well I seem to be on a photography binge today. Anyway here is a link to an interesting case of copyright violation in which one person photoshopped a previously existing photo submitted it to a contest and ended up winning.
the original picture carried a creative commons license but required attribution for distribution and the original photographer was never contacted or given proper credit. while the contest did require that “all submitted work be 100% original” they ended up deciding that the original had been edited enough to qualify as a separate entity. while the manipulation was somewhat extensive (he changed the black circles to squares) since the real world consequences of this particular case have already been decided I’m curious to hear what everyone thinks about how this case would be settled legally.
This certainly doesn’t seem like it would qualify as 100% original, as other source material was used in the creation of the picture. What makes this worse was the fact that the original photographer wasn’t notified or given credit at all. I am surprised that the person ended up winning the contest when all this information was considered. It makes me wonder how legitimate the organization running the contest is.
One of the points I remember reading in Goldstein’s book is how much a work needs to be altered so that it adds something new to the world. I don’t remember the exact context of this point though (something with a phone book company?). Anyway, regardless what would happen legally, I think the photographer still had a moral obligation to be honest.