Dear POVers

Some time ago, Jaime Vives Piqueres, Chris Cason and myself were informed
that a senior student in a technical academy had appropriated our "Reach for
the stars" image and a few others. He had removed the copyright notices,
replaced them by his own name or initials and put the "new" images on
display on his personal website, which was publicly open. He claimed the
images to be his own, and may have used these fake credentials to obtain
graphic-related jobs in his school.

After investigating his website, which looked like a poorly done portfolio,
it appeared that around 50 images were there, taken from various sources. A
good number were POV-Ray ones taken from the IRTC (prize winners). Some had
been taken from the websites of famous professional 3D artists (including 5
from the same artist). There was also a demo picture for a major 3D
application, a real space photograph and screenshots of games (all supposed
to be POV-Ray or Max images according to the text).

None of the images were credited. In some cases, he crudely photoshopped the
images to erase the copyright. In other cases, he just put a black box on
top of it and wrote his initials, or his full name if there was enough
space. Also, he created new titles for the images and renamed the files: for
instance, my own "Wet bird" became "The Blackbird in New York". By browsing
through the IRTC and other 3D sites, I managed to identify 25 images out of
50, including 11 that were now signed by him.

As I was busy tracking down the images to identify them, he suddenly shut
down his web site. We believe that he may have noticed the unusal activity
coming from unfamiliar, overseas locations, and freaked out. We had had the
time to back up most of it anyway. With the site closed, there was no longer
need for sending a C&D letter, but since several commercial artworks were
concerned (and thus involved other parties), it was necessary to make sure
that his actions were not left unnoticed. As this appeared to be mostly an
internal affair, we chose to contact the school authorities, who took the
matter seriously and immediately had a meeting with the student and his
parents.

We consider then that the case is closed and hope that he has sincerely
recognised the error of his ways. Therefore, we won't disclose his name or
his school's. Let's say, however, that the culprit's chosen nickname ("god")
seems to have reflected some self-aggrandized notion of himself... He isn't
a POV-Ray user, by the way ;-)

However, since his website was open for everyone to see, it's not impossible
that some of the images turn up in the future to embarrass him, since he was
foolish enough to put his real name on them and boast in public. We'll
inform the other "victims" in private (most of them being regulars in these
groups) of the copyright theft of some of their images.

G.

-- 
**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray and Poser computer images
- Posters

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In article <4048fb4a@news.povray.org>,
 "Gilles Tran" <gitran_nospam_@wanadoo.fr> wrote:

> Dear POVers

[.../...]

> G.

Hi,

I'd like to cash in on this opportunity to ask what is the legal status 
of the "Copyright". I often see artists who append a copyright to their 
images (which of course is justified), but does it has a real 
signification ? Don't we need to register on an official organism which 
would vouch for the autenticity of the work ? Is it enough to write 
"copyright" and your name to make it your intellectual property ?

I had troubles wandering on the web to find these informations.

Thanks,

-- 
"Je ne deteste que les bourreaux" -- Albert Camus

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news:noe.falzonPASDEPUB-8722E0.03475606032004@news.povray.org...

> Hi,
>
> I'd like to cash in on this opportunity to ask what is the legal status
> of the "Copyright". I often see artists who append a copyright to their
> images (which of course is justified), but does it has a real
> signification ? Don't we need to register on an official organism which
> would vouch for the autenticity of the work ? Is it enough to write
> "copyright" and your name to make it your intellectual property ?
>
> I had troubles wandering on the web to find these informations.
>

That's an extremely complex, and probably unanswerable question, given the
international nature of the internet.  Copyright laws vary in different
countries, and although the Berne convention theoretically tries to define
them worldwide, as far as I know, most countries' laws have provisions that
specifically limit the Berne convention.

Here in the US, technically you need only put notification on the work when
it is put into a fixed form or medium in order to copyright, so if I put a
notice such as (c) Date MyName on an image, then theoretically I have
copyrighted it.  That is why you see notices on most pictures, because it
serves to announce to would be thieves that the work is claimed by someone
already.

That has no legal weight though, because if someone else tries to claim your
work, your notice means nothing unless you have registered that notice with
the Library of Congress' copyright office.   Registering your work is a
requirement if you need to take action to enforce it.  No legal action can
be brought without registration. But it happens that sometimes the
registration doesn't occur until there is a need to enforce.

That of course means that if you have some reason to initiate legal action,
then there is also a high probability that someone else has registered a
copyright on your work already.  Look up the current Novell -vs- SCO
lawsuit(s) to see how that works...

My approach, which I started years ago for music I have written, is to send
in a copyright registration each year with all my work from the previous
year, registering the work as a collection.  That way I can include multiple
versions of things in case I have released something in more than one form
or medium, and I only have to pay one registration fee.  If I register each
work separately I have to pay the fee for each work.  A work can be
registered more than once, so if there is a need to register a particular
work for a particular reason I am still free to do so, while my original
registration as part of a collection will still serve to pre-empt anyone
attempting to register my work to themself.

RG - theft is NOT the sincerest form of flattery

Post a reply to this message

> I'd like to cash in on this opportunity to ask what is the legal status
> of the "Copyright". I often see artists who append a copyright to their
> images (which of course is justified), but does it has a real
> signification ? Don't we need to register on an official organism which
> would vouch for the autenticity of the work ? Is it enough to write
> "copyright" and your name to make it your intellectual property ?


I'm pretty sure if you make it, you have the copyright for it - regardless
of whether you write "copyright" or even your name on it.

But please, someone correct me if I'm wrong or am missing an important
detail.

 - Slime
[ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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"gonzo" <rgo### [at] lansetcom> wrote in news:40495517@news.povray.org:

> 
> That has no legal weight though, because if someone else tries to
> claim your work, your notice means nothing unless you have registered
> that notice with the Library of Congress' copyright office.  
> 
> 

Close.  It does have weight, just not as much, making the required burden 
of proof greater, and the potential damages substantially less.  

http://www.zernerlaw.com/articles/copyrightbenefits1.htm

Registration is still required, prior to bring a suit.


-- 
Tom
_________________________________
The Internet Movie Project
http://www.imp.org/

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I don't know if it would work in tribunals, but technically for images 
of which you didn't release the source code, you have a mean to show 
that you are the owner, by showing an Higher resolution image for 
example which the other guy wouldn't be able to do.

JC


> In article <4048fb4a@news.povray.org>,
>  "Gilles Tran" <gitran_nospam_@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Dear POVers
> 
> 
> [.../...]
> 
> 
>>G.
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to cash in on this opportunity to ask what is the legal status 
> of the "Copyright". I often see artists who append a copyright to their 
> images (which of course is justified), but does it has a real 
> signification ? Don't we need to register on an official organism which 
> would vouch for the autenticity of the work ? Is it enough to write 
> "copyright" and your name to make it your intellectual property ?
> 
> I had troubles wandering on the web to find these informations.
> 
> Thanks,



-- 
http://exether.free.fr/irtc (more IRTC stats !)

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> The generally-quoted web page simplifying copyright is
> http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

  There's a clear contradiction between that site and
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6225

  The former says:

 "Nothing modern is in the public domain anymore unless the owner
explicitly puts it in the public domain"

  The latter says:

  "There is nothing that permits the dumping of copyrighted works          
into the public domain"

  (That is, there exists no legal mechanism by which you can get rid
of the copyright of a work: Someone will always own it, no matter what
they say, until it expires.)

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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news:noe.falzonPASDEPUB-8722E0.03475606032004@news.povray.org...
> I had troubles wandering on the web to find these informations.
>

I've found http://creativecommons.org/ to be quite useful in this regard.

Cheers,
Ian

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Glad to hear it is all settled, Gilles.  For all the wonderful includes that
you have
done and made available to us, it's very sad to see this sort of thing going
on.

Now if I could only get good enough to where somebody would want to steal an
image of mine.    ;-)

Michael

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IIRC in the netherlnds copyrights are automatic on everything
you write (you do not even have to put a copyright notice in
like in the US). I think it is the same for images, but am not
sure. Because POV is a script language I at least own all source
for the images I make. At least in the Netherlands. If I leave
out a copyright notice someone in the US can use it without
my permission, untill the time he takes his laptop on a
holiday to to amsterdam.
	Andrel



> In article <4048fb4a@news.povray.org>,
>  "Gilles Tran" <gitran_nospam_@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Dear POVers
> 
> 
> [.../...]
> 
> 
>>G.
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to cash in on this opportunity to ask what is the legal status 
> of the "Copyright". I often see artists who append a copyright to their 
> images (which of course is justified), but does it has a real 
> signification ? Don't we need to register on an official organism which 
> would vouch for the autenticity of the work ? Is it enough to write 
> "copyright" and your name to make it your intellectual property ?
> 
> I had troubles wandering on the web to find these informations.
> 
> Thanks,

Post a reply to this message