Re: Senior pics

Christine Sundt <csundt[_at_]oregon.uoregon.edu> wrote:
>
> Christine Haight Farley <farley[_at_]law.columbia.edu> wrote:
>
> > In Jeweler's Circular Publishing Co. v. Keystone, 274 F. 932
> > (S.D.N.Y. 1921), Judge Learned Hand states that "no photograph,
> > however simple, can be unaffected by the personal influence of the
> > author, and no two will be absolutely alike" suggesting an answer to
> > the question left open by Burrow-Giles as to the authorship of the
> > "ordinary production of a photograph."
>
> I'd like to recommend that in 1921, photography was outside the realm
> of lot of people (amateurs), and that the point-and-shoot camera did
> not exist. The most common apparatus used for photography took a lot
> of skill and ability by the operator. Indeed, indoor photography was
> even harder without what we know today as the automatic flash. Is this
> case still relevant to today's circumstances?

In fact, by 1921 the democratization of the photography industry had already occurred. Kodak introduced the hand-held camera in 1888 and used the slogan, "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest" as early as 1890. Thus, the industry had succeeded in putting cameras in the hands of the untrained amateurs. I'm currently writing about the history of copyright's response to photography and how as the process of making photographs became more mechanical, the law, curiously, made it easier to find authorship.

Christine Haight Farley
Associate in Law
Columbia Law School
farley[_at_]law.columbia.edu Received on Thu Apr 10 1997 - 19:34:15 GMT