poster that includes a photograph but also some original design work by an Alvernia University student. Is luminous-landscape and/or Alain Briot liable for reproducing the design aspect of the infringing poster without permission of the student or university?

Is it a case of: 1) He stole my photo, so I feel ok in stealing that design work back? If so, then "stealing is stealing" is false because Briot must feel that some stealing is OK within certain situations.

Or is it a case of: 2) I only care about the photo and the text and design of the poster are irrelevant?

Because if it's 2, then perhaps you can start to see why this gets to be a tricky issue. We throw our hands up and cry about values and theft, but feel it's ok to steal fonts, themes, we use trademarks willy-nilly and probably break the speed limit every day.

Briot makes the statement "Copyright legislation is supposed to take care of this, unfortunately as we all know it does not work."

But, he says "Furthermore, it took nearly a week for my photograph, and the poster, to be removed from Alvernia’s website."

So, the image was removed. I'm not convinced that copyright legislation has been proven to be broken by Briot's tale of woe.

Now, I wonder if Briot got paid to write that column for luminous landscape, or if he was happy to devalue the labor of writing for paid writers everywhere. (OK, that last part was a little snarky)
 
I'm speechless. Although I produce no work worth stealing or even giving away that is not true for working artist's whose livelihood depends on their work. What is surprising is the attitude of the university. They seemed too dense or arrogant to get it.
 
Alain Briot's use of the university poster with his stolen image was editorial and not commercial, therefor not subject to copyright by the student or university. It was in fact, 'exhibit A' in his argument.
 
I have no objection to educational use of my images but when someone uses one of my images for their own commercial benefit, I have a serious problem. After reading this thread I went to the internet to do a quick search for one of my images. It took me less than one minute to find it being used by a commercial photography site at http://www.hardmountphoto.com/gallery. The image of the vintage Kodak camera appears on my RFF gallery.
3A_Ser_III_7241_02_RFF.jpg

Now I await a response from them.
 
Tony Pio said:
I have no objection to educational use of my images but when someone uses one of my images for their own commercial benefit, I have a serious problem. After reading this thread I went to the internet to do a quick search for one of my images. It took me less than one minute to find it being used by a commercial photography site at http://www.hardmountphoto.com/gallery. The image of the vintage Kodak camera appears on my RFF gallery.
3A_Ser_III_7241_02_RFF.jpg

Now I await a response from them.
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Well I, for one, found that site educational ...
 
julianphotoart said:
Stealing is stealing indeed, and intellectual property is property as much as anything else. It is strange that this form of intangible property is so little respected.
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It's no wonder really. There aren't that many forms of property that you can take and the owner keeps them anyway. There aren't many forms of "stealing" where the damage calculations are similarly hypothetical, as in based on the assumption that the "thief" would actually have bought the work, where this assumption itself is taken for granted in a completely unsubstantiated fashion.

Copyright infringement is convenience-driven - it occurs because it is so convenient to take things for free. If the only way to get your work was to pay for it, many "thieves" wouldn't take them to begin with, there would be no income, and hence there is no loss of income either, because zero minus zero is zero.

So no, "stealing" is not stealing. It's really not the same as stealing, say, a car, where the car has a monetary value that it is worth exactly once and where the car is gone after the theft and the damage is exactly the value of the car.

Claiming it's the same thing and claiming enormous damages for allegedly lost income is really sour grapes and the stomping of John's dinosaur horde. Nobody denies its a problem and there is a real need for a solution, but the solution has to be adequate to the problem of copying, not to the completely problem of physical theft. Mixing up the words is not going to help.
 
How about when someone does not actually steal a photo, but steals the concept and idea behind a certain photo?

Several years ago, my wife and I were sitting in a movie theater waiting for the movie to start. You know how they play ads, public service announcements, etc while you are waiting? Well, lo and behold, up pops an ad for a charity organization dealing with runaway kids and there is a B&W photo accompanying the ad. I almost damn near dropped my popcorn as the image was an identical copy of a photo that I designed and shot for a short lived zine I published back in the mid '90's.

I waited for the ad to recycle on the screen, wrote down the contact info for the agency and called them the next day. After talking to several different people I was having a hard time making them understand that my photo was not being used without my permission, but my concept and artistic vision were certainly being used by another photographer to produce the photo they were using in their advertising. I explained that I had the original negatives to prove my position. Anyway, their final answer to me was for me to contact the photographer and sue him. Now, they would not disclose his/her name nor provide any contact info. I assured them that if I did sue, they too, would be named in the lawsuit.

Of course, such an extreme measure was never taken, and I was later contacted by the agency and assured that the photo was being removed. I, in turn, offered my original photo as a replacement, which they declined, without viewing it.

So, did I own the rights to this concept or design? Was I right about contacting the company and complaining about the theft of my artistic vision?

I know there have been similar circumstances where artists sued over this type of thing because they felt that their ideas had been stolen and they wanted compensation for their work and effort. What do all of you think ?
 
Rick Waldroup said:
How about when someone does not actually steal a photo, but steals the concept and idea behind a certain photo?
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Elsewhere I posted a link to a British court decision about a picture that was similar, clearly not identical, but also clearly inspired by another picture, and the court found the first to be in infringement of the second on copyright grounds.

1(image1).png

1(image2).png

(images linked to from the court decision)

I find that highly problematic because I believe that ideas and concepts should not be copyrightable, only their manifestation in the form of concrete things - images, texts and so on. Everybody can have an idea and a concept, but the creative step and the step that involves work it's turning it into an actual, well, work. Otherwise you'll end up with lots of copyright lawsuits about "picture of president Obama, in three-quarter portrait, looking right and down".
 
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