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ELR does not like photographers

Discussion in 'Photography' started by Fred Kerr, Mar 30, 2014.

  1. ADB968008

    ADB968008 Guest

    Maybe an official from the ELR would like to make a statement of clarity, this forum is open to all, and its officials frequent here.

    A display of good management I am sure would be well received and seek to neutralize the quite considerable discontent the recent statements have made across many forums.
     
  2. hughesfowler

    hughesfowler Member

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    Dear all,

    I feel I need to offer some clarification to my previous post which has been blown out of context.

    Many will know that I am a passionate volunteer who has been involved in the operation and preservation of heritage railways since the age of eight. After 20 years I am now privileged to work as part of the paid staff at the ELR.

    In recent times I have worked with charter organisers Richard Newton and Martin Creese and have been part of footplate crews during photographic charters for many years at Foxfield Railway. I am an enthusiastic fan of photography and use my Nikon on an almost daily basis, so do not have, nor never have had, a problem with ‘contributing photographers’ and apologise if in my previous post I came across as being derogatory towards supporters and volunteers.

    Many who supported Richard Newton’s February morning run pasts will remember being handed a voucher for access to the platforms during the event. This was arranged by both Richard and I at a moment’s notice before the event in order to say thank you to those that did brave the lovely Lancashire weather.

    My gripe is the continued monitoring of members of the public who do turn up at the railway (which may not be an event day) and do NOT contribute. I have watched many times at both Foxfield and the ELR people trying to sneak onto site in order to watch the trains go by. The joke comes when some pull out their flask and butty box and enjoy the views completely free without even buying as much as a cup of tea.

    I will also add that from the railway’s trial period of the increased platform tickets we did see a higher return of revenue. There was a slight drop off at Ramsbottom but Bury held its own considerably well which included access to Bury Transport Museum. We did take a knock on numbers at the February gala, not by many but this was expected considering the weather and competition over that weekend.

    As a parting note I hope you will all continue to enjoy the ELR as well as coming to enjoy future events.

    Kind regards,

    Richard

    From nuelr forum today.
     
  3. goldfish

    goldfish Nat Pres stalwart

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    Describing content that's been cut'n'pasted from a private forum and then emailed to you as 'public domain' is a novel interpretation…

    Simon
     
  4. Fred Kerr

    Fred Kerr Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    I think you'll find it may also be a legal definition hence the need for caution about what you post - and where you post it. In my case it came from a third party and was NOT a direct content from a member of the private forum hence my belief that it was in the "public domain".
     
  5. goldfish

    goldfish Nat Pres stalwart

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    Agreed.
    You should double-check that. It's certainly not my understanding of copyright.

    Simon
     
  6. Fred Kerr

    Fred Kerr Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    Where does "copyright" come into this ?

    My understanding is that "copyright" refers to a piece of work created by a single unity (i.e. person or group) and is related to ownership. I have neither sought "ownership" or claimed it but simply passed on information which has been put in the public domain by reason of being posted to a particular person whose subsequent re-posting placed it - in the legal sense - in the public domain because it had been passed to more than one person without restriction and thereby had been "published"; publication thus puts the material in the "public domain" as I understand it.

    I am happy to be corrected BUT this is surely semantics that gets away from the essence of this thread - a reported view of photographers which many have taken exception to on the grounds that (a) it classes photographers in a way that is found unacceptable (b) it purports to come from a paid employee of an organisation which claims to encourage photographers and (c) an opportunity for either the employee or his employers to retract / apologise for / explain further the offending material.

    In that context I refer you to post 22 above; as I am no longer a member I leave it to ELR members to decide what action - if any - to take whilst I will make my own decisions based on the opportunities available to me as an ordinary member of the public.
     
  7. goldfish

    goldfish Nat Pres stalwart

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    Those rules apply to the written word, including these (mine) and yours above.

    The forum comments you copied here weren't in the public domain until you pasted them here (assuming that the other forum was private).

    As I say, you should check it. Particularly if there's a suspicion that the people whose words you've made public aren't happy about it.

    I'd recommend that basic courtesy should probably be a factor before copying private conversations into the public domain, no matter the seriousness of the subject…

    Simon
     
  8. nanstallon

    nanstallon Part of the furniture

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    Heritage Railway Volunteer:
    Yes I am an active volunteer
    Some people think that a touch of staff grumpiness towards the public gives preserved railways a touch of 1960s BR authenticity. I do remember some (by no means all!) railway employees in those days being somewhat less than friendly - much like any walk of life!

    If a member of staff on a preserved railway is behaving in an offputting manner, then presumably the management will either take him aside for a pep talk, or dispense with his services. These days a certain degree of charm is needed and expected.

    John
     
  9. Fred Kerr

    Fred Kerr Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    I think this is THE grey area of the Internet revolution.

    If A posts E-mail to B that could be defined as private. If B then posts / forwards that E-mail to C does it remain private or is "legally" in the public domain ? Since I was C in this scenario I consider the material to be in the public domain as it was sent to a third party (i.e. C - or me in this case) but the legal definition may yet have to be qualified asto what "publication" and the "public domain" are in this environment. Acting on my belief that the matter was now in the public domain I felt it needed a wider opinion to be expressed hence my actions in posting it; after all this forum is for discussing matters of interest and this was a matter of both interest and concern to many.

    In the meantime I repeat what I stated earlier in this thread; it is incumbent on posters to be careful what they say, where they say it and to whom it is said as Lord McAlpine so expensively proved to many internet posters last year.
     
  10. osprey

    osprey Resident of Nat Pres

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    As a holder of patents I can claim some knowledge of patents/intellectual property. If A posted to B without pointing out it was not to be replicated or stamped copywright (that can easily done by posting and recording to yourself thereby claiming prior art) there is no copywright case to answer for recipient C......that's my view of things from my experience.........
     
  11. goldfish

    goldfish Nat Pres stalwart

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    'B' cannot change/remove 'A's rights. 'C' is bound by the same terms. It's not a grey area.

    Simon
     
  12. osprey

    osprey Resident of Nat Pres

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    Mmmm would have thought that A posting to B would have classed it as being passed to a third party and therefore the public domain, providing there was no indication of prior art, copywright or a mutually signed NDA....that's what my patent attorney states.......
     
  13. goldfish

    goldfish Nat Pres stalwart

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    My reading is that copyright is implicit in created content and the act of publishing it on a private forum doesn't change that. If it had been a photograph, B emailing it to C wouldn't have altered A's rights .

    I could well be wrong, and we could carry this on for a while.

    Where I think we could probably agree is that it's bloody rude to publish people's thoughts that they published to a private community. Even anonymising the comments would've been better.

    Simon
     
  14. osprey

    osprey Resident of Nat Pres

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    I would have thought it depends on what the rules of the "private" forum are and what the members have elected to abide by.........after all this section of NP is "private".....in that context nothing published/quoted here should not be revealed to parties not members of this section?
     
  15. I. Cooper

    I. Cooper Member

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    If you consider the real paper world it becomes easier to understand: If 'A' sends a letter to 'B', then the content and arrangement of the words together with the layout design on the page remains the copyright of 'A'. However, the letter itself belongs to 'B'.

    In basic terms it would be in breach of copyright for 'B' to create a copy of the original letter (eg. by having it published in a magazine there will be a few thousand copies circulating). 'B' could quite legitimately put the letter in the public domain by pinning the original letter to the window of the local shop/pub/railway station. In doing this they have not created a copy of the letter, so there has been no breach of copyright. If they wished to increase the awareness of the letter then they could publish widely that a letter had been sent to them, precee the content of the letter (ie. not repeating the exact content, therefore not breaching copyright, but outlining the content of the letter in their own words), and directing people to see the original letter now on public display in the shop/pub/library etc.

    In America (and thus widely reported on the internet), there is the concept of needing to register a 'work' for copyright to exist. This may be the case over there, but UK copyright law does differ slightly in a number of areas (the details surrounding the concept of 'fair use' is another difference). In the UK, copyright automatically exists and remains with the author of a work the moment it is created - the exceptions are if the work is created during the course of employment, when copyright is likely to belong to the employer (check contracts) or if the original copyright holder assigns/sells the right to another person. The fact that 'Osprey' is reffering to an "attorney" rather than a "solicitor" or a "lawyer" would suggest they are perhaps referring to American copyright legislation, not the UK "Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988" and subsequent revisions. There are differences.

    There are a number of companies in the UK who claim to register your copyright for a fee. There is no official register of copyright in the UK, however using the services of such companies does make it easier for someone to prove that they created a certain work on a certain date, therefore versions created after that date by others must be copies. In essence this is the same as sending a letter to yourself - although that is flawed as you could send an unsealed empty envelope to yourself to get a date stamp on the front, then fill and seal the envelope at a much later date... but this is slightly getting distracted.


    When you consider electronic communication the grey area surrounds what is the 'original' and what is a 'copy'. If you receive an email, then if you forward the email to someone else is that a 'copy', or is it the 'original' that you are forwarding? I would have my own view on this, but ultimately it would be better to seek the opinion of a lawyer, and the only true answer would be decided by a court. There would not, of course, be any problem stating that, "on such-and-such a forum, so-and-so stated that they don't like certain people". Once again there has been no breach of copyright and the person is referring the interested to seek out the original copy for themselves. It would also be possible to quote small sections of the original text, but the guidelines surrounding exactly how much can be quoted without breaching copyright are not clearly defined and will vary according to each individual circumstance, so are not easy to generalise about.
     
  16. osprey

    osprey Resident of Nat Pres

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    Well put....I had got slightly mixed up as I do have US patents as well as UK ones but they are very alike as you state. The paper example is excellent......the grey area is the e mail side of things.....
     
  17. I. Cooper

    I. Cooper Member

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    ...incidentally, just because something has been placed into the public domain does not mean copyright no longer exists, or the works can be re-copied without further breach of copyright.

    There are thousands of books sitting in libraries and bookshops that are in the public domain, but copyright still exists and is held by varies parties. The author may hold the copyright for the words, a designer may hold the copyright for the layout of the words on the page, a font designer may hold the copyright for the design of font used to print the book, an artist may hold the copyright for drawings and diagrams used in the book, photographers hold separate copyright for photos used. etc. etc. Seeking permission from the publisher of a book to create a copy may only relate to a portion of the copyright which they hold, other aspects of the publication may be covered by other copyrights with only certain permissions granted to the publisher via licenses to permit them to print and distribute the book.
     
  18. osprey

    osprey Resident of Nat Pres

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    Looking at this situation overall the quicker the ELR jump on it the better..............
     
  19. I. Cooper

    I. Cooper Member

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    Indeed, the basic principles between copyright/patents are pretty much identical all around the world. American and UK copyright is largely the same, it is only in the details where things differ, unfortunately it's often the details which get talked about rather than the general principles!

    Electronic communications are a bit of a problem area, this is why many social media websites require people to grant them limited (and sometimes not so limited) copyright rights to copy and reproduce work that members post, on the basis that for the social media to work they need to create multiple copies of a photo/text so it can be distributed around the social media site.
     
  20. goldfish

    goldfish Nat Pres stalwart

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    Too many negatives? I'm not 100% sure what you're saying? Is it 'if it's posted in the members forum it shouldn't be cross-posted to a public forum'? I'd agree with that.

    The internet is made out of links - Fred should have said "I understand that there is a discussion taking place at FORUM X where comments made by an ELR spokesman about photographers are causing some controversy - I think people here would be interested, go and take a look' - and provide a link to the forum. It gives the members of this forum an idea of what's going on without specifics, and it gives members of the other forum some certainty over who is and isn't viewing information they published thinking it was private (because anyone here who isn't a member of FORUM X would need to register, including providing an email address).

    I would certainly be annoyed if people were cross-posting comments from this forum, which is members-only to a public forum. I can't imagine I'd bother to do anything about it beyond giving the person who cross-posted a fairly robust piece of my mind. Wheaton's Law applies… http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wheatons-law

    Simon
     

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