"The design of the lighting used to illuminate the Eiffel Tower at night is considered a work of art in itself. The Tower's official website states: "There are no restrictions on publishing a picture of the Tower by day. Photos taken at night when the lights are aglow are subjected to copyright laws, and fees for the right to publish must be paid to the Société Nouvelle d'exploitation de la Tour Eiffel."
Actually I did read the link you posted. The above quote makes the point I've been trying to convey exactly. The photographer is limited by the artist's rights. The photographer can't use his photograph without respecting those rights. However that DOES NOT mean that the photographer's work is not also subject to copyright. If those lighting designers love my photograph of their lights they can't use it without licensing it from me just because they control the presentation of their original work. They CAN limit what I do with my photograph and/or extract fees from me for usage.
You are missing the point. Please read the second article I posted. Here is another excerpt:
"Advertising, fashion, interior design and lifestyle photographers frequently include paintings, sculptures, drawings, craft items, architectural works, jewelry, clothing, toys or other artistic works into their photographs. Such items are protectable by copyright. The owner of the copyright has the exclusive right to reproduce the copyright work, and photographing a copyrighted work amounts to reproducing it."
You cannot claim copyright for an image that contains copyrighted material without permission/collaboration from the copyright holder.
From US Copyright Website:
"Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work. Accordingly, you cannot claim copyright to another's work, no matter how much you change it, unless you have the owner's consent. See Circular 14, Copyright Registration for Derivative Works."
Like a lot of things, it all depends on the context. The courts have found that that for copyright to apply, the art must be a unique image created by the photographer.
If you photograph a piece of artwork for printing in a publication, that's more part of the printing process. Could a photo lab hold copyright to one of your images if they created the print?
If a photographer adds their artistic stamp to someone else's artwork via lighting, camera angles, etc, then copyright starts to be an issue. However, it's not an absolute issue, and you might have to go to court to explain to a judge why you deserve copyright. There is some case law on this, where a movie company was found to have violated a photographers copyright by sending someone out to shoot a statue that was on the cover of a book that was being filmed. The court found that the image on the book cover was unique enough to be a copyrighted image.
That's interesting about the Eifel Tower, but keep in mind that France's legal system is different from English Common Law that we North Americans base our legal system on. Unless you're in France, it doesn't mean much.
The issue has nothing to do with French Law. In fact the article was part of a document produced by the World Intellectual Property Organization which is a specialized agency of the United Nations. France, Canada and the United States (plus 181 other counties ) are members. The organization produces international legislation to protect intellectual property including copyright. They are the administrators of 24 international treaties (including the Berne Convention) that protect property rights.
If in your Eifel Tower example a photographer creates a wonderful photo of that thing at night and registers said image with the US Copyright Office. You're saying that the creators of that lighting are then perfectly within their rights to take that photo and use it for whatever they want without any compensation to the photographer because that copyright registration would never stand up???
If you're not saying that, then how does what you're proposing differ from what I stated in my first post to this thread?
Any image can be registered for copyright in the US. There aren't copyright police sitting there looking at every frame and making a judgement of whether it's valid or not. Whether or not copyright is valid on a particular image will be decided in court if a dispute ever gets that far. There are loads of gray areas in IP law that keep the legal system constantly busy. This is certainly one of them. I find it extremely difficult to believe that any US court would deny the photographer in the hypothetical situation above ANY rights to his creation.
now, i am an independent contractor, if the artist and i are working together in lighting and camera angle for photographing 3d art, is this as cut and dry as if i was completely directing the shoot?
There was a case a few years back where photographer published a poster of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was sued for copyright infringement. The ASMP took on the case, and it was eventually thrown out. That is the current precident on copyright on public buildings.
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