walter_dufresne

If I understood her correctly, my old attorney pointed out that photographs created by employees of the US government (in the course of their

work) are in the public domain, as per Title 17 USC. She specifically mentioned, as examples, both NASA and the FSA.

She also said that photographs created by employees of state and local government (in the course of their work) may or may not be in the

public domain, depending on the laws of that state and the rules of that agency.

"The copyright process registration takes many months ..."

Not quite, and not any more. There's good news in recent months. Registering copyrights in the USA is now fast, cheap, and easy with a

high-speed internet connection and a credit or debit card.

We submitted another bulk registration on Monday, our fourth this month on behalf of ourselves or our clients, via the Library of Congress's

"electronic copyright office" program at http://www.copyright.gov/eco/beta-request.html and it's worked wonderfully. The astonishing part is

that the *effective* registration date *is* Monday, because:

01. they've got the money ($35.00)

02. they've got the the electronic paperwork (Form VA), filled out online, and

03. they've got a copy of the work (several dozen tiny .jpg versions of the big camera raw files).

Once all three pieces are in place *that* becomes the effective date of the registration, even though it's taken the US Register of Copyrights

about six weeks to mail us the paper certificate.

I once heard a New York lawyer mimic Lyndon Johnson, arguing that an *un*registered copyright is about as useful as a bucket of warm piss.

He said that magazine publishers *know* this and use it to their advantage: they're damn sure to register the copyrights to their compilations

(the magazine itself) while simultaneously working with photographers who won't register.

CVI Dye Transfer Laboratory moved from NYC's Little Italy a couple of years ago and is now

on Vashon Island in Puget Sound, out in Washington State. The owners, Guy Stricherz and

Irene Malli, still print, and they produced a marvelous show and book, Americans In

Kodachrome, a segment of which the Getty exhibited last year.

As a follow up to "Interior America," the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston,

Massachusetts exhibited and published Hare's "This Was Corporate America" in 1984. Long

out of print, the exhibition catalog truly is stunning because of the frankness embodied in

Hare's essay. (That word, "stunning," is a frequent adjective associated with blurbs about

photography but, in the case of Hare's essay, it truly is an appropriate adjective.) Over the

years I've had one catalogue stolen from my little library, replaced it with a xerox of the essay

courtesy of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, and replaced that with another catalogue via

ABEBooks. Chauncey Hare is my hero, a role model for a plainspoken man who worked hard

at his art and who rejected temporal power.

We've had good luck here using the V750 with old sheet film in both 4x5in and 8x10in size.

When we use Digital Ice, we have the scanner hooked up to our most powerful Mac, because

it seems that Digital Ice uses lots of horsepower from the processors. Digital Ice seems to

gobble up CPU cycles, and you can check with Apple's Activity Monitor application from your

Utilities Folder inside your Application Folder. It looks like not using Digital Ice makes the

V750 scanner quicker and more useable on older Macintoshes.

For those photographers feeling a bit more flush, and content to work without

genuine Graflex parts, Louis Shu at Photo Gizzmo, Inc, in New York City, NY 10014

(tel: (212) 463-0130) got me some utterly wonderful Beattie Intenscreens for my

Graflok backs, in 4x5 format with beautifully faint grid lines. They were pricey, at

$239.00 each, and they had to be made to order by Beattie up in Rochester, but they

are very pleasurable to look at, to look through into the world.

Walter Dufresne, Brooklyn, NY