Thread: Reposting and Image Ownership

I'm assuming you misunderstood what I said. I never said I seriously thought it was advanced editing. Making gifs and screenshots are some of the most basic steps when it comes to image editing. And I guess it might also be elitist of me seeing as my major and work deals with the software that makes these things and really, it's not that big of a deal to me and if I made basic gifs and screen shots I really wouldn't care if other people used them and altered them. I know to some people they're doing some advanced editing work here, but in retrospect, they're not. Fact is, one cannot claim ownership or copyright to anything that is very clearly the original material of something they do not have the rights to or permission. If the original creator of an image or video can immediately identify it as their own, and they have copyright or documentation proving that they are the original creator, they can take action against that other person. Photo manipulation is a great example for this. Most people who manipulate photos will obtain rights or permission to use the images before using it, but if they do not, they need to alter it to the point of being no longer recognizable. This can also go for screenshots and gifs. They are essentially photos. Example, this one Obviously there aren't babies this tiny, so someone took two photos and put them together nicely. This technically counts as photo manipulation and this is where we meet the border of Can the artist who did this claim ownership or copyright? Can this person claim this as their own? Yes, but only if they have legally obtained rights and permission to all images used. Otherwise, not enough has been changed in these images to claim ownership or copyright. It's protection for those who created the original content. People simply cannot take someone elses work, pretty it up, and call it their own. You can stick a watermark to credit yourself, rile up a hatestorm, and they can beg those who take it, use it, alter it, etc. for credit and respect for the work they did on it, but they cannot legally do anything about it. It. is. NOT. THEIRS. I'm not saying people should blatantly disrespect the efforts people make to further personalize these images, but at the end of the day, if someone so chooses to disrespect someones work and the work they did and alter it or claim it as theirs, there's not much they can do other than to contact them and hope they credit them or take it down. I will respect people who have done some work to the image, but I admit, I don't give a crap if they blatantly took an image and did squat to it. So to explain how I'd treat gifs on Tumblr. I'll use some examples I'd respect this There is plenty of shopping and personalization being done here. Does this mean the person can claim ownership and rights? Nope. All because the gif in the center belongs to BBC and I HIGHLY doubt they have rights to the image. I'd be 'meh' about This person put a word over the gif. Congratulations to them. I'm not impressed, and it's all wasted effort if they think they can claim ownership over this. I'm not going to tip my hat to them, but I won't just go grab it and claim it as my own since they already doodled on the gif. And I wouldn't give a flying fuck for stuff like this This I honestly would not care about doing alterations to. It's very obviously not their video that they have rights or legal ownership to and all they really did was knock out some frames and crop or resize it.