From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett
On 5/21/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
Nor is having the idea for a particular photograph enough
to give you
copyright over an image taken by somebody else. I don't know about "setting the settings" - you may have some point here - but on examining this image it doesn't seem to have been taken in any particularly challenging lighting or other conditions. Depth of field, the "flat" lighting of
an overcast
day
- it all looks to me like the camera was set on automatic and the
autofocus picked out the subject.
It looks to me unremarkable in every way. There must be a million happy snaps out there taken in the same location all
looking much the
same.
If it's so unremarkable and so uncreative, isn't the whole question of copyright totally moot?
Hardly. We put a lot of effort into monitoring the license status of photographs in WP. It doesn't matter if the photographs themselves are good or bad, exciting or boring.
Can you claim copyright over the way you parked your car? Over the way you filled in a cheque? Over your choice of TV watching on a given night?
????
Such a bad photo as that one hardly seems to fulfil any criteria for creativity - the person aimed in roughly the right direction and pressed a button.
I wouldn't call it a bad photograph. It's slightly tilted, but that's easily fixed. There's no sparkle to it, but that's more the fault of the lighting than anything else. From the subject's point of view it is pretty good. It shows him in front of a famous landmark and is admirably suited to the user's page, showing what he is doing.
My problem lies with the fact that he has called himself the creator of the photograph and released it into the public domain when to my mind copyright belongs to the photographer rather than the subject.
Point and shoot? That's about all that anyone does with a digital camera
nowadays.
Most people - but not all.
Sure. But there is no evidence in this photograph that the subject "set the settings", as you surmised earlier. It looks like a straight "point and shoot" image to me.
Pete