New Book about TOS: These Are The Voyages
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I think the stock footage over-the-shoulder viewscreen shots were taken during "The Corbomite Maneuver." You can see the flashing blue glow from Balok's cube being reflected on the surface of the Helm/Navigation console.
You are SO wrong about this. As was said, startrekhistory.com does NOT own these images and was relying on fair use laws to show them on their site. So this publisher is completely entitled to behave the same way. Restoring a photo to its original appearance in the '60s doesn't give anybody special ownership rights; no doubt the book editors / photography team also worked with the pics in PhotoShop - if you read some of the Amazon comments. That could be just as hard work. And it's obvious to most people that putting tiny black and white photos in the book is hardly exploiting them.
For me, it's not about whether it's legal or not. It's about if I was in that situation and did the work, would I want to be treated the same way? I wouldn't.
YMMV.
But it does seem to me that you are taking things to a horrible extreme. You're saying if one guy fixes some scratches/blemishes on a photo he doesn't own -- no one else in the world can reprint that same image. Even if that same photo was printed decades earlier in different magazines or sold in multiple copies? So it is absolutely not unique. And what if someone else does more repair / rework on it ... or changes it from color to B&W ... the next guy is not allowed to do anything with it because one person fixed a scratch? It's clear the publisher reworked all of the images ... they are no longer in color and they say they also spent alot of time with them in PhotoShop. And I've seen some of these same photos on many sites around the net and in old books and magazines printed long ago. I suspect some are from startrekhistory but could just as easily have originated elsewhere or from identical paper photos or other film clips.
It's a horrible extreme to want to be asked before you appropriate my work for a project you're doing? We seem to have different definitions of the word 'extreme'.
Why didn't they simply find their own photos and do their own restoration work?
The two times the book mentions this:
I think the book is simply wrong about this. As you indicate, the scene in question never shows us the helm station, only the navigator. I think the author simply mistook Budd Albright for Bruce Hyde.
It can't be that Hyde was sitting out of frame, unless the author is using words like "glimpse" and "shot" rather lazily.
The most interesting thing in this book is the release of the Nielsen ratings, but I've noticed (up to page 222) that even those are inconsistent. For "Balance of Terror," for example, the author claims that Star Trek won its timeslot against CBS' Thursday Night Movie, but the numbers indicate CBS actually had the bigger share. The author has also (thus far) left out some important details such as the NBC's "sneak preview" airing strategy with "The Man Trap." He's also pointed to the success of the series in summer reruns several times as indicative of the program's rating success, although the Solow/Justman book indicated that the series did well during the summer, because it attracted viewers who had missed it during the regular season.
There's a lot of great information in the book, especially if you haven't seen the UCLA files, but thus far I'm not impressed by the way it is presented and/or organized.
The restoration work of Star Trek History goes above and beyond one person fixing a single scratch. This is plainly demonstrated on their website.
If Jacobs Brown Press had used the same raw images (i.e. the Lincoln Enterprises frames) and done their own restoration work, I'd really have no problem with their efforts. But that's not what they did; instead, they (or Gurian) pilfered the restored images from Star Trek History (and birdofthegalaxy) and used them in the book.
I think it's possible that StarTrekHistory was not, in fact, relying on "Fair Use." I think they cleverly avoided the issue of rights and ownership and public domain and fair use and other legal mumbo jumbo by forgoing any kind of revenue from these images entirely--whoever actually owns them even after their restoration work. I think their willingness to not derive any revenue of any kind speaks highly of their scholarship and generosity.
And then comes along someone who is not willing to avoid the issue of rights and ownership and public domain and fair use and other legal mumbo jumbo and is not willing to forgo any kind of revenue from these images. Along comes someone who asserts that these images, whosever they actually are, can be shared with people in order to generate revenue. They've decided to exploit these images, rather than studiously avoiding that exploitation. I can understand StarTrekHisotry.com's frustration at not having monetized these images--and then have this project come along and do exactly that--and with the very same images--regardless of the provenance of the images.
Of course, if these images were not actually independently obtained by the collector and were simply harvested from others' restoration efforts, I can doubly understand their frustration. It would be interesting to learn if the collector of these images for this project is actually able and/or willing to produce the original, unrestored clips in some way. Are they still in the collector's possession? Or does the collector only have the restorations at this point? It would also be interesting to know if the collector was compensated in any way by the publisher for all these images.
Whatever the full story is here--wherever the images came from, and whatever money was changing hands--I do know that this aspect of the These Are the Voyages project sure has become an albatross around the neck of the publisher.
And then comes along someone who is not willing to avoid the issue of rights and ownership and public domain and fair use and other legal mumbo jumbo and is not willing to forgo any kind of revenue from these images. Along comes someone who asserts that these images, whosever they actually are, can be shared with people in order to generate revenue. They've decided to exploit these images, rather than studiously avoiding that exploitation. I can understand StarTrekHisotry.com's frustration at not having monetized these images--and then have this project come along and do exactly that--and with the very same images--regardless of the provenance of the images.
Of course, if these images were not actually independently obtained by the collector and were simply harvested from others' restoration efforts, I can doubly understand their frustration. It would be interesting to learn if the collector of these images for this project is actually able and/or willing to produce the original, unrestored clips in some way. Are they still in the collector's possession? Or does the collector only have the restorations at this point? It would also be interesting to know if the collector was compensated in any way by the publisher for all these images.
Whatever the full story is here--wherever the images came from, and whatever money was changing hands--I do know that this aspect of the These Are the Voyages project sure has become an albatross around the neck of the publisher.
It is an extreme to suggest that one person restoring a photo he doesn't own; which is part of the public domain - gives him ownership rights and removes that photo from the public domain. Why are you giving all the credit to Startrekhistory for their restoration activities and none to the publisher for their restoration work? B&W photos need alot of manipulation to prepare for print -- it's a different environment than color.
I wouldn't jump to any conclusion there, BillJ, although several Amazon reviews appear to come from people with a relationship to the publisher. I mean, goodness, Gurian (who has a photo and a bio on the publisher's site!) posted a review there and has a glowing blurb about the book posted at the publisher's site, too.
I don't think anyone has suggested that.
It doesn't help that all the photos in question (at least, up to page 222) all carry the caption "Courtesy of Gurian" with no mention of Star Trek History or Birdofthegalaxy.
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You're still dancing around the main issue. Which is the fact that whoever published this book showed no common courtesy towards people who restored the photos. They could've gotten original photos and done the entire restoration themselves, but didn't.
So restoring these old scratched and faded clips and making them available for free to people is one thing, but converting some similar images (or perhaps even these very same restored images) to black and white suddenly makes them monitizeable?
Whatever the intent or justification was in including these images in the book, it seems to have become more trouble than it was worth.
Whatever the intent or justification was in including these images in the book, it seems to have become more trouble than it was worth.
In the Amazon review, Gurian says he posted a photo somewhere showing some identical clips or photos to those on startrekhistory. And you're still dancing around the issue, dude, that restoring a photo gives NO rights to the photo. You're acting like it gives total ownership to the photo. I believe these are all public domain = free to everyone to republish.
So it would be cool if folks take chunks of the book and resell them because most of the information is available to the public to begin with?
People are condemning the publisher and suggesting they illegally reprinted those pics, or needed to get permission, and suggested startrekhistory owns those images ... which others here and I believe is simply not true. Since these are public domain images.
I think that StarTrekHistory.com does not, in fact, assert that restoring the images has given them the right to receive income based on that restoration; they seem to have done the exact opposite--refraining from deriving any income from those images.
Converting the images to black and white doesn't suddenly grant that "restorer" the right to make money from the images, does it?
The publisher must be kicking himself now.
Converting the images to black and white doesn't suddenly grant that "restorer" the right to make money from the images, does it?
The publisher must be kicking himself now.
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