Forum Moderators: not2easy
Does a doctored photo have a copyright of it's own or is the copyright still retained by the original owner? For example, a year or so ago, there was a spectacular photo of what appeared to be a soldier barly being missed by a great white shark. It turned out that the "photo" was actually a doctored combination of two different photos.
Does the new photo have rights to a copyright, or is it just considered a breech of the first two photos copyrights?
In this case, both statements may be correct at the same time. The doctorer owns the copyright on the combined image, because he created that. But the authors of the original photos probably still own the rights to the parts they unwillingly "contributed". In the end, only a court can decide, but usually you need to doctor a lot more to disconnect the result from the original rights.
Does the person that combined the photos have actual rights to use the photos, either through fair use, public domain, or permission? In that case, they would have a copyright on the combination or compilation, but not on the specific elements that were copied.
Did they add enough original creative content for it to count as an original creative work? Is it a parody of the original? Etc.
A classic example would be a compilation book of poetry. Each separate poem is still copyrighted by the author, but the book is copyrighted by the compiler of those works. All that does is keep someone else from compiling the same works in the same order. If you copy a poem out of the book, the controlling copyright would be that which covers the poem. If the poem has entered the public domain, the book copyright cannot stop you from making the copy of the poem.
