Anyone ever use your images without permission?

[Jim VB]

Originally Posted by Dean's Cards

I was told by a copyright lawyer that photos placed on the internet were considered public domain. If you do not want people using the photos, then you can watermark them.

Dean,

You may be talking legality. Dan was talking about common courtesy.

[jmk59]

I think I would be a little upset by this one. First off, we are collectors and part of what is fun about collecting is the occasional ability to show off items in our collections. When someone else shows an item without mentioning that it came from our collections, it may feel a little like a loss or a slight. This is true regardless of whether it is technically or legally "correct" to use posted images.

But the one that gets me here is how many of them were used. I think if someone used one of my images for a minor this or that, I might not mind as much. This looks more like they raided Dan's whole collection and used images to compile this publication. There is little else in the thing besides Dan's images - no text, no commentary, etc. I don't know exactly which drawings, etc, came from Dan, but from the photos I recognize it looks his collection is a significant portion of this.

So now it's not just the images they've used, but it's also the time, money, dedication, ebay searches and everything else that it took Dan to compile them. Yes, no doubt the author here could have dug around the internet and found some of the same or maybe different images. But the fact is that he didn't have to. Dan had already done that work for him.

And if Dan hadn't mentioned that he was actually named in the comments, I would never have known to look for the comments and find them.

Joann

[Zach Wheat]

I started cataloguing a lot of card images without regard to where I got the images. At this time I had only intended to use the images for my personal use - i.e. reference. Now I wish I had paid better attention to which sites I got the images from in the event I want to use them for other purposes.

[Jim VB]

Originally Posted by Zach Wheat

I started cataloguing a lot of card images without regard to where I got the images. At this time I had only intended to use the images for my personal use - i.e. reference. Now I wish I had paid better attention to which sites I got the images from in the event I want to use them for other purposes.

I've done the same thing Zach. I think the difference here is that Dan's images were used for a quasi-commercial activity, but a public municipality. That's the part that would frost me. He did the work. You have to scour the site to find the credit. They stand to make the money (or raise the money.)

[FrankWakefield]

Dean, either you misunderstood what that attorney said, or he mistakenly advised you as to the law. What you have posted there is not correct.

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

Dean, either you misunderstood what that attorney said, or he mistakenly advised you as to the law. What you have posted there is not correct.

Frank,

What is the correct interpretation? Thanks.

[egbeachley]

I think Dean may have written it wrong. Placing an item on the internet does not mean the copyright becomes public domain.

But a non-copyrighted image can be used by others, or something of that effect.

[slidekellyslide]

I'm not even sure how they knew my name to attribute the images to in the first place because it's not on my Photobucket account. The only thing I can think of is they contacted the local minor league club (Lincoln Saltdogs) and asked for old images of Lincoln baseball...The Saltdogs contacted me last year through the American Association forum and I gave them the link to my photobucket...they may have passed that info on to the city??

And again, I would have let them use anything they wanted..it was just a bit of a shock to run across a website I didn't even know about where 90% of the images are mine.