Copyright the Moon

[vintagesnaps]

I think you can register a copyright of anything you capture/record with your camera; it may not be that beneficial in some situations, I don't know. There are a number of circumstances where a number of people could record similar or possibly nearly identical photos.

Someone mentioned a still life which reminded me of art classes; I'd been using a shared darkroom at a local university adjacent to studio space where sometimes there would be cubes and cones etc. set up for a drawing class - it looked like they all drew the same thing and although drawings would likely have more differences than images recorded with a camera might have, it seems to be the same idea of everyone using the exact same subject.

Photographers at the same event could get images that are close to identical - I've found comparing pictures with a fellow sports photographer that we'd sometimes have photos that were an awful lot alike (somewhat different because we weren't obviously standing in the exact same spot at the same moment).

Andrew why do you assume that everyone read your blog last Sunday? or reads it on a regular basis? I didn't know this related to something in your blog, maybe that's why I didn't get where ethical concerns fit into this (I felt like I missed something which maybe I did).

I don't know Tim and Benco, some little green men might have beat you to those copyrights.

 

[Ysarex]

On the other hand, this very unique image I made that features the moon is copyrightable:

Love that copyrightable photo.

Joe

 

[table1349]

The point of the moon is that, being tidally locked, every picture of a full moon taken is literally identical, except for some fairly minor technical differences which boil down, basically, to the amount of detail captured.

It represents a useful extreme, I feel, for the thought experiment of "what if I edited MY picture to be pixel identical with YOUR picture -- who owns it now?" because that process is relatively speaking pretty easy, in the case of the moon.

You answered your own question. The are not identical. Even if they were, the person that took the photograph will own the copyright. You own yours the other person owns theirs. Nothing tough or magical about the situation.