"Maybe his argument is that by buying the film he owns the rights?"
As I mentioned in one of my comments they also developed the film which if not done correctly would result in images that wouldn't look the same as they do now. [1] The film without development has no creative appeal other than the appeal of a film canister.
[1] As anyone who has done photography with a darkroom knows (I have and development is part of what you get just like picture composition is.)
The film carries within it all that you could get out of it even after developing. You can't get something out that wasn't in in the first place and the whole goal here is to change the output as little as possible. It's fidelity what is appreciated here, not creative license to solarize the film or do something else with it other than to try to extract the information with as little loss as possible.
It's a mostly mechanical process, if you follow the recipe then the predicted outcome is the same, no matter who does the developing.
"Dodging and burning are terms used in photography for a technique used during the printing process to manipulate the exposure of a selected area(s) on a photographic print, deviating from the rest of the image's exposure. In a darkroom print from a film negative, dodging decreases the exposure for areas of the print that the photographer wishes to be lighter, while burning increases the exposure to areas of the print that should be darker"
I'm not saying that there can't be artistry in the darkroom. I'm saying that in this particular case such artistry would likely not be appreciated. And since you don't know what is on the film in the first place it is very hard to manipulate it in such a way. That requires a lot of pre-existing knowledge about what is on the film.
I spent a ton of time in the darkroom of my dad when I was a kid and it's all lots of fun but in the end what wasn't in front of the camera lens is not going to magically appear on the developed film or the prints. At best you'll end up with a derived work, at worst you're destroying a bit of history.
IANAL but the word you're looking for is "derivative works". In order to develop film, you need to take someone else's work and apply your original interpretation to it.
This is definitely the most stretched interpretation of the term 'derivative work' that I've ever encountered.
Developing a negative does not create 'a derivative work', since developing film is not 'interpreting' it in an original way, it for the most part is chemistry. Do it the same way twice you get the same result.
You can prove that to yourself by cutting a roll of film horizontally in half and then developing the two halves independently using the same recipe. If you do it all by the book they'll come out in such a way that the two film halves can be reconnected to give you the whole images.
Have you ever done darkroom photography? (I have and have made money doing that).
And if so, just to be clear, you are claiming that there is no difference in results from someone with experience and someone "just following a recipe?".
> Have you ever done darkroom photography? (I have and have made money doing that).
Sure.
> And if so, just to be clear, you are claiming that there is no difference in results from someone with experience and someone "just following a recipe?".
Oh, definitely there can be a difference. But that difference will never amount to the person in the darkroom being able to supercede the copyright claim of the original photographer.
Are you saying that there is some form a originality done by operating a darkroom, where the result can be distinguished from reproductions, clones, or forgeries of the photograph.
If its a reproduction of a photography, its no more original, in a copyrightable sense, than creating a forgery. Such actions might require high skill, but high skill is not what make works copyrightable.
Negative development is a pretty mechanical process by default, and yes I still shoot on film as well as digital and I love my lab. I think a good analogy is the editing, design, and typesetting of a book - it's visible on every single page and certainly affects perception of the work in multiple respects, but still a long way from being equivalent to authorship.
Even to the extent that development of a film is copyrightable, it's entirely derivative of the original exposure and certainly can't be considered to subsume it for authorship purposes.
"When does copyright start? Do I have to register the work with the government?
Copyright status is automatic upon creation of your original creative work in a fixed, tangible form. Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is not necessary for copyright status and protection, though registration is needed in order to pursue an infringement claim in court."
Too late to edit but I messed up that sentence. It should have been "But the photos are not going to show anything the original photographer did not put in there."
Copyright of photos is always a tricky subject that I could never get my head around. What about the folks in the photo, would they also not be copyright holders as well of the photo as they are part of the creation. Even tricker is if the photos contains items that are copyrighted, how is this dealt with?
Mix them with copyright by photographers (and now apparently by developers if we're to believe some in this thread) and you can feed a pack of lawyers for years.
I'm torn between whether it's more entertaining or more frustrating to watch programmers argue about copyrights, particularly when their arguments are a priori, and premised on a misunderstanding of how the laws actually work.
As I mentioned in one of my comments they also developed the film which if not done correctly would result in images that wouldn't look the same as they do now. [1] The film without development has no creative appeal other than the appeal of a film canister.
[1] As anyone who has done photography with a darkroom knows (I have and development is part of what you get just like picture composition is.)