Reply To: Using other photographer's work to promote your business

[stef]

“There is a photographer in California that writes books.  The introduction talks about his 20 years of photography experience and has a section saying the whole document is copyrighted.  The books are basic but mostly accurate and have photos to support the text.  In a couple of cases the text says he didn’t take the photo so he does not know for certain how lights were set up.  I started to become suspicious when he identified a photo of the Canadian House of Commons as a picture of a castle.   There was a wedding photo which had a watermark at the bottom.  I did a Google search and found the photographer, who had no idea her photo was in the book.”

That doesn’t always mean it was not used legally.

There’s a misunderstanding propagated heavily by advertising and lobbying driven primarily by the recording industry.

Many types of copying someone else’s work is illegal. Many types are not illegal.

 

Examples:

Some people think that copying but giving credit or linking makes it legal. It does not.

Some people think that any copying is illegal. It is not.

Some people think they can control all use of their image (face) or creations (art) in all contexts. They cannot.

 

Using an example of someone’s work to explain a concept might be perfectly legal, even in a book you’re selling. The whole idea of copyright is to protect the owner to allow him to capitalize on the work publicly, spawning growth of creativity. This creativity is also spawned by allowing commentary and education to build on other works as examples, which is protected by law. The recording industry, and many fauxtographers themselves, try to promote that any use of anyone else’s image is illegal and imagine all sorts of harm that was done, esp when they’ve never even sold an image in the past.

If any such copying weren’t legal Fair Use, this site would be offline and the owners in court.