Traditions and ceremonies

Ive given up with him --Its rare that I have any idea what he is on about. If the man has had any education at all it must have been little.

 

A few more to add to the ditty box:


Carrying the feather of a wren killed on New Year's Day protects a sailor from dying in a shipwreck.

A stone thrown over a vessel that is putting out to sea will cause huge waves and storms, and ensures she will never return.

Light a cigarette with a candle and a sailor dies at sea.

A drowned woman floats face up, a drowned man floats face down.

And an Arab proverb which caught my fancy: 'If you are a friend of the captain, you can wipe your hands on the sail.'

 

Another Arab one! A favourite of the dhow sailors I believe,

"Only fools and Christians sail to windward!"

Study those great big settee sails and the way they wear ship and you'll see what I mean (actually the 'dhow' (no such vessel in arabic!) appears based on the caravel of old now were have we seen those before? Possibly our Iberian friends might care to mention!!

 

Photos

"I've returned the compliment by offering two splendid examples of 'my' Barra. The pictures were taken by a visitor named T.Opdyke III and I think he does us justice.
The first picture is of the main (only) city on Barra - Castle Bay. The second shows the 'rush hour traffic' on Barra."

Bergalia,

I would advise you not to use my photos on any website (even if you do list the me as the photographer) as they are copyrighted by myself and I have not given you permission. As this is a very informal site, I will not take the matter further, but do not let it or anything like it happen again. Photos you find online may be easy to steal, but under international copyright law, the penalty is fairly harsh. Thank you!

-T. Opdyke

 

I do apologise unreservedly to T.J.Opdyke for the use of his photographs. I did however make strenuous efforts to trace his whereabouts (via various photographic societies, even via the US telephone system) to obtain prior permission to reprint his work.
Should TJO care to contact me I will happily reimburse him for use of the prints - which in all sincerity are excellent examples of the scenery to be found on Barra. MT (Bergalia)

 

traditions

personal traditions: never launch a boat that is un-named, Any race worth doing is worth a healthy dose of rum before you start.

 

In defence of Bergalia

As far as Max has apologized and T. Opdyke already said he's not going to go any further, I would like to comment the issue T. Opdyke arises.

I've been searching internet to find ot where T.Opdyke states his photos are copyrighted, and I could find nothing. It would be important to know where such information is displayed for the public to know.

On the other hand I've found the web site where I think Bergie took the photos from:
http://travelgirlinc.com/onlinealerts/barra.html
There they say the site is copyrighted by Travelgirl Magazine, but nothing about the same from Opdyke. So I understand it should be Travelgirl Magazine the offended, but not Opdyke.

I understand it is unrealistic to pretend a copyright on whatever images or text and post them on the WWW without any kind of protection, pretending the people not to use them freely for not commercial purposes, as it is the case.

Nowadays is totally possible to protect images or text posted in a web site to make them uncopyable, as to avoid (or at least making it pretty difficult) their use out of the context where they actually are. See: http://www.ocean-racing.net/home.html as an example. Not making this may be neglicency on the side of the publisher, in my opinion, and most probably any court will deny whatever claim from the pretended copyrighter because of what could be considered at least as uncarefulness.

This is my opinion, but I may be wrong, as I'm not a lawyer. As this is an interesting matter, affecting all of us, I would like to know what Opdyke and others with more knowledge have to say to this respect.

Cheers.

 

Whilst I am the 'guilty' party in this episode I have to heartily agree with Guillermo's excellent summing-up of the situation when posting photographs, to illustrate a point, on this or any other forum. It is not always - in fact seldom possible - to have as a personal item the picture which best makes the point. I had hoped that in the above case giving credit to the 'author', thus offering a wider recognition to their work, would suffice.

 

I have been said a much more cruel one: "Only poor people sail to winward"
Cheers!

 

This is unusual, but for once I have to disagree with you. I believe the photo byline is standard. I enjoy photography some, and have been lucky to have a few newspapers and magazines use my photos. I've recieved photo credits each time, but never a separate copyright notice. Maybe this is an outdated convention from times when only large financial media instituions had the resources and motivation to protect copyright.

If you hit the print screen button on your keyboard, you can paste the image of any page of the above into any software you like.

I have seen java applets used on a mapping/satellite photo sites which make it impossible to copy and paste, but these generally are slower to load for every visitor. At the time I believe it also required an applet to be given permission / installed which is a drawback for many.

A visible watermark is another option, but then you suffer a distraction on the image itself, which is a bit unfair to the photographer if this anti-theft graphic is unwanted.

We have longstanding conventions which allow for quotation of a resonable amount of text with attribution for academic purposes, but as communication media has expanded to allow the use of images for such a purpose and distribution of academic thought to a wider audience than classmates in a physical university and now reach an international audience, I'm also curious what conventions have been defined and tested recently, specifically for images used in the more academic threads regarding design.

 

Thanks, Jeff.
I think what applies in these forums' case is the "Fair use principle". See, per example:

http://www.piercelaw.edu/tfield/copynet.htm:
"Fair use.
Fair use is one of the most important, and least clear cut, limits to copyright. It permits some use of others' works even without approval. But when? Words like "fair" or "reasonable" cannot be precisely defined, but here are a few benchmarks.

Uses that advance public interests such as criticism, education or scholarship are favored -- particularly if little of another's work is copied. Uses that generate income or interfere with a copyright owner's income are not. Fairness also means crediting original artists or authors. (A teacher who copied, without credit, much of another's course materials was found to infringe.)

Commercial uses of another's work are also disfavored. For example, anyone who uses, without explicit permission, others' work to suggest that they endorse some commercial product is asking for trouble! Yet, not all commercial uses are forbidden. Most magazines and newspapers are operated for profit; that they are not automatically precluded from fair use has been made clear by the U.S. Supreme Court."

http://www.benedict.com/Info/FairUse/FairUse.aspx
The Statutory Decree
§107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair Use
"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." (See also §107 at: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/chapter01.pdf)

Also in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Fair_use_and_fair_dealing

As said: I'm not a lawyer, but I strongly doubt Bergie, or whoever of us posting other people's material in these non-commercial forums just for discussion purposes, is infringing any copyright law at all in most countries.

On top of this, I understand a copyright ownership requires properly registering of it at a Copyright Office. In my not qualified opinion, just marking the © symbol is not enough to grant copyright ownership on a work. A copyright is generally subject to a statutorily-determined term. Courts in the United States and the United Kingdom have rejected the doctrine of a common law copyright.

Unless proof in contrary, I still believe T. Opdyke is just plain wrong claiming Bergie for the use of his photos within these forums, even if Bergie lives in Australia. As read in Wikipedia: "Under current Australian law it is still a breach of copyright to copy, reproduce or adapt copyright material for personal or private use without permission from the copyright owner", but I understand this refers only to Australian registered copyrighted material (?).

More opinions?


Lots of additional info at: http://www2.lib.udel.edu/subj/copyright/internet/

 

Guillermo, I don't think a copyright has to be registered as in music if you have written the works it is yours automatically. If anybody copies it, it infringes copyright, ie the copy in copyright.

All you need is proof you did it first. Sometimes done by sending the works to yourself by registered post and leave it unopened. As it is dated, it is sealed evidence.

I would have thought that anything published on the web, as it is a public domain, would be open to public use. To me it would be like printing thousands of photographs, handing them out free and then suing people for keeping them.

Poida

 

Poida,
Probably you posted while I was adding this extra info to my post: "A copyright is generally subject to a statutorily-determined term. Courts in the United States and the United Kingdom have rejected the doctrine of a common law copyright".
A related, but different aspect, are an author's rights.

 

Poida,
it seems in Australia you do have copyright laws pretty different, to this end, of those in the States or the UK

 

Poida, Guillermo - as I seem inadvertently to have started this 'topic' - allow me to say that you are both correct in your assumptions that copyright laws in Australia are at variance with those of America - and most of Europe - in that at present there is no 'clear' copyright legislation for 'intellectual' property.
Oddly by Australian definition - intellectual property currently applies to music, lyrics, 'certain' literature, (fine art painting) and photography - unless specifically registered as 'copyright'. The exception being paintings and designs belonging to traditional Aboriginal owners.
A discussion, by a panel of judges in the Australian High Court, to introduce legislation which will bring Australian 'intellectual property copyright' into line with 'the rest of the world' has been 'in process' for the past three years.
To date no firm conclusions have been reached, their 'lordships' being unable to grasp the rapidly changing diversity of material published on the internet.