copyright

Pragmatic Photography

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Pragmatic: relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters. Practical as opposed to idealistic.

Acrobats have to be pragmatic. They may have planned for some fancy manoeuvres but it’s much more important to get the job done and not fall or drop anything.

Left: Gary Borstelmann, aka Gary Sladek, aka the Amazing Sladek, performs at an NBA All-Star game in Toronto, 2016.

Right: Rong Niu, aka Krystal Niu, aka Red Panda, performs at an NBA All-Star game in Toronto, 2016.

This is another view-from-my-office photo.

A pragmatic photographer is more concerned with getting the job done rather than making an artistic statement.

Many people who take pictures with their cellphone camera are pragmatic photographers. They want a photo without any fuss and without much thought.
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Copyright Phishing Scam

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Today I received this message through my contact form:

Name: John

Email: JohnBowles@xero.com

Message:

Hello,

Your website or a website that your organization hosts is violating the
copyrighted images owned by our company (xero Inc.).

Take a look at this report with the hyperlinks to our images you utilized at
www.warrentoda.com and our previous publication to find the proof of our
copyrights.

Download it now and check this out for yourself:

https://storage.googleapis.com/ . . .[redacted] . . .

I do think that you deliberately violated our legal rights under 17 U.S.C. Sec.
101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damage as high as $150,000 as set
forth in Sec. 504 (c)(2) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”)
therein.

This letter is official notification. I seek the removal of the infringing
materials described above. Take note as a service provider, the DMCA requires
you to eliminate and/or disable access to the infringing content upon receipt of
this letter. If you do not stop the utilization of the aforementioned
copyrighted materials a law suit can be started against you.

I do have a strong faith belief that utilization of the copyrighted materials
referenced above as presumably infringing is not authorized by the copyright
owner, its agent, or the law.

I declare, under consequence of perjury, that the information in this
notification is accurate and hereby affirm that I am permitted to act on behalf
of the owner of an exclusive right that is presumably infringed.

Very truly yours,
John Bowles
Legal Officer
xero, Inc.

xero.com

12/06/2021

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Proposed Change to Copyright Law

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The federal NDP put forth a Private Member’s Bill, Bill C-440, that proposes to abolish Crown copyright in Canada. The Copyright Act Section 12 currently states:

Where copyright belongs to Her Majesty

12. Without prejudice to any rights or privileges of the Crown, where any work is, or has been, prepared or published by or under the direction or control of Her Majesty or any government department, the copyright in the work shall, subject to any agreement with the author, belong to Her Majesty and in that case shall continue for the remainder of the calendar year of the first publication of the work and for a period of fifty years following the end of that calendar year.

For comparison, the US government generally puts all federal government works in the US public domain. Those works were paid for with American public money so the American public should have free access to them.
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How not to get arrested for counterfeiting

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The full face of the twenty dollar bill is shown at actual size but it has a large watermark. (Bank of Canada)

You might someday have the need to photograph banknotes, coins or postage stamps. Do it wrong and you or your customer could get a visit from the RCMP or be on the receiving end of a lawsuit. Copying currency and stamps isn’t just about counterfeiting, it’s also a copyright issue.
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Credit Where Credit’s Due

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Four weeks ago, Google made a small but potentially good change to Google Images.

When someone searches images on Google, there is now a tiny, barely noticeable, new link below the larger version of some images that reads, “Image credits”:

The tiny link to show the image credits appears only if the appropriate IPTC data is embedded in the image.

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Copyright, monkeys and creativity

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The US government stated, in its September 2017 update to its copyrights practices (link to PDF), that it will not register a copyright for any work that lacks human authorship. This includes, but is not limited to:

• A photograph taken by a monkey.

• A mural painted by an elephant.

• A claim based on the appearance of actual animal skin.

• A claim based on driftwood that has been shaped and smoothed by the ocean.

• A claim based on cut marks, defects, and other qualities found in natural stone.

• An application for a song naming the Holy Spirit as the author of the work.

You can be assured that all of the above stem from actual events.
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