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| Re: I got a comment against a PATH filming (437372) | |||
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Re: I got a comment against a PATH filming |
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Posted by PhotoBT on Tue May 29 09:07:48 2007, in response to Re: I got a comment against a PATH filming, posted by tramrunner on Mon May 28 16:52:45 2007. I got the same answer: "...These pictures you take, are not yours. They belong to Brooklyn College..."I agreee that the photograph of Journal Square is not my own property. Its my photograph, but for at least 50% its an intellectual property of an architect who engineered the station. for more 30% its an intelectual property of PATH who keep the place clean, and operating, and served by train. This is incorrect. To a certain extent I think you’re confusing copyright with usage rights. When you take a photograph, you automatically “own” the copyright to the image you created, unless you are in a “work for hire” situation, which is where your primary job it to create photographs for your employer (i.e. a photojournalist working for a newspaper, which I was for six years) or you have contractually agreed to transfer those rights to someone else. The area you can run into trouble is with usage of the photograph and its potential to infringe on someone else’s copyright. An example is if you were to take a photograph of a painting. You might still own the copyright to the photograph itself, but as your photograph is wholly comprised of the painting, using it – selling it, printing it, etc. – would violate the rights of the painter. There are, however, situations where you can use it, such as with a news story about the painting. That is called “fair use” and is an exemption to the copyright laws. Photographs of buildings, such as the campus of Brooklyn College and the Journal Square PATH station, would not violate the rights of whoever owns the copyright to the building, if anyone. There was a US Supreme Court case a number of years ago involving the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in which the court ruled that a photographer selling photographs he took of the building did not violate the copyright of the owners of the building. The simple version is that it would only be an infringement to copy the building, as in building a new building, not taking a picture of it, since the copyright only applies to the actual physical building. The only trouble you might get into here is that since there is a rule that you are not allowed to take pictures in the PATH system (which is probably illegal) it could be argued that you were trespassing, as that rule was a condition to your being allowed on the property. Since the photographs would be “the fruit” of your supposed criminal act, you would not be entitled to any profit from the photographs and a court could order you to never distribute the images. The people who clean and operate the station have no copyright rights to the station or anything in it. |
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