Quote Originally Posted by Feanor View Post
Am I missing something? It seems to me that you seem to be saying that JohnMichael is using the linked photos as advertising. IS that, in fact, what you're saying? It's not the case; where did you get such a notion?

Recap for clarification:

First image was image that John Michael took on his own camera of his own turntable and then posted to a forum for the purposes of whatever discussion was going on there. I don't care why he did it, other than he wanted to show some online friends his photo (whether it was a discussion about the turntable, the cartridge, or he wanted to show off his photo skills was immaterial). It was just a random nice photo that many of us post to discussions.

Second image a third COMMERCIAL party has taken that image and minimally altered it (i.e. cropped it a little, maybe straightened it and background blurred it). But it has not been altered in any way that anyone closely looking at the photo could call significantly altered to make the original image unrecognizable.

Because the second image was used by a party unknown to John Michael for commercial purposed without so much as a "do you mind" it would fall under copyright infringement.

Between my two initial posts all I ever suggested is that John Michael look into getting some sort of compensation for the use of the image. The link I posted was a follow-up to my initial post suggesting that he do that and was merely meant to demonstrate that he had a possible legal leg to stand on.

Him posting the images / links here or any other discussion is not the issue I was pointing out. The fact that nobody paid him to take his photo and use it their advertisement was something he could look into still getting paid for.

I have no idea what he might get out of it if successful. If it's just a local retailer that used it on their website maybe not much. If it's the actual manufacturer, probably a reasonable compensation is in order from either them or their ad agency (or both).

Might not be worth the fuss and bother of him pursuing it. But looking into it and maybe at least getting a "sorry" from the third party might be nice . It's entirely possible whoever put together the ad didn't realize they were crossing a copyright line (or maybe didn't care figuring nobody would notice).

To restate the obvious here. I was in no way saying that his post here was inappropriate.