Contests and Posters

whispers65

I was looking at some renders from another site and in the renders they had actual movie or music group posters on the wall.

so let's say on the wall there was a poster of the movie Jaws.

Is this ok or not ok? Copyright issues? Can they be used in contests here?

I'm just curious. I was somewhat surprised but didn't necessarily know if in this case it was good or bad.

Karibou

Rule of thumb, as far as I know, is that anything that could be published commercially -- like as a promo image, in the case of a contest winner -- should NOT have actual bands/movies, etc. Unless, of course, they're public domain, which is only the case if they're old or made by the government. :For personal renders, though, it's pretty unlikely the copyright police will be coming after you. :lol:

whispers65

Thanks. I was just curious. What I have always done is just create fake ones and use those so I will continue on that trend, not that anyone really sees my renders anyway lol.

Ken OBanion

I don't know.... I'm not a lawyer (I don't even play one on TV!), but I should think something like that might fall under the 'Fair Use' provision of the copyright laws.

That's the provision of the law that allows passages of a work to be quoted in another work, say, for a review, or some scholarly discussion, without being accused of plagiarism. There is a practical limit to how much of the original work can be "copied and pasted", though, and I've seen some pretty intense arguments over just how much is "too much".

Anyway, reproducing a movie poster in a scene, scaled down as much as it necessarily must be, and with the resultant loss of detail, just strikes me as, in a very real sense, "quoting" the original work, and as such, it ought to be okay. One could, at least, make that argument.

Attribution would probably be key, however; I posted an image in a contest elsewhere some time ago, in which I used a still from the old movie 'Hatari!' on a movie screen. Acknowledging and attributing the image to the film's producer (Paramount), in the products-used list, was just the right thing to do, and may have kept me out of trouble, to boot! (Didn't win, anyway!)

robkelk

Ken OBanion said:

That's the provision of the law that allows passages of a work to be quoted in another work, say, for a review, or some scholarly discussion, without being accused of plagiarism. There is a practical limit to how much of the original work can be "copied and pasted", though, and I've seen some pretty intense arguments over just how much is "too much".

There's also the matter of contest entries not counting as "a review, or some scholarly discussion", or classroom use. Fair Dealing (or, in the USA, Fair Use) is a much narrower defense than most people think it is.

Better to make up your own...

Richard Haseltine

As I understand it the question is usually is the use incidental - a photo of a real room that happened to have the Jaws poster on the wall, where the poster wasn't the thing being photographed, would likely be OK but a carefully staged scene where the Jaws poster was an important part of the whole would be an infringement. The problem with a 3D scene is, of course, that there aren't incidental items that just happen to be there so the chances of its use being OK are much lower.

kyoto kid

...so does this extend to use of recognisable "brand name" props like the new Chevrolet Camaro or a Boeing 737 (widely used by the world's airlines) in a scene?

I recently submitted a work to a contest that had a Harrier (albeit in BRG rather than any military livery) which was a rather prominent part of the scene.

Richard Haseltine

Potentially - would depend on who owned the rights and what their policies were (as, for example, some government-owned things are not protected actively within limits).

robkelk

Kyoto Kid said:

...so does this extend to use of recognisable "brand name" props like the new Chevrolet Camaro or a Boeing 737 (widely used by the world's airlines) in a scene?

I recently submitted a work to a contest that had a Harrier (albeit in BRG rather than any military livery) which was a rather prominent part of the scene.

Legal advice you get on the Internet is worth what you paid for it. That said...

There are three major types of Intellectual Property law. Since you didn't create a new process that somebody else may have already created, Patent law definitely doesn't apply here and can be ignored.

Copyright law concerns itself with particular expressions of ideas. Since your image is original to you, you hold the copyright to the image as a whole. Components of the image can cause problems in copyright law (such as the inclusion of a "Jaws" movie poster, which we've already discussed), but I'll assume that you have the necessary licenses for all of the meshes and textures you used that you didn't create yourself.

This leaves Trademark law... which is tricky. It's possible for more than one company to have the same trademark in different businesses (for example, Pioneer Petroleum and Pioneer Entertainment have both trademarked the word "Pioneer" in Canada, but the first sells gasoline and the second makes electronics, so there's no overlap.) It's also possible to lose a trademark if it isn't defended, unlike a copyright. It's possible that the manufacturer of the Harrier in question (Hawker Siddeley, British Aerospace, or McDonnell Douglas, depending on the particular variant) has registered the shape of the aircraft as a trademark - I don't know - but, if it exists, that trademark might only apply in the field of aviation. Since you gave the aircraft a different livery, that might - maybe - be enough to make the image different from any possible trademark, depending on how the trademark was defined. A court would ask whether your image could be confused with whatever trademark might exist by a reasonable person - if it can't, then you're probably safe.

whispers65

And that's why I probably don't post any pics, not that I use anything other than what I've bought. Rarely do I even use a freebie because it's not worth all of the hassle.

Looks like tonight I'll be making posters. It's really fun anyway and soothes the creative beast within me.

Thanks everyone for the responses and opinions. No one will ever drink a Coke in my pictures. They will be drinking a Red Spot or whatever crazy thing I come up with lol.