Larry Lessig at TED
November 18th, 2007This summer, while working at a camera/photography store in Lethbridge, one of the jobs I did was Photoshop work and printing photos.
One day a middle-aged woman came into the store carrying an old 8×10 of her deceased parents. She explained that the photo had been damaged when it fell off the wall and the glass protecting it, broke and cut into the image. She asked if we would be able to photoshop the damage out and make a new copy.
Before I could speak, the manager of the store pulled the image from my hand and inspected the photograph.
“Who took the photo?”
There was no stamp on the back and she didn’t know. She explained, “It was taken about 30 years ago by a photographer that their pastor hired to take family photos at their church”.
He told her due to copyright laws, he would not print her a new image. (Nevermind the illegally copied Photoshop program he was using to charge $45/hour to make other’s copies).
Should it be illegal to recover the woman’s photo? Common sense revolts at the idea.
But she never did get it fixed.
See this great TED talk by Larry Lessig speaking about the shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws.
November 22nd, 2007 at 8:48 am
About not fixing the picture: I wonder what your boss would do if his car was damaged. Would he have it fixed even though the auto manufacturers have copyrights on their designs? In a perverse way he was trying to show that he is a wonderful guy. People like that disgust me. I’ve seen seen this type of person before.
November 23rd, 2007 at 7:33 pm
I can’t believe it. What has the world come to. Some common sense should have prevailed here and he should have just fixed the photo for her. This is taking things too far. If you apply this logic to everything, we would all be sued.