This is acceptable?

[Decapod401]

Originally Posted by vcode455

I have traded slides since 1985. Every once in a while an image of mine shows up on Facebook from the collection of someone who has passed away. I am OK with that as long as they give me credit and are not selling prints or something.

In most cases, I think copyright cases involve commercial use without permission. People don't want someone making money off their, or a family members work. Or they don't want it used to drag their name thru the mud. Virtually every image I have posted from someone no longer with us has generated an "OMG, thanks for posting that great memory" from family members and friends who have seen it.

Greg,

While I understand and mostly agree with your sentiments, The legal side of the copyright laws don't support them. Although you don't see a dime from posting an uncopyrighted image here, on Facebook, or elsewhere, someone at those sites is making money derived from them.

When we post images here, the upload page has a lot of verbage that we all skip over after our first post or two. The first listed item is:

"1. Please only upload photos that you have taken, or that you have the legal right to display (such as those passed down from a family member, those where you have legal possession of the original, etc.). We take copyright violations very seriously!"

I don't know if admin will be stricter now that the forums have had this discussion, but it seems that the site shares in the liability of any violations of copyright infringement.

Originally Posted by RobJor

Couple of sidelights.

When you send a photo into a magazine for feature or contest you give them permission for use including usually for promotional purposes, articles etc but you still retain ownership. I remember Cinthia Priest at RR Illustrated was very strict on that.

Trader sides are an interesting sidelight. I know several people who traded slides and all of sudden some long forgotten slide traded years ago shows up I mentioned my friend Terry Norton whom I posted a few photos but is not online. Looking through posts I see photos of DT & I, so I send him the link. Long ago an employee gave him information when he was in Ohio so he sent him slides.
Then years later the son posts the images. Brought back some good memories for him. I think most people look at this as a little serendipity.

Ebay - of course all kinds of stuff shows up there sometimes at Prices????
70's Milwaukee Road roster shots tho are a "dime a dozen", We were all taking them. Another friend Bill Clynes sent me a link for N & W Pocahontas going away steam shot for a lot of money. "Wow, I was standing next to him, I have the same shot."

Bob

I think that most people with trader or purchased slides believe that the copyright follows ownership of the original. Although I was also of that opinion, this discussion has enlightened me.

When I did the L&NE book for the ARHS long ago, the commercial publishing partner, who was also the proprietor on Rails'n'Shafts was a book snob (not a bad thing), and one of the elements that he insisted on was that the dust jacket have a painting and not a photograph. Since the L&NE had limited color coverage, I wanted to have the painting depict something that wasn't available to me on film, so I worked with the artist to depict a scene with two FA1's in front of the cement mill at Martin's Creek.

About twenty years later, a slide with that exact scene showed up on Ebay. Given my personal connection to the scene. I bid an exorbitant sum north of $200, and I didn't even sniff the final price!