Question about Fair use and posting photos with captions without permission.

[The Backlash Cometh]

If a private organization posts photographs of government officials in a meeting that took place on government property prior to public meetings, and another photograph at the corporation site of the company which received beneficial treatment from the officials, would those photographs qualify as fair use?

It's a given that the private organization would never give their permission. Yet, it's very much a public interest issue.

Can that photograph be published without permission using Fair Use?

[MineralMan]

1. It depends on who took the photos, really, and under what conditions..

Without details, it's impossible to say. The copyright of photographs starts with the photographer, who is normally the original copyright holder, but may be owned by a business or organization if the photo was taken as a work product. Copyright ownership can also be transferred at any time. If the photo was taken by a government-employed photographer, odds are that it's in the public domain. It's complicated, and there's no general answer possible.

[NYC_SKP]

2. Additionally, there are likely state and local differences in the law. (nt)

[MineralMan]

3. Not in copyright law. States can't alter that law or change

it in any way. It's one of the few purely federal legal matters. Copyright and patents are among the very few actual laws mentioned in the Constitution. That reference removes copyright and patent law from the jurisdiction of the several states and vests it solely in the federal government. It's almost unique in that distinction.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Privacy protections, Also potential libel slander that results from release of materials, no?

:shrug:

[MineralMan]

5. Different matters. The OP asked about Fair Use, which is strictly

a copyright issue. That's a federal matter, exclusively.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. What if...

What if the photo has been sent to several government agencies? Does that make it a public record?

And what if the photo is a clear indication of a crime? And the government agency and the private organization were part of a conspiracy?

Doesn't that make it Fair Use? Or is there another rule based on public interest that would protect its usage?

[MineralMan]

10. Again, I can't answer because there's not enough information.

A photo can be evidence of a crime and still be protected by copyright, if that's what you're asking. Where it has been sent is irrelevant. It is only who created it that is relevant. If you can't offer any more information, I can't really give you any better answer. Copyright has nothing to do with what the photo shows...only who created it or owns the copyright in it.

[HopeHoops]

7. Technically probably not, but in the reality that is the Internet it is a constant.

We post things here on DU all the time that come from such sources, and many of them contain clear copyright notices. YouTube is under a lot of pressure, and gives to it, to delete specific things from specific places - clips of the original SNL shows for example. If you don't protect the right when you become aware of it, you're essentially yielding the right to fair use.

One thing DU does right is not HOSTING the pictures. We can link to them, but not upload them. If there's a problem with something I post because of copyright, the owner has to contact me or my hosting company (or Photobucket for many people) to bitch about it. They can complain to the DU admins if they want, but the only thing DU can do is delete the post and I've rarely seen an example of a post I suspect disappeared for that reason.

And besides that, to claim fair use I believe you have to credit the original source. If I copy an image from another site and upload it to my hosting company's server without a credit, I'm not complying with the concept. There's a good reason that DU limits copy/paste of article contents to 3 paragraphs. For most articles, that usually falls within the fair use concept, especially since the source is referenced directly in the link field. That's a bit of a problem when there are only 3 paragraphs (or less). This, as I understand it, was one of the primary reasons behind the "Edit Requested" status being applied to posts. When it was introduced, the admins' notice said it 'initially' would only be applied to over-use of content. I don't recall that changing since then, but that's an ATA question.

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. Attributing credits is not a problem.

More than happy to cite where it came from. It's because they know it's an admission of a crime that they might resist it.

Which makes me wonder why there's no law out there that addresses this issue.

[HopeHoops]

9. Eight years of the shrub proved that you can get away with admitting a crime (war crime even).

It's a tough call. The news organizations pay for most of the material they didn't generate (except public records, of course), so the same "iconic" picture shows up all over the place. If someone uploads a picture they took to a web site they control and without a copyright notice, they are essentially putting in the public domain from a practical perspective. Technically they still hold the copyright unless the site they upload it to claims ownership of all materials. That was a controversial aspect of a change in the Facebook agreement - they claimed complete ownership of all rights digital and otherwise to anything on the site even if a user uploaded it. I rarely log in (and don't upload to there anyway), and honestly their agreement is changed more often than Eric Cantor's diapers.

Use of public property and public figures really doesn't change the copyright of the person who took the picture, video, or audio, or simply wrote something about the event. Some people and companies rigorously enforce their rights, others don't. It is kind of a "use it or lose it" prospect for the owner because being aware of a violation and not doing anything about it is viewed by the courts as implicit consent. That's why every damn technology company has lawsuits pending with every other one and counter-suits and counter-counter-suits, etc. Protect it or risk ownership. You shouldn't fuck with Disney, for example, and yet you can get a Mickey Mouse tattoo and I doubt there's a tattoo artist in the country who paid royalties to use the image.

VisiCalc was the first serious spreadsheet program for personal computers and I found it ironic that Lotus tried to sue Microsoft for copying 123 when Lotus stole damn near everything from VisiCalc. And the basis for the first Mac OS was based on the Lisa OS which was closely based on something Xerox created. Who really created the concept of a GUI? Commodore was WAY ahead of both Mac and M$ and so was Atari for that matter. Perhaps they were both two focused on the product and not on making it popular, but market dominance does not necessarily equal superiority.