We have a saying in England: “The law is an ass”. It’s not some kind of bizarre booty call for QCs, it just means that the law is stupid…donkey stupid, stubborn like a mule, well more to the point, it’s the judges who make the laws that are stupid
BoingBoing reports today a case in point (pardon the pun): In a bizarre ruling, an English court has ruled that in favour of a commercial poster company that argued that a photo that showed a similar but different scene taken by a different person in a different place nevertheless infringed the copyright of their original poster.
The judge ruled that photographing a scene that is "substantially similar" to a scene someone else has already photographed infringes the first shooter’s copyright.
So, no more snapping the Eiffel Tower, any beach with a palm tree, your kids on a pedalo, a full moon, close-ups of flowers nor any spit-roast scene.
Insane English copyright ruling creates ownership in the idea of a photos composition – Boing Boing.