On Jun 9, 2012, at 10:40 PM, Matthew Hunt wrote: > An author of dog training books contacted my wife about a picture I > took of my wife and our late Doberman. The author wanted to use the > picture in a book she is writing. My wife respects the author and > liked the idea of being in the book, but I didn't want to give away a > photograph for a book to be sold at profit. I realized that the book > is likely to sell on a pretty small scale, so I thought a good > compromise would be to allow her to use my photograph, in exchange for > a free copy of the book. That would make my wife happy (for both the > book and being in it) and be a minimal expense for the author. > > The author declined these terms. You see, she plans to use hundreds of > photographs, and clearly it would be too expensive to agree to such > terms. > > (Since the author is seeking permission from the subjects, rather than > the photographers, I'm sure the book will be full of photographs that > she doesn't have the right to publish.)
If I were an author or one with aspirations to be an author, and if I wanted to use photos or other artwork in my publication, it would seem that I have four courses of action: a. I could do the art work/photos myself; b. I could hire a professional or several to do the artwork/photos for me; c. I could find open source license-free artwork/photos I could use; or d. I could just browse around and steal other people's stuff without attempts at compensation, acknowledgement, etc. Actually, there is a fifth option - browse around and then do the right thing by asking for permission and offering compensation. This would seem to be the most complicated and potentially most expensive so I can understand why she isn't doing that. But her apparent preferred option, (d), is the most disrespectful of others intellectual property. As an author, how can she be so mindless? I have been involved in the publication of several professional books (i.e., reference books, text books), either as co-editor or co-author or as the supervisor of someone co-editing or authoring such books. [And hundreds of technical reports and articles.] Even though we tried to avoid it, there were times when it was just critical that we quote extensively from others' works and/or copy figures/tables/graphs. And that meant getting those authors' and their publishers' permission to use the material. That is by far the hardest work in writing something, even worse than doing an index. Option (a) or (b) have got to be the best way to go. If this woman is self-publishing, she can probably get away with doing whatever she wants to. If she is going through one of the handful of publishers who publish dog/cat/bird/hamster/ferret material, then her publisher should be apprised of their exposure to serious legal liabilities. stan -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
