Other Peoples Pictures

Depends on the photos themselves, and I am assuming they are of Canadian coins? Are they a true creation of the artist (photographer) or are they considered derivative works? For modern coins, you have to be careful. For example, the beautiful photos that canadian_coins takes of recent NCLT purchases like here are considered derivative works, the Royal Canadian Mint actually owns the copyright of the designs and all likeness of those coins.

Are the photos being used for private educational purposes? If so, then copyright law allows up to 20% of a given piece of work to be copied and used for educational purposes.

It is a bit of a grey area with the internet, because international copyright laws may differ from those of Canada or the US. Fire up your Google search engine, and start with the Bern Convention.

I agree that people selling something should use their own photos.

My Experience:

A while back I wrote an article for the Barber Coin Collectors' Society Journal.

I had found three pictures to document my research.

I asked my Editor Eileen to contact the David Lawrence people
for permission to print their photos in the journal.
I asked an ebay seller for permission to use his photo.

It was the decent thing to.

So my article was published without any problems.

Here is where it gets tricky.

I am about to re-post the photos and the raw article here.
To oblige the BCCS, I will state that I am the author of this article and that permission to use the photos was obtained for use by the BCCS.

http://barbercoins.org/

Any reuse of the TEXT of this article is fine by me as long as credit is given to the journal. However, no permission
has been sought for the re-use of the photos.
Therefor, no permission can be given to reuse these photos.

And that's my experience.

Except to say, our request for permission to re-post the DLRC photos reached the ears of his son! He gave an okie-dokie - "Sure! Why not?"

---------------------------








Eileen,
The text is as tight as I can make it. I'll never be a serious researcher. My agenda that members gain confidence to contribute is transparent. Just my style and my bias. And a little humor goes a long way as well.
There are three photos which could provide a thousand words apiece. The first is a benchmark photo of the 1896 s. From the David Lawrence Auction Archive. The second is my dime, the photo of which is also in the DL archive. The third is from Ryan, an ebay seller. He has kindly given us permission to publish it. He has been acknowledged in the text.
Hope that you can use this.

Matthew

===========================================================
Die Chips on the 1896 s Dime.

One of the thrills of collecting Barber coins is that they always hold surprises. Join me on a recent journey of discovery.
Early in 2011 I purchased an 1896 s dime. Nothing special. Just a VF-20 example. But that nagging hole in my album was at last filled. From time to time I would enjoy looking at it. I was quite happy and satisfied.
About six months later as I was studying The Complete Guide to Barber dimes I saw the following note:
"One die has chips on the corn ear and leaves below." David Lawrence
Well, I took yet another look at the dime and found something strange: "stuff" where there should not have been "stuff." I just had to do some research.
What I learned was the following:
There are three areas of interest about the dime: the right hand side of the ear [the kernels] of corn [subject to filling?], the area [filled!] between the two shucks of the ear of corn [which usually forms a clear ‘V' pattern], and on the oak leaf directly below the left shuck of the ear of corn. The latter is a three dimensional "blob" which looks like a left-handed boxing glove.
Of course, I needed another example to prove my findings. I found it thanks to Ryan, a kind ebay seller. Although his example showed nothing strange about the kernels it did show AN IDENTICAL three-dimensional "boxing glove blob" as well as the "filled" area between two two corn shucks. That convinced me that these two dimes were most likely examples of the die variety mentioned by "Uncle Dave."
So the lesson, I guess, is this: if you see something "strange" on your Barber coins do not hesitate to do some study. You just may find something worth writing about.
And we will be happy to read about YOUR journey of discovery!

It would be a matter of common courtesy to aknowledge the use of pictures of other peoples' than your own, quite apart from copyright laws, which may impinge on the issue.

^lol

Smiling babies........they make me ticked off sometimes.

This subject came up on another forum. Here is a post I made there, which may help here. The discussion applies specifically to my books, but the same concepts hold for the internet.



I hope this helps the discussion. Copyright law is a simple concept that, in my opinion, the governments have made complicated. In general if you don't publish others' intellectual property (writings, photographs, die numbers, etc.) without permission for a statuatory period of time, then you are fine.

In my books, my use of materials fall into several different categories.

Public Domain - For example, I used information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1853. I cited the material source in my books, but needed no permission to use it because the copyrights had expired and it was now in the public domain. Even when it is off copyright, it is important to cite the source (to not do so probably is plagiarism). In the U. S., I think anything published before 1923 is now in the public domain.


Fair Use (called Fair Dealing in Canada) - I used short exerpts of other people's works for either criticism, comment, scholarship, or research. This is allowable without permission of the author under Fair Use. Here is a better definition of Fair Use:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107


I obtained permission - In several areas of my books, I sought out and received written permission to use other's intellectual property. In several instances I had to pay for the permission. In some cases they gave it freely.


Crown Copyright - The U. K. and some commonwealth governmental information is under Crown Copyright. Usually you can get permission to use material under Crown Copyright, but you almost always have to pay for it. For example in my Volume I, the photograph of Thomas Graham and the Provincial cent die records are both under Crown Copyright. I paid to use images of both. It was not inexpensive. It is my understanding that Crown Copyright does not expire, unless the Crown decides to take it off copyright. In the U.S., there is no Crown Copyright, or equivalent. U. S. government records are in the public domain as soon as they are created.


All three of my books are registered with U. S. copyright office. For some reason Volume II hasn't made it into their data base yet, but I have the returned copyright certificate from them. For example, if you paste the link below into your browser, then type Dies & Diadems in as the title, you will see the Copyright Office database information for Dies & Diadems. You will see that the text, the pictures, and the die numbering system are under the copyright.

http://cocatalog.loc.gov

If you deal with the U. S. Copyright Office, you will find that it takes up to two years after submission to receive written confirmation of your copyright. Your copyright legally begins as soon as you put your work on paper (that is to say, even before you submit it to them).


The basics of U. S. copyright law can be found here:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf

The answer to Roger's question is probably that it is work for hire, as discussed on page 2 of the link above.


Length of copyright is a tricky subject because the laws have changed over the years. Specific information on U. S. duration of copyright can be found here:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf

My copyrights should be valid until 70 years after I die.

Here are a list of the countries that have signed on to the international treaties to enforce foreign copyrights:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ38a.pdf

Have you thought of using a watermark twoplustwo?