RE: Re: Night Lighting

Steven Jamar wrote:
> Sound and light shows are shows -- and copyrightable as such -- especially
> in the rest of the world without its benighted fixation requirement. (pun
> intended)

Lots of the rest of the world, particularly those areas that speak English (or something like it ;-), have a fixation requirement.

> Projected light is copyrightable -- at least if it goes through film.

Protecting an image on a piece of film is not the same as protecting the projected light. The projected light from a film is a public performance which is a protected right - not a work in and of itself.

> An original, creative set of lights for Christmas would be copyrightable,
> it seems, without difficulty. A work just needs to be fixed, not
permanent.

> The use of floodlights in a very typical way (from the ground up, top
down,
> white light) would seem to be utterly lacking in creativity and so not
> entitled to a copyright.

Except that, in the rest of the world, originality is nothing like the hurdle that it is in the US. It's more about identifying who has a cause of action.

> But if there is some creative placement, color,
> shadows (caused by something other than the building itself with ordinary
> lighting), then it seems like it could well be a sculptural work of sorts,
> or maybe an architectural work. Certainly laser light shows are
> copyrightable.

Tenuous but possible.

> But, even if one had a copyright, it would be a very thin copyright and
> would not, it seems to me, enforceable against the right of a
> photographer standing in a public place to take a picture of the building
> as lit.

Doesn't the US copyright law provide that photographing architectural works in public places is not an infringement?

-- 
| Tim Arnold-Moore, Ph.D., LL.B., B.Sc. (Hons)
| Address: SAIC Pty Ltd
| PO Box 599
| Carlton South 3053
| AUSTRALIA
| Tel: +61 3 9925 4116
| Mob: +61 4 2288 8092
| Fax: +61 3 9925 4098
| simul iustus et peccator