A copyright judgement of great concern to photographers

David Heath
Saturday, 28 January 2012 23:10

Opinion and Analysis

It would seem that when the rules of copyright are rigorously applied, common sense goes out the window.

One would argue there are certain similarities.  They are both monochrome images with a red London double-decker bus.  They both also show the UK Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.  In both cases the parliamentary buildings reduce to a vanishing point to the left of the image.

But that's about it.

The differences are just as strong.  While it is clear that the bus is traversing Westminster Bridge in Photograph 1, it is impossible to determine this in the second image.  In Photograph 2, the bus is quite clearly a Routemaster (one of the old busses that were recently retired from service) while in the first image the bus is a considerably newer model (oddly, the judge presiding over the trial refers this also as a Routemaster, when clearly it is not).  In addition, the second image was taken from a position much closer to the tower, using a wider-angled lens.

Finally, I'd invite readers to examine the trees immediately behind the tower.  In the lower image, it's a case of "what trees?"

In summary, the lower image seems to be significantly older than the upper image.

Now for the fun part.