Questions about copyrights on old family photos
The last post about everyday people's copyrights on photos reminded me of a discussion my father and I had over our collection of old family photos. Mainly we were talking about our pre-World War I photos but it does apply to all in our collection that were not made by one of the direct family members from which we've inherited. By current copyright law the photographer owns the image but what about these older photos? Do we own the copyright to them? If there is no indication of the photographer or studio is the copyright ours? Can we publish them without crediting the photographer if there's a stamp on the back that says some photographer's name or studio? If the studio still exists do they own the rights to this image? If it's gone do we own the rights or was it part of the studio's assets distributed at the time it became defunct? Then getting to the more recent ones like say the official military portraits from our WWI vets right down to those in the service today, does the military own these? Can we reproduce them without infringing on a copyright? We think of these photos as ours, of family has own them, passed them down from generation to generation, but do we really own the full rights to the images or just own these singular prints of the images? It's all an interesting question about the legality of scanning these photos and sharing with extremely distant relatives we meet through our research.
I know there was a big shift in 1978 on copyright law to what we are operating under now. I'm not sure how it would apply to the photos we have. I know that all photos published before 1923 are in the public domain. But we do not know of any of these being published in the typical sense of newspaper, book, or such- but wondered were they published when they were given to the subjects. So are they in the "public domain" being in our family's hands or not? Would these wandering photographers who made family pictures outside their homes in rural areas during the 1800's and early 1900's be under the employ of the family at that time and thus under the old copyright laws of an employer commissioning a photo own the copyright thus the right fell to the family for it's duration? If the copyright has expired but it's not ever been published if it's ever published is it automatically public domain or subject to the new laws?
I've read of cases where the owners of old letters of historical significance could not publish or recreate the letters because the copyrights of the material belonged to the writer's heirs. In such cases the courts have allowed the owners to extract the facts from the letters and publish those with limited quotation of the letters they own physically. However, I'm not clear when this copyright would expire, would it fall under the renewable copyrights from prior 1978? Or did the '78 law bring such things into today's laws?
Now I'm not considering publishing these for profit but rather scanning them for others in our family interested in genealogy and would like to know what our common ancestor looked like. We'd also like to use the scans when we print various genealogical documents (group family sheets, pedigree charts, register reports, Ahnentafel reports, and such) to include photos the family members listed. These would be to share with others in the family and those interested in genealogical research of the family lines we have already researched and documented. I've seen such genealogy books of family research publish such pictures crediting "The Collection of The John Smith family of Someplace, State, USA" but wondered if this is correct. Any thoughts or insights you have on these questions would be appreciated.
I know there was a big shift in 1978 on copyright law to what we are operating under now. I'm not sure how it would apply to the photos we have. I know that all photos published before 1923 are in the public domain. But we do not know of any of these being published in the typical sense of newspaper, book, or such- but wondered were they published when they were given to the subjects. So are they in the "public domain" being in our family's hands or not? Would these wandering photographers who made family pictures outside their homes in rural areas during the 1800's and early 1900's be under the employ of the family at that time and thus under the old copyright laws of an employer commissioning a photo own the copyright thus the right fell to the family for it's duration? If the copyright has expired but it's not ever been published if it's ever published is it automatically public domain or subject to the new laws?
I've read of cases where the owners of old letters of historical significance could not publish or recreate the letters because the copyrights of the material belonged to the writer's heirs. In such cases the courts have allowed the owners to extract the facts from the letters and publish those with limited quotation of the letters they own physically. However, I'm not clear when this copyright would expire, would it fall under the renewable copyrights from prior 1978? Or did the '78 law bring such things into today's laws?
Now I'm not considering publishing these for profit but rather scanning them for others in our family interested in genealogy and would like to know what our common ancestor looked like. We'd also like to use the scans when we print various genealogical documents (group family sheets, pedigree charts, register reports, Ahnentafel reports, and such) to include photos the family members listed. These would be to share with others in the family and those interested in genealogical research of the family lines we have already researched and documented. I've seen such genealogy books of family research publish such pictures crediting "The Collection of The John Smith family of Someplace, State, USA" but wondered if this is correct. Any thoughts or insights you have on these questions would be appreciated.