The Internet is a Public Place, is it not?

[parkerbenson]

Type in the phrase, "the internet is a public place" into google and you get many hits, people saying, the internet is a public place, don't put up anything you don't want people to see, etc...

Google "The Photographer’s Right" and open the PDF file detailing photographers rights.

It makes the statement that photographers in the United States are allowed to take photographs [aka images] anywhere in a public place, with certain restrictions such as military bases, dressing rooms, bathrooms, etc..

If the internet is indeed, a "public place", then when people upload their own images of themselves, or content, does it not become part of the "public place"?    If I create a costume  and walk down the street, as a manner of individual expression, or work of art, can someone take a photo of me?  Have they violated my "copyright"?

I would argue that this topic requires some discussion and debate...  Is the internet a public place, and is such, when you put things into the public place, in a manner that leaves them unprotected (i.e. right click and save, screen shot, etc.), have you surrendered your right to privacy, copyright, etc..

In my mind, there is a difference between contracting with a photographer to take images for your advertising and then refusing to pay the photographer and using those photos in your advertising...  AND, copying an image you see on the internet, that is in public view, for your own use and distribution, providing you aren't "selling that image" or claiming authorship of the original image as your creation.

This hasn't been thought out, but one consequence of these Getty suits may be the loss of our rights in public spaces to take photos/images of what we see.  If I paint my house certain colors to make it pretty, as I have, do I then have a copyright to all images taken of my house?  I do consider it my creation.

Thoughts and dialogue welcome, so that we might progress along this line of thinking...

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

short answer...no , no and no to all, don't confuse the rights of a photographer with copyright issues, they are completed separate beasts altogether.

[Oscar Michelen]

Paparazzi can take photos of celebrities when they walk down the street or come out of the coffee shop because there is no expectation of privacy. But otherwise people have privacy/publicity rights that don't allow folks to make use of their image, name or likeness without their permission.  Just posting a picture on the internet does not waive someone's copyright. Would you suggest that if an artist wants to exhibit his work on the internet that he then waives all his rights in the work? Of course not. Your house suggestion does not display sufficient originality and creativity to be copyrighted.

The bottom line is that Intellectual Property has many nuances, exceptions, rigid rules, that are not easily addressed in a yes or no question, though buddhapi did a pretty good job of trying to do so.

[parkerbenson]

what about walking into a yard sale and buying a used record album... is the owner of the yard sale violating a copyright, or no, because the same album has already been sold, not copied, so it's not like selling a "bootleg".

what about walking into a yard sale and buying an Ansel Adams print and putting on your wall in your dental practice...

I suspect again, that it's the original sold by a retailer, where the print had been licensed, someone got a royalty, etc..

So, what happens when we take that example a step further...  We have a friend with a nice Ansel Adams print, and we have a scanner, and we scan and print a copy of the Ansel Adams print and hang it on the wall in our dental practice...

That, I presume, crosses the line to willful copyright infringement?  

The internet seems a hazier place to me...  Let's say I walk into a dentist's office and there's a photograph on the wall, no copyright, no author, the dentist got the photo from a friend years before... I say, "Hey, that's nice, that would look nice on the wall in my office", and the friend says, "Here, you can have it", and you take it off the wall, but somehow magically it stays on the wall, so there are now two, and you take it to your office and put it on the wall, and now it's on the wall in both offices...

Can you do that, theoretically, assuming magic existed?  That seems to me to be where the trouble is, the origin of the work is unknown, and you take the original with you (right click and save), and you put it somewhere to look pretty and you don't sell it, so it's there simply to adorn your office.

This needs to be addressed by the courts or legislatively.  

My understanding of music copyright is that I can purchase a CD, burn a copy for my car and keep the original in my house.  I can tape a copy for my boombox.   I can load it onto my computer and put it on my Ipod.   What can I give to my friend?

Can I loan him my Ipod? Can I give him the original CD?  If he's riding in my car, and says, "Hey, I like that music", can I loan him the car copy?  What if he never gives it back?

I realize that this is what the Kazaa file sharing suit touched on, but I don't get the sense it's been flushed out yet.

The big thing when we were kids was to share LPs and cassettes and make copies on our home stereos for our own personal use... some of which I still have, 25 years later, while the LPs may have been damaged, or sold.  Am I guilty of copyright infringement?

Historically, it seems copyright laws made much more sense prior to 1976, and the farther back you go, the more sense they make to me.

[Matthew Chan]

There is a reason why we have judges and a court system despite the fact there are "hard-coded" laws. Laws are meant for guidelines of operation, not life-death decision-making.

For example, there are still all kinds of laws regarding performing certain sex acts in many states.  But as a practical matter, almost no one is going around to enforce those laws.  They may be law but most people disregard it because of its ridiculousness in this day and age.

Same thing with the 5 or 6 figure statutory damages.  It is there "just in case".  But if a case gets in front of a judge, he/she will evaluate the entire situation.  Intent, malice, and willfulness will have influence on any ruling.

If it was sure-fire for companies to win 5 to 6 figure damages, there would be may more lawsuits.  Common sense often prevails in court.

Not everything can be or should be legislated so tightly in my view.  Only the most egregious stuff should be.

[Oscar Michelen]

Ok lets keep the general hypotheticals to a minimum please. The answer to all your questions parker is the called the first sale doctrine. The copyright holder only gets the benefit of the first sale.  After that anyone can re-sell it, so the yard sale is legal,  buying the Ansel Adams photo and hanging it is legal.  What is not legal is making it available multiple times or reproducing it for resale or distribution.  Copyright means just that - the right to make a copy of the item.  So you can re-sell one tiem a copyrighted item you bought, but you can't make further copies of it.  Here endeth the lesson

[Matthew Chan]

We all just learned another legal concept today from you. Yay!

[Oscar Michelen]

Glad to help