robertakay said:
AZ-I am writing a book on an old road in NM (circa 1910-1930) and have original photos taken by someone from that period of time that I would like to use. I know that I can use them (they were given to my grandmother back in the 1940's) but my question is: I will be doing a little retouch work on them in Photoshop and would like to put my own copyright symbol and date on those retouched photos that I will be using in the book. Is this going to be enough to keep others from using them elsewhere and if so, how do I go about keeping them from doing that?
Also, there are some other photos that were made into postcards from same time period. These do have a copyright on them but since they are pre-1930 are those copyrights still good or can I go ahead and use them?
thanks
You can use anything first published prior to January 1, 1923, without having to seek permission from anyone -- those works are in the public domain. Anything published after that date may be in the public domain, but you will need to do some research to determine if a copyright still exists and, if it does, who owns it so you can seek permission. Don't ask how to do it -- start at
www.copyright,gov and see if they have any records, otherwise, see if there is any publication history and start googleing. This is one of the tricky aspects of copyright law -- it's tough to know if these old works are covered ornot. There is some talk of changing the law to make things easier on people, but the law hasn't been changed yet.
As far as copyrighting things for yourself, you cannot obtain a copyright on a work that you yourself did not create. It is possible to obtain a copyright on a "derivative work" of another copyrighted or public domain work, which is what I think you are getting at -- but retouching a photo is almost certainly not going to be sufficiently "transformative" to create a derviative work with a spearate copyright. Generally, to create a derivative work, you need to make substantial and creative modifications to a work -- retouching, resizing, cropping, restoring, colorizing, etc., are all examples of mechanical modifications that, even if they are substantial, do not have the necessary "creative" component to create a derivative work subject to a new copyright term. Think about it -- if you could simply take an old photograph and retouch it and get a new copyright, you could keep a picture covered under copyright perpetually -- and that's not how the law is set up (although it sure seems like it, what with these 95 year copyright terms and the like...).
