On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 18:16:58 GMT, Larry Dighera
wrote:

Do you have any idea when that became fact? I was under the
impression, that the author had no right to the work unless s/he
placed a notice within it.

Many years ago (30+?), printed matter did require (or at least it was
strongly preferred) a copyright statement, but as Ray noted in his
post, current copyright law does not require that. I don't believe
that photo, artwork, or the like ever required a copyright notice.


Obviously, your mind is pretty well made up and I doubt my
comments will sway you, however I would suggest others do some
research before adopting your position.

I'm swayed. :-)

Cool, that was easy! :-)


Regardless if the necessity to place a notice within the work is
mandatory to claim a right to it or not, you've got to admit that
phonographs that do contain such a notice are automatically attributed
to their creator unlike those that don't.

I do agree that a notice in a photo makes it easier for the author to
prove ownership and can make a copyright claim easier. It also
provides some attribution, but copyright and attribution are two
separate issues. Simply providing attribution does not make it legal
to use a copyrighted work.


In any event, I still see no copyright infringement occurring as
result of an eBay seller imbedding links to images located on
another's web site. I could be wrong about that too. But until
someone provides a credible citation to the contrary, such a belief
seems grounded in reason, IMO.

There are four ways I can think of to make use of someone else's photo
on the web:
1) Copy the image to your website use it from there
2) Embedded a link to the photo in one of your webpages
3) Provide an explicit link directly to the image
4) Provide an explicit link to the webpage where the owner displays
the photo.

The use of 1) is a clearly copyright violation. The use of 4) is
almost certainly not a copyright violation though some website owners
don't like it. The use of 2) and 3) start to get a bit murkier. I
doubt anyone would get very far persuing a copyright violation case
based on 3) though I consider it pretty tacky.

That leaves 2) which most of the prior discussion has focused on. I
can't point to a legal case on this, but strongly believe that the
courts see 2) as functionally equivalent to 1) and therefore a clear
copyright violation. Imagine that I setup a website called DNN
(Dewitt's News Network). To keep my cost low, I embedded links to AP
and UPI pictures that I find on CNN and MSNBC in my website. I have
absolutely no doubt that AP, UPI, CNN and MSNBC would all slap me
with a copyright suit and win in the courts. Eric probably doesn't
have the financial resources to defend his copyright the way those
companies do, but that doesn't mean would should respect his copyright
any less.

deg