The situation gets even weirder, and it comes down to the amount of money
someone wants to spend fighting you. If you do a cutaway that is viewed as a
derivative work that is based on the Haynes original, they can still sue you.
There is NO hard and fast change seven things rule. There are guidelines.
You can use a small amount of a work, usually less than 10% of the original
work. Even this gets muddy if you sample something that can be defined as the
'essence' of the work. Remember the flap a few years ago when Phil Collins
was suing over the sampling of his drum tracks. You also do not have to
"claim" copyright by putting a symbol on the image etc. You create the image,
you own the copyright. period. You have more of a leg to stand on in court
if you have the little symbol and your company name, but ignorance is not an
excuse in court. You can not say I found this image, didn't know who it
belonged to and used it anyway.
To make things weirder this rule applies to any intellectual work.
Technically triumph holds the copyright on the spitfire shape, you would have
to have there permission to use the spitfire in a poster because this is an
aesthetic use of the shape. However you could have a picture of the spitfire
in a work that was showing how to tell a spitfire from a herald (a reference
work). It all comes down to some judges interpretation. If this all seems to
run contrary to your sensibilities, and you are saying no way this doesn't
make sense... welcome to the world of copyright law. Since the computer, and
modern imaging, it has become harder, if not impossible to interpret this
stuff. There is no clear case law right now that I know of, maybe a lawyer in
the group can pipe in. What I've seen is rulings that seem to directly
contradict each other in the use of images, etc. The other problem is that
works are meant to go into the public domain after a set amount of time. The
problem is that the big corporations tend to keep pushing the time out,
because we are now getting into the era where a huge number of works are ready
to go into the public domain. Disney's "Mickey Mouse" would have gone into
the public domain last year if the rules had not changed.
You do not have to pay for copyright, only to protect it. You own the
copyright on any original work you create. If you do not want the copyright,
you just have to indicate that the work can be used in whole or parts without
limitation.
Here is another great one. The shape of the letters you are reading have
a copyright. If you take something to be printed you had better know who owns
the copyright of the fonts that you use. If you use a font that you do not
hold the copyright for or permission to use you could be sued. Some fonts can
be extrordinarily expensive. That is also why you see similar fonts with
different names. Had your family picture taken recently by a professional?
Guess who owns the copyright, not you. You probably signed a paper that gives
the photographer sole ownership of the image. If you cause the greatest
natural disaster since Chernobyl they can make money by selling your family
picture, and could sue your great aunt Thelma for selling of the same image.
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