Photo Ownership

[conor]

Question: If you have a camera that is shared between you and say your partner, friend, etc, who owns the rights? are they shared?

[Ads]

[niccig]

The rights to the photos taken with the camera? I'd say whoever took the photo owns the rights to it, since the camera is just a tool - no different than a painter's brush (though slightly more complicated).

[Torus34]

If you and a friend share a hammer, and each of you uses it to build a house, who is responsible for the house that collapses?

[rmh159]

Someone else can probably comment on the specific laws but I believe copyright law specifies that as soon as you click the shutter that photo is copyright protected by the owner of the finger that clicked the shutter.

[toastydeath]

Indeed. It's the original author of the work.

However, that creates some nice muddy water surrounding getting the images back, as they were made using someone else's property, even though the owner of the camera cannot use them for anything without consent.

[rmh159]

Hahaha very true. I have no idea how you would prove in court that it was your finger on the shutter and not the other person's. This might be one of those laws that's in place to provide a guideline but is COMPLETELY unenforcable.

If it's really that big of a concern I'd say you should get your own cam... or a lawyer.

[Orgnoi1]

The author of the photograph owns the photograph... period... the medium has nothing really to do with anything except that its the means for the author to make his art.