Picture copyright?

We started a new site recently that has pictures of businesses in a certain area. We are going to be doing reviews on these businesses and other things.

What are the copyright laws for taking pictures of a business and then posting them on your site?

Are the pictures automatically our property to do with whatever we want?

To post pictures of a business on our site, do we have to have their written permission?

Thanks for the feedback...

 

Do you mean taking pictures from the web or putting your own pics on your site?

 

That's an awfully good question.

 

Shouldn't this be in the Legal Issues forum.
Copyrighting and Copywriting are 2 different things.

 

You might find this helpful.

http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf

 

The copyright of the image itself will belong to you if you take it. However you might run into trademark issues and some architectural buildings are actually copyrighted, so you may not photograph them. see here.

However, in most cases you shouldn't have any problems. The use you will put it to seems to fall in "fair use" category. Just make sure that you take the photo's yourself and don't copy from another site/source.

 

I think that the Sydney Opera house is in that category.

Also Clogon, you may want to contact the owner of the business you want to
photograph, just to show no ill will. Put yourself in their place, how would you react if pics of your business were on the web? Positive or negatively?

You might find that they would be up for it and help you.

 

Thanks for the great feedback. I didn't mean to post in the wrong category. I meant copywrite I think...

This information was found (thanks to Crusader):

"Photographing public buildings

"In addition to property-release issues, you also need to think about copyright concerns vis-à-vis buildings if they were built after December 1, 1990. Before that, buildings did not have copyright protection and were thus, by definition, in the public domain. Shoot away.

"In general, buildings erected after December 1, 1990 do not pose a big problem either. There is a “photographer’s exception” to a building’s copyright owner’s rights that permits the photography of buildings. This gives a wide leeway to the definition of “building”; everything from gazebos to office towers are included. As long as the building is in a public place, or visible — and photographable — from a public place, there is no infringement of the building’s copyright owner’s rights. This rule includes private as well as public buildings.

"When art is involved in the photography of a building, however, there could be a problem. If there is a work of art attached to or adjacent to the structure you are photographing, or if you are just photographing that work of art, to be safe you will need to get permission from the copyright owner. If the artwork is secondary to the subject or focus of the photograph, or if your photography is intended for educational, research, news reporting, criticism, or public interest use, your pictures may fall into the area of “fair use” — yet a litigious copyright owner could make your life a living, expensive and defensive hell.

"In the case of artwork, complications often arise because the possessor of an artwork is frequently not the owner of the copyright for that artwork. Just as you retain the copyright to your photographs, the artist may retain copyright ownership to his or her artwork. In such cases, you will need to contact that artist, or the artist’s agent, or the survivors, or whomever it is who can give permission to photograph the work. That artist could be unavailable, in another country or deceased — but in order to be safe, you will need to receive permission from a responsible party.

"If the artwork’s copyright has expired and it is in the public domain, then you don’t have to worry. However, you will have to do some homework to determine if this is the case." (http://www.asmp.org/commerce/legal/copyright/publicbldg.php)

I'm going to look more in to it - this is what I'm doing

 

one other question: what is the difference between copyright and copywrite? I'll look it up...

 

copyright: the exclusive right to make copies, license, and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether printed, audio, video, etc.: works granted such right by law on or after January 1, 1978, are protected for the lifetime of the author or creator and for a period of 50 years after his or her death.

copywriter: a writer of copy, esp. for advertisements or publicity releases.
(www.dictionary.com)

 

Copywriters own the copyright of their work.
(unless the sold the rights away to someone else).