On 9/12/06, Richard Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Not responding specifically to Zero, but in general... It seems to me that thinking about creative input isn't going to be useful here either. Imagine if the kind stranger happens to be a professional photographer, and "takes charge" to arrange the subjects of the photo, and perhaps even takes two steps to the left so as to include a very dramatic lighting effect. The pro then hands to camera back to the owner and walks away.
Obviously the stranger would have at least *some* copyright interest in that case, then.
I'd say that's more likely to be a rare corner case, though. And the point I was making, at least, is that the person who presses the button doesn't *necessarily* have any copyright interest in the photo. Obviously they *sometimes* do. In my opinion, although this part is debatable, *most* of the time when you hand someone a camera and tell them to take a picture of something for you the copyright in the resulting work is jointly held between you and the actual picture-taker.
This is not work for hire; it's not any sort of contract arrangement. It's just a kind pro giving away services. I'm not any sort of lawyer, but it sure seems to be that, in handing the camera back to the owner and walking away, the photo-taker is almost literally handing away any rights to the photo.
From a practical standpoint, this is certainly true. From a legal
standpoint this is much less clear.
For most purposes, the answer is "who cares". But as a project dedicated to producing a free work, I think you have to care at least a little. Of course, depending on the details sometimes I think even a project dedicated to producing a free work has to sometimes admit that the chances of someone actually suing over such a work are so small as to render the entire exercise of determining the true copyright owner pointless.
Anthony