lgb wrote:
We went to Walmart the other day to copy some photos of me whan I was a
kid and of my kids when they were young. The pictures were taken in
late 30s - early 40s and late 50s - early 60s.

Walmart tokd me they couldn't copy some because they were taken by
professional photographers and doing so would violate copyright laws.
I was irritated enough to go home and read up on copyright law.

I think they make this stuff deliberately obscure to give the lawyers
gainful employment.

Maybe it's just me but I find copyright law to be pretty clear and
easy to understand. Not so for many other areas.


First, none of the photos had a stamp or any other identifying mark on
them, so they were not copyrighted acoording to the law at the time they
were taken. And of course that made it impossible to locate the
photographers (some of whom are probably dead by now) to get copy
permission even if they had been copyrighted.

Secondly there seemed to be a gray area called "works for hire" which
might, or might not, imply that I owned the copyright on my kids pics,
and by inheritasnce from my parents on my pics.


"Works for hire" isn't a gray area at all. The law is quite plain,
it is the term of art "works for hire" that is confusing because
that particular doctrine typically does NOT apply when you hire
someone to creat a work of art for you. "Works for hire" actually
are works done by your employee, not by an independendant contractor
you hire. The doctrine should be called "works by employees" to
avoid the confusion.

Finally, the basic import of the law seemed to be to protect the
"commercial value" of any copyrighted work. Much as I'd like to think
otherwise in my case, old pictures of ordinary children have no
commercial value, only sentimental value to the immediate family.

The purpose of the law is to protect the rights of the creator of
a creative work.


If Walmart's lawyers are correctly interpreting the latest finagling
with the copyright laws, the laws need to be changed. I'll write my
senator and representative and send a copy to Walmart's headquarters,
but I doubt it'll do any good.


I quite agree with you that it will not do any good. Surely you read
about the Berne Conventions. US Copyright largely law adheres to an
international standard.

Note that I would not think of using a photo from a published and
copyrighted work in something I did. At least not without getting
permission. Protecting commercial work is a good thing.

I'd be interested in hearing if others ran into this problem and how
they solved it.


If you Google through the archives of the rec.photo and misc.legal
heirarchies you will find this is often cussed and discussed.

I got my copies by signing a form saying I claimed the rights and
holding Walmart blameless if anyone sued us. I think I'm safe :-).

I expect you are too. I cannot fault WalMart for wanting to obey the
law, signing form is a trivial thing to ask of you.

BTW, I bet you never asked a baker to make you a cake with an image of
picture of MIckey Mouse in the icing. It seems there is some damn
Mickey Mouse protection in Copyright law (thanks to the late Sonny
Bono).

--

FF