Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass Paperweights => Topic started by: cfosterk on November 21, 2007, 07:15:07 PM
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If a dealer takes a picture/photo of a weight and then sells that weight I presume they can continue to use the original image (even though the piece is no longer in their possession).
I don't mind one of my pieces being illustrated but copyright really confuses me!!
Discuss.......
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The picture is an entity in it's own right and ownership is the owner of the negative (or other original) unless they signed the rights away. Once published copyright is established, posting on eBay is publishing. Proving publication is another matter entirely.
There are rules of thumb that cover most situations but copyright law is extremely complex and hard to understand, it is a specialised area of law.
There have been attempts to exert copyright of items depicted in a photograph but in most cases they do not succeed - it depends on the usage in that case. So if you made and sold open source cola and include a photograph of a can of coca cola in your advertising you would be abusing coca cola's copyright, the same image used non-commercially would not.
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The point about signing away rights to an original is an important one to bear in mind.
A few years ago, I made an agreement with Perth Museum and Art Gallery. Basically, I examined and photographed their entire collection of Scottish paperweights and I provided them with a full printed catalogue for their records. I was happy to agree to the requirement that my images of their weights could only be subsequently publicly reproduced by me with a "Permission of Perth Museum ..." statement. (Images of those weights also appear on the web at the SCRAN (http://www.scran.ac.uk/) site, but those were taken by a professional photographer, not by me.)
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Interestingly, on that SCRAN site, after typing in paperweights under search, on page 4, there is an Ysart Slinky Snake that is attributed to Monart. Can there be some accuracy to that attribution?
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Well spotted Mark.
That snake weight, SCRAN ref: 000-000-496-857-C (Perth Museum ref: 7G/1974) is in my catalogue as Caithness period - on the basis of UV checks. Perhaps some of the SCRAN references had not taken account of the information I provided.
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Thanks for clearing that up :)