OUAN603 - Extended Practice: Copyrights

OUAN603 - Extended Practice:

Copyrights

It was inevitable that some images from each movement would need to be used in my animations to illustrate the piece and give it content, though copyright issues could arise from this. I needed to find a way to use images ideally that weren't under any copyright laws and were completely fine to use in my animation, of which is a non-profit educational piece.

The problem came with what would happen if a school or company ever contacted me in hope of using my animation, thus meaning possible profit and monetary benefits which would render some of the images unusable if they had strict laws on them. A good way to avoid running into any snags was to simply reference each image used underneath in a way that would be cohesive with the animation, and be sure to state who currently owns rights to the image. Further research lead me to this conclusion:

"Duration of Copyright

The International Berne Copyright treaty (Paris text 1971) states that copyright lasts until 50 years after the death of the author -- for countries that signed this treaty. European Community countries: artists rights societies and pay-per-view lobbies have unfortunately succeeded in raising this duration to 70 years after the artists death." - https://www.ibiblio.org/wm/about/copyright-issues.html




So, after the copright has run out, is the piece of work in the public domain, free to use as and when we please? If so, is it acceptable to use somebody else's photographs of a public domain artist's work as it cannot be considered a new rendition that has been altered enough to be a new piece of art?

Thoughts by Michael Greenhalgh about whether photographs of paintings should be classified in the public domain:

"There may be two copyrights: copyright in the artistic work (for example, a painting) and copyright in the photograph of the artistic work). You will generally need permission from the owner of copyright in the artistic work unless the copyright has expired. It is unlikely you need permission in relation to the photograph, if the photograph depicts nothing but the artistic work and is indistinguishable from other photographs of the same work. Otherwise, you will generally need permission from the owner of copyright in the photograph.

In other words, when someone photographs a painting of Van Gogh in a museum, producing a picture that is indistinguishable from other photographs of the same work, this cannot be considered an original art creation: it is precisely requested that the photographer annihilate his own personality to only mirror the artist’s own personality and reflect the artwork with maximum fidelity through the photograph. Thus, the photographer does not hold any copyright on the picture itself."


Okay, but what happens when a photographer of a public domain artist's work gets "stolen", despite the original work's copyrights not belonging to them in any way as they did not create the original piece? Well... 

http://www.vangoghgallery.com/ is a brilliant site set up by a man named David Brooks of which took him five years to fully develop. It features some of the rarities of Gogh's work, and took an incredible amount of effort for David to compile and collect scans and photographs for his audience. A short snippet from a New York Times article states how copyright breaching affected him:

"Last year, Mr. Brooks left his job at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce to devote himself to the site full time. An Internet-based poster shop in Boston agreed to sponsor the site, and for the first time Mr. Brooks began earning a small amount of income from banner ads. He also entered into an agreement with a Dutch-based company named On-Site to publish his database as a CD-ROM. It looked like his dream of making a living as a van Gogh researcher was about to come true. 

That was until an e-mail message arrived last December, from a friend at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. ''She said, 'I found this Web site, and I think the person is using a lot of your material, you'd better have a look,' '' Mr. Brooks recalled. 

Mr. Brooks said he was flabbergasted to discover that all the art images and all the letters appeared to have been copied from his site and reposted on About Van Gogh Art (www.about-van-gogh-art.com), a commercial site that sells everything from van Gogh lunch boxes to reproductions painted in China. Mr. Brooks recognized much of the digital work as his own. 

''I probably have about 15 images that you simply can't find anywhere in color,'' he said, ''and I found them on this guy's Web site, the same size, pixel for pixel.'" - http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/17/technology/when-the-art-s-public-is-the-site-fair-game.html?pagewanted=all

I want to avoid taking anyone's hard work for granted by not breaching any copyright laws and regulations. Sometimes projects that feature others' works, especially deceased artists', can be a bit of a minefield. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ZmVheuxpo - Coot Cat Learns Fair Use was a really handy video for me regarding some of the opinions and issues regardinf "fair use". I may consider contacting the individual holders/owners of the pieces of work I will need to use in my animation to ask for their permission just in case, otherwise it was suggested I talk to someone in the gallery of the college.