Ethical Question

[Cheesefood]

Hey peeps...we've argued this before, so let me streamline my question.

My in-laws' wedding album is damaged. Apart from being in a fire, many of the pictures are extremely faded. The album is over 30 years old.

As a wedding present to them, I want to re-touch the photos. There are burns that I can remove, moisture damage I can clean up and I can make the colors vibrant and re-saturated.

A few weeks ago, we argued about the "rights" of the couple that purchases the photos. Many photographers stated that they felt it copyright infringement for the wedded couple to make their own copies of pictures since it reduces the photographers income.

How does this fall into that argument? I don't think the photographer is still alive. If he is, good luck finding him and even better luck getting him to find a set of negatives from 30 years ago.

So, is what I'm doing ethical? My plan is to scan them all in, retouch them, then take them to a local camera shop to get the digital files printed on good photo-quality paper.

[Cheesefood]

Second part of the question:

Since there are some 60 pictures, 8 x 10, I've scanned them at 200 dpi to save hard-drive space. I printed two from my ink-jet, and they looked very nice. 200 dpi should be enough for me to get good prints from a camera shop, right?

[Mathias Vejerslev]

200 is good, 300 is better.

[Cheesefood]

200 is good, 300 is better.




Right, but when I get into editing the pictures, the file size can quickly jump to 30 megs each. I don't have a huge hard drive, nor do I have the money to buy a new one in the next two weeks.

[ID. Awe]

Also remember to apply some sharpening to the photos before sending out, the image will soften slightly in the output process.

[William Kazak]

Scan at the higher resolution and edit down in Photoshop per use basis. Big
hard drives = yes. Now you know the real story!

[Cheesefood]

Also remember to apply some sharpening to the photos before sending out,
the image will soften slightly in the output process




Do you recommend the unsharpen mask, or just the set sharpening filters?

What I'm doing now (from 7.0.1) is to scan as a TIF, then use Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Colors. Then I duplicate the layer and set the blending to multiply, at about 80% opacity. Then I merge and adjust the curves as necessary.

[Phosphor]

"The liklihood that the photographer would retain the records at this
late date is slim."




My dad had a well-organized and annotated negative file that went back over 50 years. Many (if not most) pro photogs do the same.

[YrbkMgr]

Hmmmm... I stand corrected then. Maybe Cheesefood should contact him for reprints.

[Carol Steele]

>Maybe Cheesefood should contact him for reprints<

Or at least his permission to scan and print. I too have all my negs
etc going back at least 25 years. You never know, he might even offer
to sell you the negs at a knock down price after all these years - and
that would save you hours and hours of work.

--

Carol
(Posted from the UK)

[YrbkMgr]

And all this time I envisioned Carol as a 25 year old....

[Cheesefood]

If you were going to do this and then make copies for everyone in the
family or sell them to a stock photography house, I cold see the photographer
having a problem but for what you are doing, you're probably safe...




But I do expect to make copies for their children, who may like a framed copy of their parents wedding picture.

I failed to mention that the family is from a very rural Iowa town where 99% of businesses are locally owned. Because of that, they are subject to moving or going out of business.

I'd love to find the originals, but I feel that asking them to look up the photographer is like saying "This is a huge pain-in-the-butt process and I'll just spend the money you don't have." That's just how her parents are.

And as I said, my wedding is in 19 days, and it's in the same church that her parents were married. I'd love to be able to present them with the photo album with newly reprinted pictures on that day.

I'm also retouching some photo's of my grandma to prepare for her funeral collage. She's 94 now, and not doing so well. Since one of the pictures of my grandfather is over 100 years old, I'm just going to assume that the photographers copyright has expired and that the negatives are gone.

[Ed A. Ortiz]

Please excuse me for jumping in here like this, but I also have a similar question and I didn't want to start a new thread.

A number of times I've been asked to archive wedding albums, family albums and retouch some photos as well.

Now, I'm thinking about charging for my services. If I were to do so, can I put in writing “The consumer is held liable for any copyright infringement that may occur” or something to that wording.

Can anyone offer any advise as to how I can protect myself from any wrong doings?

[YrbkMgr]

Ahem! Ed, plain and simple. Copyright infringement. You need permission to reproduce these. If you are charging for them, the photographer will be granted your fees if you are brought to court. There may not be punative damages, but certainly compensatory.

We have been asked to put wedding photo albums on CD many, many times, and won't touch it. Our attorney said that if we did it, he'd help prosecute us (not really but that was the overall tone of the 2 minute conversation).

Your attempt to pass liability to the client does not obviate your liability. If the client signs a document, saying that they give you copyright permission, and that they have the right to grant permission to reproduce, you will still be liable for compensatory damages, in the event that the client does NOT have the right to grant copyright.

Don't walk, RUN from this one brother.

Peace
Tony

[Cheesefood]

Ed,

Your best bet is to scan them and put them on a file-sharing program like KaZaA. No one has been able to successfully sue anyone from a file-sharing program infringement.

So Tony, if what you're saying is correct, I'm not allowed to scan my wedding pictures onto my computer?

Let's see them try to stop me. If I want a picture that I paid $1,000 to be my desktop wallpaper, I'll do it anyway.

[YrbkMgr]

Look, it's not my law, it's international copyright law. Just because they can't stop you from stealing a car, doesn't make doing so illegal.

So Tony, if what you're saying is correct, I'm not allowed to scan my
wedding pictures onto my computer?




That is correct, in most circumstances. Enforcement is another issue. You aren't really exposed.

Stealing is stealing. I think that in your circumstances Cheese, I probably would do the same - it would still be wrong, but I'd do it to help my father/mother, etc. with a personal, family album, that would live, essentially, in perpetuity.

But to start charging for stealing someone elses work, which is what Ed was saying, well, I couldn't do it.

How'd ya like it if someone stole the logo you created?

Don't get me wrong, my commentary is not a moral judgement. I can only speak to my own morality, but the fact is, copying a wedding album and then selling them is illegal.

Just for the sake of argument, the amount of money you paid for the service of having a photograph taken does not confer any additional rights upon you. Again, it's not my law, it's copyright law. <shrug>

Peace,
Tony

[Ed A. Ortiz]

Well, my aim is really to do personal pictures. Like the hundred and one pictures your uncle Fred took at the wedding reception. Besides, you say the photographer would likely be compensated for profits made. What’s that 20-30 bucks?

I won’t be selling the photographer’s photos/negatives anyway, I’ll be putting them on CD or retouching the worn out/faded photos and charging for those services and the custom built interface supplied, not the images. The pictures that I know have a copyright I’ll be sure to request proof of permission to use those photos, but the ones that I might not be aware of are the ones that bother me.

Tony, I’m not arguing with what you say, just try to find a loophole.

Cheesfood,

>Your best bet is to scan them and put them on a file-sharing program

like KaZaA. No one has been able to successfully sue anyone from a file-sharing
program infringement. << I don’t know about that. I’ve heard bad stuff
about the site. I stay away from there.

[Don McCahill]

Re: So Tony, if what you're saying is correct, I'm not allowed to scan my wedding pictures onto my computer?

I'm not sure that Tony is right on that one. I am pretty sure that backing up copyrighted materials is an allowable use under fair-use provisions within the copyright acts.

Of course, if you are scanning them into the computer, and sending copies to all your relatives via the net, then you would be infringing on copyright.

[YrbkMgr]

Good point Don, on the fair use provisions. In fact, I'm not familiar with the limitations of the provision so it's possible that I am mistaken.

Peace,
Tony

[Cheesefood]

Let's all be honest here though. Please, weigh in with honest opinions.

OK, so we all know pretty well the art of photo-duplication.

We all have access to good equipment: scanners, printers, computers, cameras.

We all know how to correctly and incorrectly duplicate a photo.

So here's my question:

If you just paid $1,700 to a photographer for his services, and another $2,000-3,000 for some high-quality prints, would you scan one of them and print it out for your grandfather in Arizona, your aunt in California or your uncle in Nevada whom you rarely ever see?

And then if a friend comes over a few months later and says "I really like that picture, can I get a copy?" Do you:

A. Call the photographer and make arrangements for the friend to purchase a print.

B. Purchase the print as a gift for the friend.

C. Go into your home-office, scan the picture and print it out so they can bring it home.