Photography copy right

[David Lawson]

My wife wants to start a business putting photos on CD's. Can you take photos taken by a photographer and reproduce them and put them on CD? Since the individual paid the photographer to take the photos, do they own the rights to the photo or does the photographer?

 

[crazie4life]

Hello, although the individual pays her to make take photographs, the individual cannot submit her photos somewhere else and call them his own under his name. He has to give credit to your wife. He can print the photos for his own personal use. But he cannot make a profit by saying that he took the pictures. It's plagerism and offends the copyright law

 

[scurrie]

I don't think David is saying his wife is the photographer. If I am understanding correctly, he is saying that his wife would be receiving a bunch of photos from a customer, scanning them into a digital format, and then burning them onto a CD.

If the customer had photographs taken by someone else (i.e. professional prints from a photography studio), then the customer would not have the rights to those photos and be able to give permission to reproduce them onto a photo CD. Permission would have to be received from the original photographer before doing anything with the photos. Just because someone purchases prints from a photographer, doesn't mean they also obtain the copyright for those prints.