Petronio, LF list photonet postings and copyright

[d._kevin_gibson]

ecently a couple of us have come across posts from the list copied to

others weblogs and other sites. I know from discussions (my own posts

don't happen to be in this example) that there are some who are

unhappy

and uncomforatble with this, but don't want to make a fuss.

 

One example in case is the weblog of LF list member Frank Petronio -

example below:

 

http://www.frankpetronio.com/weblog/Pages/focus.html

 

or

 

http://66.102.7.104/search?

q=cache:2AhuRTvzFPIJ:www.frankpetronio.com/weblog/Pages/focus.html+fra

nkpetronio+weblog+Focusing+Issues&hl=en

 

Personally I have two problems with this

 

First, it is expressely against the List Rules :

 

""Prohibited Usage of the Site The content and materials available

through the Site are the property of photo.net or its licensors (the

users), and most of the materials are protected by copyright,

trademark and other intellectual property laws. Furthermore,

photo.net has expended its resources to gather these materials and to

publish them or to make them available to its users. You agree not to

reproduce or distribute, or cause to be reproduced or distributed,

any material that you retrieved from the Site, without the express

prior permission of both photo.net and, in the case of copyrighted

materials, the copyright owner, except for such reproduction as

occurs in the normal course of reading or viewing the materials using

a Web browser. Requests for permission to reproduce or distribute

materials retrieved from the the Site should be sent both to

photo.net and the original author of those materials. You acknowledge

that photo.net and the copyright holders will be significantly

damaged by Your violation of this section in a manner that would

require immediate injunctive relief. You are not relieved of your

duties under this section because material was posted anonymously or

under a pseudonym, because you cannot locate the copyright holder,

because the materials are in the public domain, because the materials

are available on any other web site or in some other form, or because

you have the permission of either the copyright holder or photo.net,

but not both. "

 

 

 

No permission seems to have been sought for such use.

 

Secondly, I note Petronio lists on the portfolio part of his site

that all

images are copyright 2003 Frank Petronio. Well, he and others

(especially

those who are photographers) should be well aware that a persons

written

words are also copyright protected. It matters not if they are

written in

a public forum, newspaper article or letter - they have the same

level of

portection as his photogorpahs do. As such, he and others, if they

wish to

quote someones post wholesale, need to seek permission to do so.

 

This is additionally laid out as the case in the terms and conditions

of

use of this LF list

 

 

BTW - Frank will claim one has to do some real digging to find his

weblog posts - several of us have been concerned about this copyright

violation - the reason being it happened to show up very easily doing

a google search looking for something else.

 

It's simply wrong and shouldn't be done.

[User_503771]

Some thoughts:

 

I know I'm gonna show some ignorance here: Is there a moderator of this list? If so, s/he should be contacted about this. Or whoever is the "governing authority".

 

Another thought: My understanding of copyright law is that if a person discovers that their copyright has been infringed, then, in order to retain that copyright, they must defend it. ("Their" and "They" are used as generic instead of "he" or "she" -- I know it's awkward and ungrammatical, but it's as close to the neuter gender as I can find in English.)

 

Example: Joe Blow publishes one of my photos without my permission. I find out about it. If I don't defend my copyright by whatever legal means at my disposal, I risk losing the copyright.

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong. More data resides at Library of Congress, loc.gov. They've got a terrific set of downloadable files.

 

Also if I understand correctly, my statements on this list once submitted to the list are no longer my intellectual property, but of the list owner. Is this true? If so, then I would think that the owner of the list should contact Petronio.

 

If this isn't true, then each person who has posted and had their posts duplicated without permission should contact Petronio and tell him to cease and desist. If he doesn't do so, then legal remedies could be resorted to, if desired.

 

In any event, I believe it's dangerous to let it ride. If Petronio wants to quote this list, he can bloody well play by the rules. A simple link on a page is easy to insert and doesn't step on anyone's toes.

 

I only took a cursory look at his site, but I construe that at least part of it has a commercial purpose, which would be to promote his photography. This alone is reason enough to give anyone's contention that he's violating copyright law some teeth.

 

Perhaps all he needs is to be made aware of this, and of the fact that by violating copyright law himself, he is opening himself up to the impression that he is untrustworthy in his dealings with people. This could be bad for business....

 

Meanwhile, I'll look around on the list and see if there's a way to contact the owner of the list. If I find this, I'll send a message with a link to this thread.

 

I appreciate this board's existence. It's very helpful to me to be able to read these posts and learn from them, and I do my best to chip in with whatever knowledge I have that might in any way be helpful to someone who's asking a question, by way of putting something back. I've found it to be a civilized place in a world that isn't always so civilized.

 

Hopefully, Petronio can hear some voices of reason and cut the crap.

[crispin_agnew]

"Another thought: My understanding of copyright law is that if a person discovers that their copyright has been infringed, then, in order to retain that copyright, they must defend it. ("Their" and "They" are used as generic instead of "he" or "she" -- I know it's awkward and ungrammatical, but it's as close to the neuter gender as I can find in English.)

 

Example: Joe Blow publishes one of my photos without my permission. I find out about it. If I don't defend my copyright by whatever legal means at my disposal, I risk losing the copyright."

 

Basically incorrect - it still remains copyright

 

 

 

"Also if I understand correctly, my statements on this list once submitted to the list are no longer my intellectual property, but of the list owner. Is this true? If so, then I would think that the owner of the list should contact Petronio."

 

Again, not quite correct - the author/copyright owner still owns the copyright. By submitting to the list he/she allows photo.net limited license to use it

 

It's a clear violation of both the photo.net terms of use for this site, and also of copyright

 

See:

 

http://www.photo.net/terms-of-use

 

especially:

 

Intellectual Property Rights

You will not use the Site to violate anyone's copyright, trademark, intellectual property rights, or privacy rights. The content which you submit must be Your work in its entirety. You may not submit content which is an amalgam of the works of several persons, even if You are among those persons, even if You are the principal creator, or even if the other authors have given You permission to use their work as part of the collective work. By submitting material to the Site, You are representing that You are the sole author of the content in its entirety, that You have the right to submit the material, and in the case of photos that you have obtained any model releases that may be required.

 

Notwithstanding the foregoing, you may include brief quotations and thumbnail images in your submissions that are permitted under the copyright laws as "fair use", provided you correctly attribute these to their authors. Furthermore, when commenting on photos in the photo Gallery, you may include a version of the photo under discussion in your comment, altered or marked up to illustrate your comments. By uploading photos to the photo Gallery, you grant to other photo.net members permission to copy the photo, to make such alterations and markups for the purpose of commentary s they see fit, and to attach tthe modified photo to their comments on the photo.

 

Submitting material that is the property of another, without the consent of its owner, is not only a violation of this agreement, but may also subject You to legal liability for infringement of copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights.

 

If material in which you hold intellectual property rights, which infringes your privacy, or which is defammatory is unlawfully submitted to photo.net by a third party, please inform us immediately and we will remove it. Notifications concerning copyright infringements should be sent to our DMCA Agent. To gain time, you may also send email to us through the Contact Us form on the web site; however, this is not a reliable form of communication and we may not read your email message.

 

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Many of the posting areas of the site, including the Gallery, provide You with the ability to delete or edit your posts later. Some areas of the site are labelled "non-archived", and a policy of automatic deletion is in effect. Your grant of license to photo.net for the use of your material is not conditioned on these editing/deleting features being maintained as they were when you submitted the material, and photo.net reserves the right to alter or eliminate these features, or to transfer or replicate your submissions to areas of the site where the editing/deleting/archiving features are not the same as the area to which you originally submitted the material, or to use the material in a site feature, from which you may not be able to delete it, such as Photograph of the Week.

 

You also grant to photo.net users the right to make a temporary copy of your material in the course of viewing or reading it with a standard Web browser, and to operators of search engines, for the purpose of indexing it.

 

Prohibited Usage of the Site

The content and materials available through the Site are the property of photo.net or its licensors (the users), and most of the materials are protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual property laws. Furthermore, photo.net has expended its resources to gather these materials and to publish them or to make them available to its users. You agree not to reproduce or distribute, or cause to be reproduced or distributed, any material that you retrieved from the Site, without the express prior permission of both photo.net and, in the case of copyrighted materials, the copyright owner, except for such reproduction as occurs in the normal course of reading or viewing the materials using a Web browser. Requests for permission to reproduce or distribute materials retrieved from the the Site should be sent both to photo.net and the original author of those materials. You acknowledge that photo.net and the copyright holders will be significantly damaged by Your violation of this section in a manner that would require immediate injunctive relief. You are not relieved of your duties under this section because material was posted anonymously or under a pseudonym, because you cannot locate the copyright holder, because the materials are in the public domain, because the materials are available on any other web site or in some other form, or because you have the permission of either the copyright holder or photo.net, but not both.

 

 

 

[User_503771]

Just checked. Here's the link regarding copyright matters for this board:

 

http://www.photo.net/dmca-agent

 

Also here,

 

http://www.photo.net/terms-of-use

 

under the heading "Ownership of Submitted Material", it's clear that our postings belong to us -- we are each the copyright holders of our own posts -- with the proviso that we are granting unlimited license to photo.net to publish what we post on the Web on photo.net. Additionally, photo.net maintains that in any such publishing all posts will be attributed to the poster.

 

In my opinion, all this is more than fair.

 

So, if your posts have been published by Petronio without your permission, probably the best thing to do is: 1) notify photo.net list owner; 2) write a letter to the DMCA agent; and 3) contact Petronio and let him know he must cease and desist or you'll take legal action.

 

I submit that you should do this even if it's okay with you if he publishes your stuff, but inform him that he must ask you first; and then, when/if he does publish your material, he must include the statement that he got it from this board and that he's using it with your permission; and lastly, that he should make sure that he gets permission as well from the board owner.

 

Incidentally, copyright law is really simplicity itself once you understand it. There's nothing at all slippery about it. Changes in publishing technology have nothing to do with anything, no matter how some weirdos insist otherwise.

 

If you find the whole thing difficult to wrap your head around, there's good info available on the Web about it (google search is in order, or loc.gov). Alternatively, there are lots of inexpensive books for artists and musicians that contain pretty well laid out, clear explanations of the whole thing for the uninitiated; most bookstores have these. And of course, there's always the public library.

 

As photographers -- commercial or serious amateur or artist -- we all have a duty to ourselves and each other to see that this minimum standard is adhered to.

[User_503771]

Note to Crispin:

 

Looks like we were posting -- your post and my second post -- at roughly the same time. So I hadn't read what you were saying as I made my second post.

 

I urge you to please re-read copyright law. You *do* risk losing your copyright on materials that have been infringed if you don't take steps to defend it.

 

This also applies to trademarks. Case in point: Xerox Corp. nearly lost their exclusive right to the Xerox trademark, *and* the processes covered by that trademark, by letting the word "Xerox" approach generic status.

[mark_gatehouse]

Michael,

 

I've never come across that - with regard to the requirement to defend against copyright infringement or lose it.

 

I know of many copyrighight infirngement cases which are not persued after legal advice - either for legal reasons or because the cost would be too great. In none of those did copyright lapse as a result.

 

Also, while there are similarities in terms of intellectual property, the are signicant differences between tradmark and copyright law.

 

Could you point out where the section in qustion is in the statute?:

 

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

 

 

(I am 99% certain it is not a part of the Berne Convention - to which national copyright law must conform)

[User_503771]

I APOLOGIZE.

 

I just did a search of a 290-page PDF file containing the complete law. I searched for the word "loss" and the partial word "defen" (to cover all forms of "defend") and could find no evidence supporting my earlier claim that one must defend a copyright or lose it. If I find any support for that claim, I will certainly post it.

 

I suppose I might owe an explanation here: I've worked with various types of publications for a long time, as a typesetter, proofreader, general graphic artist, and sometimes as a copy editor. A few years ago I worked for a client who was very concerned about protecting trademarks and copyrights in their publications, and rightfully so. In order to be able to do work for them (I worked as a freelancer) I was required to read and understand some in-house guides. They expected me to be watchful as I worked to make sure that all copyright and trademark notices were legally correct.

 

What I learned at that time about trademarks and their protection was new to me and some of it was alarming. I did some additional research on the subject on my own and was still surprised. I had not realized how easily one can lose the rights to one's own trademarked materials. I suppose some of this data "spilled over" into what I know about copyrights.

 

It's been several years since I've done work that required such minute attention to these issues, and tonight my memory did *not* serve me well!

 

So, thanks for making me "sit up and take notice" and do some homework! I hope that anyone reading my earlier insistent and erroneous posts is still following this thread!

[jorn ake]

I think the first thing to do is speak directly with Mr. Petronio. 9 times out of 10, copyright problems are resolved with a conversation. Find out if he knows about the usage rules, remind him what they are and then ask if he will rectify the situation. If that doesn't fix things, then you can go on to the next step.

 

Of course, suing someone over copyright usually requires proof of damages. Not sure how much you are losing financially when someone reprints free advice, even when that reprint violates the rules of the original publisher.

[martin_patek_strutsky]

Alfonse Deluer is an alias of Frank Petronio himself. I'm sure he would be too shy to disclose that by himself.

[crispin_agnew]

"Alfonse Deluer is an alias of Frank Petronio himself. I'm sure he would be too shy to disclose that by himself."

 

No No - I'm Alfonse Deluer (or am I Frank...?)

[leica ron]

All of the individual contributions made by each poster still have their names attached. Therefore, their statements are still attributable to them and copyright remains with the author.

 

Whether or not this is a breach of pn's policies is another matter ...

 

Also, FP doesn't charge a subscription fee for his weblogs and therefore isn't making money or mis-representing the individual contributions made by the posters ...

[dfdncithekxlbn8kaglf33]

<i>All of the individual contributions made by each poster still have their names attached. Therefore, their statements are still attributable to them and copyright remains with the author.</i>

<p>

This is still a violation of copyright, clear and simple. Excepting that the owner?s retain their copyrights (even in violation of them), this statement is false and does not follow with any of the logic or law of US Copyright.

<p>

Just because someone has their name attached to it means nothing. It was posted with consent that it would by used only on photo.net. Taking the work and posting it to some photo amateur?s site is a violation of copyright of the author and a violation of photo.net terms of use.

<p>

The only legally acceptable option would be to have a written agreement to post the content that was made between all parties involved and photo.net. This is how it works with licensing photos from the photographers who created them, or the writers who wrote the words and so on.

<p>

Finally, the presentation of the hijacked information leaves much to be desired in the realms of graphic and information design. A further insult to a violation of the law.

[razzledog]

Sitting here downunder, I`m wondering what all the fuss is about! It appears everyone is so protective about what they`ve written on a so called 'public forum', that photography has gone right out the window. Are all the posters on this site such damn good writers, full of originality and new ideas, that they`ve never been influenced by what others written previously? Absolute garbage. Don`t take yourselves so seriously guys, simply enjoy sharing the photographic knowledge base with all those equally interested, and if Frank (or Alfonse) or anyone else for that matter wants to cut and paste from a humble forum, then why not. All this legal crap is for lawyers, not photogs. Why not write an award winning novel and see if Frank sticks that on his site, if indeed Frank is the culprit. We should all know by now, the law is an ass.

[www.graemehird.com]

Is it Mark Gatehouse, Donal Taylor or D. Kevin Gibson asking the questions? He's at it here too:

 

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/499146.html

 

Sounds like multiple personality disorder with a healthy dose of paranoid schizophrenia disorder thrown in for good measure.

 

(Or maybe I'm just jealous because the voices don't speak to me too ....)

[crispin_agnew]

Frank/Alfonse/Paul (this is quite fascinating and bizarre - Paul Prudi is

posting in defence of Frank Petronio - but, in fact when you look closer it

turns out he is, apparently, Frank Petronio. Perhaps this whole thread is

the work of just one person... and Petronio refers to himself in his own

posts in the third person - what a wonderful multiple personality - how many

names does Frank post under?)

 

I practised IP law for a good few years before I retired

 

"Whomever you are, it sounds like you are on a personal vendetta against Mr.

Petronio, as the web page would be considered "fair use" by a US Court.

There are no damages or injury; and it is likely that the judge would laugh

it away and tell you to "get a life."

 

First in the US (I am presuming you are in the US) Fair Use is rather

clearly defined by statute and case law and the statement above is close to

100% incorrect. The use here clearly falls outside the parameters of Fair

Use/Fair Dealing

 

Secondly I recall from previous discussions that at least one of the

posters in the thread in question, who is a professional writer, regularly

bulk/gang registers all of their public/published writings with the

copyright office, whether on the internet or in print (this is a sensible

and normal part of the regular workflow for any creator by the way). What

this does is, in effect, seriously raise the bar in any case of copyright

infringement. Among several other very valuable things, registration

attracts statutory punitive damages which can be up to $100,000 per

infringement. It is a very important form of "cheap" copyright insurance if

you like, for any creator/author.

 

Copyright may seem simple on the surface, but it never is. But it always

makes for a very lucrative law practice.

[razzledog]

Nice to see all the 'Rabble' was removed!