Using photos from other sources, ? copyright issue?

[ben_issacs]

Jeff,

I've an old RM calendar which has some great aerial shots of various Japanese railway locations, which I'm sure would be of interest to other viewers.

If I sent some of these off to the forum, would there be a copyrights issue? 

Regards, 

Bill,

Melbourne.

 

 

[Yavianice]

You need to hold the license of the pictures that you share on this forum. Please don't upload other peoples work without their permission or a license.

[cteno4]

Bill,

 

please dont post or share with forum pm anything that is not your own copyrighted materials (ie photos you took, etc., not others photos, words, etc). If you want to share with others do it off the forum. Please don’t use the forum as a way to advertise specifically what you will share.

 

what you do off forum is up to you. If you want to share stuff with others off forum use the pm and exchange email addresses to share stuff or use your own file sharing accounts to share stuff. Copyright issues on stuff like this a bit in the fuzzy area. Most copyrights have a fair use clause for personal use but that usually does not include sharing with others as that would end up voiding copyright if it got out of hand (ie what started with mp3s). 

 

I know it’s sad many older stuff is buried now and folks can’t get access to it easily like your calendars, but most of it probably is still under copyright. It’s practically impossible to trace them and determine if they are still under copyright or released to public domain. Many times the copyright holder has sort of gone poof with time but no way to determine what the status is at that point. Then there is difference ethically (but not always legally) between something like an pdf someone made and was freely sharing on the web and the site is now gone vs a book, photo, etc. it’s a very fuzzy area and why we avoid it totally on the forum.

 

Our club has decades of old Japanese railfan and model railroading magazines that were donated to us but we can’t scan them and openly share them as all within the last 70 years. It’s a shame they are sitting there and only folks here in dc can parouse them.

 

digital age has mucked up the idea of sharing of a work as in the past that was fine as a single copy could only be used by one person at a time (ie a book from the library or lent to a friend). But in the digital age 1 copy could easily be shared with everyone on earth at the same time. Various licenses like Creative Commons and variations are working on this but it’s a morass to navigate and understand along with all the country specific issues. Hard to draw lines around these things clearly and why we just don’t step into it at all on the forum and just say put only your own work up on the forum and link to everything else elsewhere.

 

yell if you have any questions.

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

 

[ben_issacs]

Jeff, 

Thanks for that information.

Pity, there are some interesting shots there.

Regards, 

Bill, 

Melbourne.