Very true... I've captured thousands of photos for "Bikes of Steel" and murky copyright law is why this collection will always be offline.
Of course what is legal and what you can get away with are two different things... granted, those photos are technically the property of the bike's owner... but a week after you captured them, there's a 99% chance that that bicycle now belongs to somebody else... is he gonna care what you do with pics of a bike he no longer owns? Probably not. And does the new owner have any more claim to the photos than you do? Nope. And will either of them care if the photos are used in a non-commercial manner on a bicycle enthusiast's web page? Probably not...
Even so, anyone who reposts ebay photos does so at some risk, and they shoud be aware of that.
Bob Hovey Columbus, GA
In a message dated 2/25/05 3:04:52 PM, classicrendezvous-request@bikelist.org writes:
> On Friday, Feb 25, 2005, at 11:35 US/Pacific, charles nighbor wrote:
> > When I find pictures that Dale MIGHT USE I MAKE A COPY OF THEM EVEN
> > eBAY ITEMS AND SEND THEM TO dale INCLUDING IF FROM eBAY item number.
> > That way he does not to send time making a copy and can just save
> > pictures tell he has time for them
>
> Charles this may quite well be illegal. From what I understand about
> the murky rules of copyright law people that photograph their items for
> sale on Ebay have implied copyright protection. From a fair-use
> standpoint you should be able to use them personally. Of course over
> the last 10 years the justice department has been steadily chipping
> away that fair-use. These pictures used without permission on the CR
> site would most likely be illegal because CR is not a strictly
> educational site, which would make it fall under fair-use again. I've
> submitted pictures of my bikes to Dale to use with my permission and
> that's 100% legal.
> best,
> Brandon"monkeyman"Ives
> Coeur d'Alene, Idaho