Ask this unfortunate lawyer what material damage is caused by what she alleges to be copyright infringement. Are the cops expecting to earn further revenue from licensing this image elsewhere? Revenue which will be diluted if it is left on this website? If so, we should be told, if not, where’s the harm?

On May 20th, 2009, I produced a exclusive series of artistically inspired portraits of my vehicle. I have initiated a copyright on said photography, and any derivative works, such as your photo taken 6/15/08, are in violation of my copyright.

I have a agreement with other owners of the same make and model vehicle for sharing of this copyright. As a designated representative of this group, I must insist that you cease and desist in continuing to photograph our unique and protected design.

We expect compliance with this notice, in that all photographs of Honda A300 MiniMax are in violation of a protected creative work and no further publication be permitted in any form.

Any future violation of these terms will be considered infringement and will be met with legal action.

Yours sincerely etc., William Knickers.

http://boingboing.net/2008/01/13/ford-car-owners-are.html

I’m not entirely serious, of course; In the case where the bulk of the work is setting up the equipment, just pushing the button doesn’t make someone the owner. Still…

And isn’t there some legal principle in the US about work produced by the federal government being in the public domain? Whatever drives that principle should be enough to keep police in the UK from making copyright claims on their “work”, I would guess. That is, if the Law made sense…

Pity the poor thing. So far it’s been limited to blinking out the lyrics to “Smiths” songs in morse code using traffic lights.

And while I’m not about to bother this lawyer myself I’m not sure I’d condemn someonw doing it. After all, it seems this is one of those “sue first, find out if there’s a law that supports you later” lawyers. All lawyers who file legal claims with no legal grounding should be charged with contempt of court since really, that’s what it is.

The camera units themselves are sent across the North Sea to the Netherlands for calibration, shipped back and then reinstalled. There are plenty of Boingers who will understand the implications here.

There are some members of a UK motoring site who have good legal, professional and technical standing – and luckily for us UK drivers, they are pursuing this calibration matter via the courts.

Sussex – arh! Get orf moi land!

(Anon. grew up in Sussex, now lives in darkest Devon. It’s like putting on a mockney accent for a Welsh miner.)

As for those deriding the copyright issue by saying the photos aren’t “artistic”: Since when does that matter? Who are you to decide what’s artistic? Does this mean that William Eggleston’s photos are deserving of copyright protection, but my vacation snapshots aren’t? What if someone takes my vacation snapshots and does something artistic with them? Or uses them in an advertisement?

This discussion is enlightening. If nothing else, I thought we could all agree that laws are supposed to apply to everyone equally. Blind justice, and all that. Apparently that doesn’t apply when it’s the Big Bad Scary Government.

I don’t know if a lawyer could be charged with “contempt of court” before the case has even gone to court (I’ll have to check with my attorney on that one). But legal malpractice is certainly an option here, provided the attorney’s client has been harmed by her actions.

Surely if the car is driven through the camera zone as a performance, then the driver has the copyright to that performance? And hence the imagery of?

C’mon … make it work!

Sorry, I also grew up in Sussex. As buckshot whizzed over my head as I fled arse-up from poaching strawberries, I never really had time or inclination to figure out exactly what was being shouted, but Viz’s farmer seemed to fit the bill nicely.

As for being densely populated – maybe compared to the Sahara.