Muses,

I'm afraid I don't understand Randy's point. As far as I can tell,
neither version of the bill has any effect on the copyright status of any
object. They seem to simply say that if a user has made an attempt to
determine the copyright owner of a work that is, in fact, copyrighted and
fails and subsequently infringes on that copyright, the copyright holder,
when he comes forward and makes his claim known, is entitled only to the
amount of money that he would have gotten if the two of them had made a
normal deal before the infringement (and not the monetary penalties
provided for in the various copyright laws). In any event, as far as I
can tell, the Senate bill has been passed and sent to the House where it
is awaiting a committee (probably subcommittee) hearing, the House bill
is awaiting a hearing in committee, and so there is no such law yet.
Assuming all the photographs in this collection on the Web were
originally taken before 1978, then the real question becomes what
constitutes 'publishing' a photograph under the old law. It's fairly
clear that under that law all copies of a published copyrighted work had
to carry a copyright notice (I'm assuming here that none of the
photographs in question carry such a notice). So, were they 'published'?
If my great-grandfather went to the local photographer, had his picture
taken, and bought a dozen cabinet cards would the photo be published? OK,
what about the photograph of the town mayor that the same photographer
made a dozen copies of and offered for sale to the general public? I have
not been able to find any court decision, at any level, that ruled on
such a question. I would be delighted if anyone could provide a reference
to any such case. Happy trails, David

David Haynes                         [log in to unmask]                  
   San Antonio

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