Luftwaffe photo question

[gamary]

I have a question that I've been trying to answer for some time and I figured I'd submit it to everyone here, and hopefully get an answer.

If I understand correctly, one of the results of the Nuremberg trial was that all material created by official German services were versed into public domain. My understanding is that this was done so that German research in various domains could be legally "recuperated" and used by the victorious powers. A consequence of this is that all photographs taken by the Luftwaffe and other German state organizations are in the public domain.

Does anyone know if this is true? I've done some research to confirm/deny this but I've never found anything conclusive. From what I can see, photos of German aircraft are used rather freely in publications. Sometimes the photos are marked "Photo XYZ collection" but this does not indicate copyright status/ownership.

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated, and would probably be of interest to many of us. Whether it's true or not wouldn't change much for me, I'm mostly asking out of curiosity.

[Jesters-Ink]

Good question, I am listening too.

[Otterkins2]

Gammy, I'm pretty sure those photos ARE in the public domain. Back then I don't even think they had copyright protection laws, and in any case the moratorium (as I understand it) is 50 years unless it's renewed by the originator or one of his relatives. Not likely, since the vast majority of them are eating dirt sandwitches by now or too senile to even remember who took the photo. Furthermore, any SIGNIFICANT alteration you make to a photo (ie: cropping, colour tinting or other alterations) means the creation belongs to you.

[gamary]

My understanding is that the moratorium is 70 years after the author's death, with many exceptions and variations from country to country.

In French copyright law, even using a small portion of a photo in any way is considered copyright violation. I shouldn't be surprised that many countries have the same level of protection.

A very useful page I've found is this Wikipedia page, although it doesn't address my question.

[x4btr]

Greetings All,

Otter, those provisions may exist under Canadian law-- I am really not too sure. However, there are no such similar provisions under European Law (EU), which is also quite specific with regards to the protection of Copyright and reproduction ownership.

All images which are part of the Bundesarkiv collection exist within the 'public domain' (as the North Americans like to put it). These may be reproduced without Copyright entitlement. Curiously, the Bundesarkiv is under no legal obligation to help anyone actually FIND anything within the collection, so upsetting them as regards publishing images in a way which displeases the collection is not an overly bright idea.

Most other photographs, and their respective Copyright permissions, belong to the person who originally took them, or to the person(s) who now legally own them. Many are now part of private collections, these made up of photos purchased by some collector (in many cases), who therefore are the Copyright owner. EU Law does not recognise significant change to any image as a New Work, and no Copyright entitlement is affected by such action (so be quite aware of that).

That said, Fair Use is strongly protected under EU Law. Any image may be reproduced legally in Book Standard Format (original size, 72 dpi, etc) for the purposes of academic/scientific discussion, even on a web site (or similar environment). Fair Use reproduction must be without profit, note, or the provision is nullified.

Ergo, do not go off and reproduce images (in Europe, I suppose) of Luftwaffe aircraft without permission unless you are certain that they come from the Bundesarkiv. And even in that case, I would take note of what I mentioned previously, as one does want these chaps on one's side!

[gamary]

Thanks for those precisions, x4btr. I didn't really know that there was such as thing as "fair use" in the EU. I knew about the American fair use, though.

Cc. the ownership of photographs, I find it a rather curious notion. Basically this would mean that if I have a hard copy of a photograph, I'm legally entitled to publish it? Seems quite strange to me...