On 4/17/07 2:17 AM, Webwalker wrote:
If I buy an original painting (for example from a street
vendor) -- can I then do whatever I wish with it -
including have prints made and sell them when he becomes
famous, or is my right limited.
The question assumes there is no supplementary agreement
to the sale/purchase. And the other side of the coin --
if I do buy it, can he later sell prints, absent an
agreement to the contrary.
Whenever I sold a copyright, I had to sign a transfer of
copyright agreement and mail it back to the magazine.
I don't recall that any of the sources that I consulted back
when it mattered ever said "except for paintings".
Paintings in a museum are a different matter -- it isn't
that the museum owns the copyright, but that they own the
physical object -- in exchange for access to the physical
object, they can demand that you agree to certain conditions
-- such as assigning them the copyright of any copies you
make.
All copyright works are assemblages of open-domain works --
your copyright is on the arrangement, not the components.
You can't claim copyright on a word, for example (a word
*can* be trademarked), but you can claim copyright on a
novel made by assembling words.
I learned this when I wanted to photocopy an open-domain law
from a copyrighted magazine: I could copy the text, but not
the typesetting! (The article I printed was really hard to
read: open-domain typesetting tends to be worth what you
pay for it.)
Theoretically, Project Gutenberg could claim copyright on
their e-texts. Scanning and proofreading and correcting are
a whole bunch of work! In fact, they do: there is a long
stretch of fine print in every e-text saying what you can
and can't do with it. But you would be quite free to find
an original copy of any Gutenberg text and do your own
scanning and proofreading and correcting, even if your work
turned out identical to theirs. (You might be called upon
to explain how you made all the same exact mistakes they
did, though.)
That said, every country has its own copyright laws. I
believe the instigating post said that in Britain, paintings
go with their copyrights unless a paper is signed to the
contrary; I *think* that in the U.S., it's the other way
around.
When I was having work printed, the printer owned the plates
and the club I was working for owned the images on the
plates, so that both of us had to agree before they could be
used a second time. Used for printing, that is; the printer
is quite free to shingle his house with them, and I heard
tell of a printer who did.
Then there's "work for hire" -- if you pay someone to create
a work, the default is that the copyright is what you are
buying. I've heard of some complicated disputes over
whether an artist was on company time when he created a
valuable work.
--
Joy Beeson
http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/
http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/
http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange
http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather)
west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.
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