Interestingly Wal-Mart at least here in North Carolina is enforcing that in their one hour labs. Even with the self-serve printer, they ask to see the original and if it has a copyright notice on it they ask for a letter of permission. No letter, they tear them up and toss them in the trash. All I can figure is someone hit them for the big, big bucks in a law suit, and won. That is the only way a major corp. is going to do something like that.
There is a cravat that the copyright has to be registered before you can sue, however. You can not take someone to court for infringing an unregistered copyright. But the registration can be done after the infringement, it is only proof of ownership. Unless the law has changed again since I last checked. If anyone is interested, and anyone selling their photography had better be at least in the areas of their markets, the ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) website should have very current US copyright info on their website.
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Markus Maurer wrote:
Hi tom I don't want to open Pandora's box of worms, but is there really an automatically given copyright on photos in your country? In Switzerland, a photo is not automatically protected, there was a case lately described in the main newspapers when a company had used a photo of Bob Marley from a live concert made from a professional photographer to produce Posters without his permission and without paying him. He wanted 75'000 Swiss francs (about 50'000 Euro)for the rights. He won only because the judges regarded the photo as exceptional well taken example and therefore as some kind of art. The copyright situation seems unclear here. If a photo is published in a book, it is protected. I you just give it to someone, I do not know....
greetings Markus
Subject: Re: Mat sizes US (Texas)
Tom (Graywolf) wrote: . Great to see that one hour labs are taking notice of copyright stamps on
the
back of photos these days.
-- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com/graywolf.html
