I own the copyright to your photos, because they're similar to mine

[Foosha]

So like a creator of an art style can sue someone using his art style! Ingenious! Now every painting ever made will be its own style!!

[rkma]

Basically, the defendant was being a dick from the get-go. First he refused to pay to use the work, and that's fine - just don't use it. At that point he explicitly went out and got himself an exceptionally similar photo, everything but the angle, so he could avoid paying anyone.

Irrelevant. You can't conjure up new interpretations of laws just to punish people who you think are "dicks." There's nothing in copyright law which says "if the person is a dick, the rules are different."

So the problem here is not that the image was used that is similar to some other image. It is that the image was created with an explicit purpose of avoiding paying the original content creator. It was created to be an exact replica of the original image and then twisted slightly to wiggle out of fees.

Yes, precisely, that's what you're supposed to do. If you don't want to pay royalties, you create your own. That's called competition.

For example, if I want to make an action movie, I might imitate a lot of the things that were successful in previous action movies. As long as it's still my original work, it doesn't matter how many ideas I borrow from movies in the past.

What if it were different? Well, the person who first used a particular scene in an action movie could tell all the other movie producers to fuck off, preventing anyone from exploring that idea in the future. The result? Nothing gets iterated on or improved, good ideas die under lock and key.

[starlord]

its a completely different photograph, this is ridiculous.
this is why copyright is so stupid. no one knows where to draw the line.

[xylophone]

Imo that's one of the problems of an unwritten, flexible constitution. Things like this are up to the judge's discretion.

[Duridi]

For those too lazy to read the article: the two images are made by different artists. A judge ruled that the first image violates the copyright of the second image, because it copies substantially from the "intellectual creation" of the original artist.

Making a picture in greytones, or black&white, then allowing the red colour to come through aswell, is of quite high chance, not the winner's idea. That has been a rather common "intellectual creation" for years.

As for the rest of the case, not interested in getting into it. I just found the quoted bit ironic.

[greeeed]

In other word, Yamada form working!! can sue Yrin from Gundam Age? (j/k)

[Gavll]

I wouldnt be so bothered if it was the other way around, but that second photo is shit. The second guy should be given the "rights" because he actually made a good job of it. The original "artist" must be seriously bad with photoshop

[Theodon]

I'm assuming that the idea was having the majority of the city-scape in 2 bit colour, with only the bus being in 8 bit or whatever it is to create that "style". I've seen this style countless times for many, many years though so it's like it's taking in to account the similarity in the actual content of the picture too; namely the buildings, but I believe that it's totally legal to take photos of a public area and you cannot own any rights to that area directly, just the image that person takes of that area.

[Deleted]

it kind of does actually.

because of those copyright laws, I can't make a game called World of Battle Craft featuring Humans, Orcs, Trolls, Goblins, Gnomes, Dwarves, Elves, Red Elves, Dark Elves, Werewolves, Minotaurs, Zombies, and the new and up coming Pandamen on a similar platform with the same classes for only $9.99 a month.

It's clearly intended to be a blatant rip off of ideas.

And I suspect the issue there would be being similar Trademarks, not simply copyright.

---------- Post added 2012-01-26 at 09:37 PM ----------

I would argue that creating something with an express purpose of copying something else to avoid paying fees, should in fact be punishable. The distinction, to me, is thus: if you see a work and you want to make your own that is inspired by said work - all the power to you, however if you see a work and you want it, but you don't want to pay for it, so you go and make a rip-off (that is after even talking to the original owner about this!), then you are in the wrong.

Nearly photograph taken would be illegal then. People should buy the official photos from gift shops or photographers, right?