Trading Card Database

[steve B]

Originally Posted by BobC

Butch,

Is that actually true? For example, if you buy a card from an auction house that keeps an archive of their auctions, including images of items sold, up and online, how can you as the current owner of that card/item force them to take the image down, or otherwise ensure that no one else can/use copy the image?

Same thing I guess when someone posts an image here on the forum, how do you go about stopping someone else from copying and using it? Couldn't someone simply claim they acquired/copied the image prior to your taking ownership of the card/item? And of course, the legal cost of trying to go back at someone for such an infringement is not going to be nominal either, and would likely deter most people from ever really doing anything about someone else using their photos/images of cards/items they own.

I'm asking this as a serious question also, as I am not that knowledgeable when it comes to copyright laws and infringements in regard to photos and images of items owned by someone, especially when there can also be numerous photo/image copies all over the internet prior to someone's actually acquiring the original item/image itself.

My laymans understanding is that you couldn't prevent someone from copying and using an auction house photo of something you now own. But the auction house could.

Likewise, I have created very nearly all the scans I post here. So I have some copyright on those images. For stuff that has a current rights holder it's possible that my scans of say a Topps card infringe their copyright. But I'm probably ok under fair use. That being said, if Topps complained I'd take the scans down until we sorted things out. It's the simplest and cheapest.

The question though is that while I created them I freely shared them on a free message board. And I have no illusion that scans of my cards have any legitimate commercial value. So if someone uses them so much the better.
(I ran across a prettied up version of a scan I did well over a decade ago of a bicycle companys internal message to dealers about a new serial number system. Commented that it was cool seeing my scan still circulating. The guy who had it seemed at first confused, then a bit hesitant until I explained that yes, I made the original scan and still owned the original document, and that I had absolutely no problem with it being distributed as widely as possible. )

Then there's issues of rights to publicise an image, especially in NY... One of the reasons I believe that no high res scans are available of the Burdick collection anymore. Or the baseball portion at any rate. I used to be able to get some great T206 images for commons, but not HOFers. Now it's low res for everything.