Hey, dude. You're entitled to your own view, of course. Others think its ethically wrong to try to claim ownership of pics that have been in circulation and printed in books and magazines for decades before the website existed. Peace.
New Book about TOS: These Are The Voyages
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Hey, dude. You're entitled to your own view, of course. Others think its ethically wrong to try to claim ownership of pics that have been in circulation and printed in books and magazines for decades before the website existed. Peace.
Exactly.
Maybe I missed it somewhere in all this, but has Startrekhistory.com actually asserted legal ownership anywhere? Are they suing?
My impression was that their position (and the position of many people here) was more like "hey that was pretty uncool to just take those off our website without asking and make a profit from them."
Which seems like a perfectly reasonable response to me.
There's an issue of serious brain cramp at the heart of this in that all could have been kept clear with a simple phone call or email. Even if startrekhistory.com doesn't own the images they did put work into restoring them. It would have cost nothing to ask if they minded those restored images being used/reprinted in b&w and then acknowledge that fact in print in the book. Then everyone would be happy.
All for the want of a courtesy phone call.
All for the want of a courtesy phone call.
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It seems to me, based on reading alchemist's comments on page 6, that he tried to get the publisher to remove a lot of pics seen on facebook and possibly was against having them seen inside the book. That seems like trying to dictate the rules or claim ownership to me -- and startrekhistory clearly does not own these images - to anyone familiar with photography and copyright laws - as others have pointed out. Seems both sides might have approached each other differently, if indeed some of the pics even came from startrekhistory versus old fanzines, books, other Lincoln clips, or other places on the net. The bottom line is that these pics are free for all to republish anywhere since they are public domain and it's the decades of research and text that sells the book, not the tiny B&W pics, dude.
My understanding (and I don’t want to talk out of school too much) is that this isn’t really a misunderstanding; it’s more of a disagreement. I believe startrekhistory, getting wind of this planned project, initiated contact with the publisher and the Collector of the pictures on multiple occasions well in advance of the book’s printing with “concerns” regarding the provenance of the images. Despite the interactions, no agreement was reached and the project went forward just as we’ve seen. Startrekhistory can weigh in with more specifics of the discussions if they are so inclined.
For some clarity, startrekhistory.com has expressed an interest in publicly posting on TrekBBS the e-mail and Facebook interactions with all the parties. (My recommendation/admonition as a TrekBBS Moderator was that no such posting be made without the consent of all parties—something startrekhistory might actually do well to try and obtain.)
I think the Collector’s contention is that, debatably, Filmclip Image X somehow became public domain back in the 70’s. Of course, over the years, the quality of the images on the clips degraded; basically they became so faded and scratched that they became crappy Filmclip Image Y. Many (most? all?) of these images have appeared in the past in old books and periodicals. But startrekhistory spends fortunes of money obtaining these old degraded Filmclip Image Y clips and restoring them back to Image X quality. “Thank you, startrekhistory. Now that you’ve done all this work on them to get them back to Image X condition, since Image X was in the public domain in the first place, anyone including me can now use them for any purposes, despite your valuable restoration work on them. Thank you! You’ve saved me the inconvenience of having to dredge through old books and magazines to obtain the images. And look how nice they now are! I’m now able to use these restored old images—whatever their provenance--for my own income-generating purposes!”
I think the argument is chiefly whether someone’s hard work in restoring these clips is completely disregardable in the course of the lifespans of these images. Although I think they are probably in the right, startrekhistory cleverly (and I think rightfully) avoids the whole “asserting ownership” issue altogether simply by making the images--whomever they belong to—available for free to anyone. But the Collector thinks that the images—whomever they belong to—are now monetizable for his own purposes.
I don’t see startrekhistory suing. It’s not like they are losing any money because someone is absconding with these images; startrekhistory wasn’t making any money in the first place. But as has been said earlier, if startrekhistory has now become so frustrated that they want to throw in the towel and stop collecting and restoring these images for the public, I would completely understand and would sympathize with their reluctance to be so generous in the future. I think even the Collector sees that this would put quite a damper on any future restoration projects.
Thanks a lot, Collector! Legal or not, what a dickish thing to do—not only to filmclip restorers like startrekhistory, but to Star Trek fans who might have otherwise purchased this interesting book series. I think that putting these pictures in this “decades of research” book has become like a turd floating in a punchbowl--I don’t think people will want to drink the punch no matter how delicious it might actually be. The upside is that I’m sure all the interesting information contained in the book will leak out eventually, via scanned and otherwise bootlegged copies. Star Trek fans are a patient lot—even after 40+ years. And it’s not like this series’ author is the only person capable of doing research through the Roddenberry files at UCLA.
For some clarity, startrekhistory.com has expressed an interest in publicly posting on TrekBBS the e-mail and Facebook interactions with all the parties. (My recommendation/admonition as a TrekBBS Moderator was that no such posting be made without the consent of all parties—something startrekhistory might actually do well to try and obtain.)
I think the Collector’s contention is that, debatably, Filmclip Image X somehow became public domain back in the 70’s. Of course, over the years, the quality of the images on the clips degraded; basically they became so faded and scratched that they became crappy Filmclip Image Y. Many (most? all?) of these images have appeared in the past in old books and periodicals. But startrekhistory spends fortunes of money obtaining these old degraded Filmclip Image Y clips and restoring them back to Image X quality. “Thank you, startrekhistory. Now that you’ve done all this work on them to get them back to Image X condition, since Image X was in the public domain in the first place, anyone including me can now use them for any purposes, despite your valuable restoration work on them. Thank you! You’ve saved me the inconvenience of having to dredge through old books and magazines to obtain the images. And look how nice they now are! I’m now able to use these restored old images—whatever their provenance--for my own income-generating purposes!”
I think the argument is chiefly whether someone’s hard work in restoring these clips is completely disregardable in the course of the lifespans of these images. Although I think they are probably in the right, startrekhistory cleverly (and I think rightfully) avoids the whole “asserting ownership” issue altogether simply by making the images--whomever they belong to—available for free to anyone. But the Collector thinks that the images—whomever they belong to—are now monetizable for his own purposes.
I don’t see startrekhistory suing. It’s not like they are losing any money because someone is absconding with these images; startrekhistory wasn’t making any money in the first place. But as has been said earlier, if startrekhistory has now become so frustrated that they want to throw in the towel and stop collecting and restoring these images for the public, I would completely understand and would sympathize with their reluctance to be so generous in the future. I think even the Collector sees that this would put quite a damper on any future restoration projects.
Thanks a lot, Collector! Legal or not, what a dickish thing to do—not only to filmclip restorers like startrekhistory, but to Star Trek fans who might have otherwise purchased this interesting book series. I think that putting these pictures in this “decades of research” book has become like a turd floating in a punchbowl--I don’t think people will want to drink the punch no matter how delicious it might actually be. The upside is that I’m sure all the interesting information contained in the book will leak out eventually, via scanned and otherwise bootlegged copies. Star Trek fans are a patient lot—even after 40+ years. And it’s not like this series’ author is the only person capable of doing research through the Roddenberry files at UCLA.
Exactly, and you seem to have no problems with this type of bootleg activity -- while you are freaking out over the legal reprinting of public domain images? How peculiar!
I do have a problem with it.
I understand it. But I don't advocate it. You advocate it. I understand how angry husbands think they are entitled to beat their wives. But I don't advocate that either.
You think that the Collector is legally entitled to disreagard restorers' work. We get that.
GSchnitzer said:
If is this indeed Collector's position, I don't even see how that's possible, especially for images from frame enlargements of aired episodes. If my memory's correct, at the time of TOS' production, initial copyright laws were for 28 years. The 1970s is not 28 years after TOS' run.
If images from ST are public domain, the entire series should right now be on Internet Archive instead of Netflix.
Of course, all of this is moot anyway, because each copyright owner of the franchise has renewed the copyrights on all the episodes.
Behind the scenes photos and stills are not under the copyrights of the episodes. They were made to be used freely in magazines and other publications. The rest of the clips are apparently discarded film trims not included in the finished episodes. I'm sure the publisher was careful to make sure not to use anything that could lead to a lawsuit by CBS/Paramount.
In the thread of comments on Amazon, they claim only the contents of the TOS episodes as they were originally broadcast on TV back in the '60s are actually copyright and now owned by CBS/Paramount. And that all the stuff not in the episodes - like the behind the scenes pics, clapperboard pics, footage/pics from scenes or takes not used in the final cut are public domain as they would have had to be registered one by one to maintain the rights on them and I guess no-one thought back then it would be worth going to all that trouble. They claim that's why all the unauthorized books about Trek in the '70s and '80s technically printed without permission from CBS also feature a ton of these types of images.
Dude(tte), if you think you're helping the publisher's case, you're wrong. Please rethink your approach.
I'm not invoking the distasteful analogies - bordering on profanity - to make my point, dude.
"Drink heavily from the punchbowl, everyone! It only looks like a turd. Legally, we've determined it's not actually one!"
I took a look at the Jacobs/Brown Media site, and they describe themselves as a "boutique" press or publisher. I can't find an authoritative definition of what a "boutique" publisher actually is, other than they often use print-on-demand publishing technology to produce exactly 1 book for each single order, rather than a run of say 500 or 1000 or 5000 copies. This sounds similar to companies that deal with providing services to self-publishing authors. They are sometimes referred to as vanity presses.
Is this the case here?
Is this the case here?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, dude! Why don't you plan a big book-burning party for Star Trek Compendium from 1981 - it has lots of nice behind-the-scenes pics in it! How dare they include images that startrekhistory owned/was going to own 20 years later. :-)
I was actually replying to the "only looks like a turd" remark. I have no clue about a boutique publisher. Flower boutique, LOL.
Marc? Is that you?
Or a fashion boutique, yeah. Boutique publishing seems to be ar relatively new term, I saw a question about it dated 2008.
From all the "dude"s begin thrown around, you must be higher than I am right now.
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