Saturday, October 13, 2007

Photo Copyright


When a photographer snaps a photo, he or she owns the copyright to that photo. The copyright is secured upon creation of the work by the artist.

So, if I'm traveling with my family on vacation and I have a stranger take our family photo, should I get the stranger to sign a release?

Of course, this is a non-issue, but I could easily see a rare case that would capture the media's attention.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

No. Because when the stranger is taking the pic of/for you, he is doing so at ur request, or, on ur behalf. Therefore, he is not the copyright owner but an agent of the copyright owner (yourself).

Although I'm not a lawyer. I just like arguing like one :)

Anonymous said...

i love the copyright law :)

Liz said...

Do you know of any cases involving this sort of thing? I think that lord kahless could have a point, but usually doesn't one snap photos of one's friends for oneself rather than at the request of the friends?

Joe Moreno said...

Liz: No, I don't know of any cases. After some more research, I concluded that this example would be considered a work for hire similar to a newspaper or magazine hiring a photo-journalist to take picture.