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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Photo alongside text: collective or derivative

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Peter Brink <peter.brink AT brinkdata.se>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Photo alongside text: collective or derivative
  • Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:48:03 +0200

Terry Hancock skrev:
Henri Sivonen wrote:
I have photos of famous places sitting on my hard drive. I think they
might be more useful if they were available for anyone to use.
Hence, I've been considering PD, CC-by and CC-by-sa. I am trying to
understand what ShareAlike means when applied to photos.

Crop, combine, collage, phototint, add animated characters, use
as backdrop or rear projection in film, just about anything you can
do with it in Gimp or Inkscape, etc, etc.

All of those imply a derivative or combined work.


Ah - but this issue is not so simple in Finland... One needs to be aware of the differences between photographic works that are original (and thus copyright protected) and unoriginal photographic works under Scandinavian law.

A original photographic work is an "artistic" photograph where the photographer have had control over the setting, the lighting, the subject etc. of the photograph. A typical example would be a studio photograph.

A unoriginal photographic work, on the other hand, is a photo where the photographer has just pointed the lens toward a subject and pushed a button. A tourist photo would be a good example of such a photo.

The rules regarding unoriginal photographic works can be found in Art. 49 a. of the Finnish Copyright Act. Art 49 a. excludes art 1 and 4 from the list of articles that applies to unoriginal photographs; therefore such photos are not protected against derivative works!

There is a Finnish case (cited in Per Jonas Nordell, Rätten till det visuella, p. 111) in which the Finnish supreme court ruled that a painting, that had quite faithfully copied the subject of a photographic picture, was not an copy of the photographic picture and therefore did not infringe upon the copyright in the photographic picture (HD 1979 II 64). The painting was quite clearly an adaptation of the photographic picture, but that was not enough (under Finnish law).

The term "derivative work" has in fact a more "narrow" scope in Europe (IMO) than in the U.S. In the U.S. a derivative work can be anything from an edited or cropped version of a work to a translation of the work. In Europe a derivative work must be an original work of authorship in itself. While the required level of originality is lower than for independent works the originality requirement is definitely still there. Under European law edited works are copies - not derivatives, and thus fully under the domain of the copyright holder.

It should be noted that it is, IMO, fully possible to escape the scope of a photographic picture by altering it so that the original picture is not readily identifiable as the origin of the new picture. You could for example cut up a several pictures in small enough pieces and use those pieces to create a collage, without infringing upon anyone's copyright. Or you could cut out the skyline from one picture and use it in your own picture.

The distinction between original and unoriginal photographs does of course have an effect on the usage of the CC-license. An end user of an unoriginal photograph, who lives in Finland, Sweden, France or any other country which jurisdiction makes a difference between original and unoriginal photos, doesn't need a CC-license if he wants to adapt such a photo – he does need the license if he wants to use the photo as is or in an edited form.

/Peter Brink









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