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by ars 4351 days ago
The result of a surveillance camera is not copyrightable. Only if a person controlled the camera. Even if the person carefully selected a site but then just left it there to record whatever would come, it's not clear that would be copyrightable.

If you fed in specific tuning parameters to the procedure and fine tuned them until you liked the output that might have a claim. But if you just let it work randomly and picked the ones you liked best that would not.

It's not enough to simply like the result, you have to actually do something to create that specific result.
1 comments
dllthomas 4351 days ago
How is "if a person controlled the camera" terribly semantically different from "picked the ones you liked best".

"Even if the person carefully selected a site but then just left it there to record whatever would come, it's not clear that would be copyrightable."

But in this case he selected a site (wrote the code), recorded a pile of footage, and then went through and selected particular shots based on his own personal criteria.

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ars 4351 days ago
He has a compilation copyright, but not copyright on the individual images.

If you leave a camera in public for a few days, then come back and edit the result into a movie you have copyright for the movie, but not for the individual stills that make it up.

To have copyright on the stills (rather than the compilation) you have to have some creativity into making them, not merely selecting them.

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dllthomas 4351 days ago
How does this differ from taking a shot with a tripod?
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ars 4351 days ago
You timed the shot. Don't confuse photo with video.
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dllthomas 4351 days ago
How is timing not selection? And it's still being captured mechanically.

Notice also that many cameras these days will take many shots in rapid succession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burst_mode_%28photography%29)

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ars 4351 days ago
The difference is in the action of the person, not in the method of the machine.

And a photo is different from a video in the timing factor.

BTW Copyright laws are impossible to mathematically define - they always have a subjective factor: Does this seem creative or not?

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