Copyright takes another deadly head shot in London – Can you tell the difference in these two photos??
Can you differentiate the top two photos apart? Well, according to the London Court (Judge Birss QC), those photos are exactly the same, and one violates the copyright of the other.
Both photos are re-sized to fit this blog (from very small previews), and unfortunately, both have very low resolution and lots of compression. But you can still tell the difference between the two. They were taken by different photographers at different times, from an approximate same public area in downtown London, of a very popular mass-transit double-decker bus on a common city street. Both were obviously manipulated in Photoshop to achieve a spot-color effect. To determine which is the Original and which is the Copyright Violator, hold your mouse over the photo, and a tool-tip will show you who’s who.
‘Inspiration’ and ‘reference’ are fine in themselves, but there is a line between copying ideas and copying the original expression of ideas which is often a difficult one to draw.
- Charles Swan, photographic copyright expert at Swan Turton, a UK law firm.
What Do You Think??
Leave your comments – do you think it’s a valid claim? Does this mean the end of copycat inspiration?
