As the Reilly history continues to be edited, I'm leaning for an on-line publication, perhaps without a publishing house which means the 1000+ photos I've collected need to be vetted for copyright. Some of these photos are used in collages illustrating such things as changes in Reilly engraving or Damascus barrel patterns, some in dating the Reilly labels. And there are the UK newspaper ads and articles from the on-line UK archives.

I've written to Holts, Amoskeog, Rhode Island Auction asking whether their auction photos can be used in a book without permission or perhaps with blanket permission...if not I'll forward the specific sales brochure/item references to them which I've kept. But there are almost 40 auction house involved in this research, some of which do not respond to queries; some of which are no longer in business. Some of these are foreign gun-sales auction in Turkey, Sweden, German, Denmark, India, France, Italy, etc. This will take a lot of time. Some are from on-line gun sales sites such as Guns International, Gun Broker, Gun Trader, Gun Star, etc....and more often than not these on-line reference no longer are valid on those sites.

Do any of you have any experience in personally running down on-line photo copyrights? If I had a publisher, they would do this, and this might be a more appealing option. A couple of very prominent gun writers have made suggestions and are looking the text over. Many thanks for any advice.

Gene Williams

What's that saying...

"It's easier to beg for forgiveness, than ask for permission" ?

Something like that. Anyway who the hell would care?

Gene, I wish your book could be a paper publication, even in magazine form rather than a hardback book. I do know of an European book that has several of my pictures lifted from the internet. I don’t care, but there may be someone out there that might in this situation. Steve Helsley has co-published several books, so he might give advise. Good luck with it. Daryl

You are right Daryl. I do want a paper edition. Donald Dallas said I might sell 500 copies but it would be worth it. He also suggested Quiller publishing in UK but said they are expensive. I've written to Quiller. Still investigating options in the USA. Images in color are expense to produce. Since this will be a reference book, it will need at least 100 images to illustrate the guns and the period they were made in.

Vic Venters said all books should be invested with a good editor, but an editor who understands guns is not found on every street corner. He also said to have a professional layout the book. I have a contact, who laid some articles I wrote for the Special Forces Association magazine "The Sentinel," and she may be able to do this.

To begin to do homework just in case, I've written to Holt's, Amoskeog, and Rhode Island Auctions to ask if their images are copyrighted and if so could they give me blanket approval to use images in their on-line sales catalogs. No responses yet. If they don't get back, at least I made the effort.

Unfortunately, as expected, it is complicated Gene. The auction site is not the "owner" of the images unless the site produced the image. In the early days of PictureTrail I was given permission by Greg Martin Auctions to use a bunch of Baker images that their photographer produced.
On a public use auction site like Gun Broker, the image is the property of whoever originally posted the image, not Gun Broker. Just as images posted here are not the property of DoubleGunBBS.

Gene,

You may want to talk with Daniel Côte to see if he is interested in editing and publishing the book.

Ken

tony treadwell's fine book "vintage english shotguns, etc." was published by lulu...

https://www.lulu.com/shop/tony-trea...duct-1ggvkn8v.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Interesting idea Ken. Three years ago I offered the Reilly article to "Double Gun Journal." Daniel said at the time that he'd let Diggory publish it. Perhaps he'd be willing to take a look with retirement from magazine publishing. He certainly has the skills, gun knowledge and layout abilities. I'll write him an email again. The text is being re-edited for the 50th time right now and there is a prominent gun writer going over it again to give a sanity check.

Ed, I did not know about Lulu. My son did. If I can get it edited and laid out by a professional this is very much an option. It'll mean a lot of work to verify that I can use the photos and articles to be used with the book.

It is a shame when a labor of love meets a lawyer.

Jon, not sure this was so much a labor of love, but a labor of sanity (being in the middle of sand for a lot of the time) and a truly intellectual endeavor that became just plain interesting.

For instance, reading 1862 advertisements for Reilly in the London press, I came across accounts of the battle of the Monitor and Virginia...and predictions on the future of naval warfare. The London press at least seemed to instantly realize the game had changed.

Gene, you have a PM from me.

I'll throw in my 2 cents worth. I don't have any experience with publishing, but I did spend the last 10 years of my career as the intellectual property manager of a major oil company. I worked mostly with patents and trade secrets, but our outside council was a major intellectual property group. My impression fromtalking with them is that copyrights in the US are now implied, whether registered or not. Using anything without explicit permission in a work for profit could potentially cause a lot of headache.

Joanna Cote sent a very gracious email replying as to whether they might be interested in editing a book on Reilly. She said they will be involved for the next couple of years in editing their index to DGJ. She said the prospective book sounded like a great addition to their gun library though. Very classy people and their magazine, though now gone, is a historical record that will be consulted for years.

Maybe some clarification is needed here on photographs. The ownership of a photograph is the photographers not the subject of in the photograph with some real exemption's, if the photograph is the image of a genuine work of art for example a painting that will always be the property of the artist and and written books are the same you will need the author or artist's permission to use it because it enters the world of intellectual copyright. Now the way to circumvent a photographs ownership you can change something in the original photograph i.e.. lets say it is a gun remove the background replacing it with with something else using photo shop. next you could add something to the photograph like a small logo in a corner, doing this changes the original image. I am sure you have seen those Getty Images with their name plastered all over the photograph to stop you doing what I have just said. Now once you have adapted the image to the point that is not exactly the original then photograph your work the photograph you have taken means the ownership is yours. An example if this is that famous image of Che Guevara that we all know but the photographer did not receive any credit or cash for his efforts because the photograph was copied and the ownership went to any person who went to the trouble to make a copy. I personally have done this a number of times if I was unsure I would use a film camera to prove the image I used was taken by me. Now I do know that on your side of the pond that you have Lawyers that can talk the back end of a horse off and convince folks that white is black and black is white so make some enquiries first. On this side of the pond this sort of legal argument on photographs was all argued out when photography was in its infancy. This I hope is of some help though it could muddy the waters more.

Good luck with all your efforts.

Ernie

That is not the case in the U.S. Ernie. There is NO percentage by which an image can be changed to avoid copyright infringement.
https://topofy.com/how-avoid-copyright-infringement/

So posting this image here, found on Getty Images © (note the copyright icon) would be copyright infringement, unless it is listed as royalty free. In general, limited images/text used for non-commercial or educational purposes get a pass. A school art teacher can project images of art in the classroom; the textbook must get permission. The LCSCA site can't post extensive text from Brophy's or Houchins' works. There are a few images from Brophy's Plans & Specifications however.



Owners of internet sites (mostly business websites) have been successfully sued for allowing someone to post copyrighted material on their site.

Begging for forgiveness rather than permission can be expensive when dealing with copyright issues. Gil

Even LLCs might not be much protection if you only set them up to shield you from suit.if they can prove that is the only or main reason you set them up in the first place.

This is going to be a daunting task then. For instance, I've used a lot of collages to illustrate specific points in the text....6-12 guns in each. I'll have to go back to each auction house for each gun in the collage. And some of the ads on for instance Guntrader.UK whose pictures I used no longer exist...I copied the text of the ad but not who posted it:



And what about press articles? Much of this history was built around an analysis of press articles and advertisements, (Much like the biography of James Madison or John Adams relied on their letters). I mostly used this site: Since I paid for a subscription they may be amenable to my using extracts but I'll query them to make sure:
https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

I notice in John Cambell's beautifully laid out article on Reilly in "Double Gun Journal" in Summer 2015, "E.M. Reilly, Purdey's Pretentious Rival," he used numerous advertisements and pictures from the internet (I collected many of the same pictures long before I know of the existence of this article). Perhaps Joanna or Daniel Cote might advise how they handled this.



A publisher would do this for an author. Perhaps I'll give that a try as well. If anyone has leads as to who publishes gun books (Larry Brown?), would much appreciate names.

Why worry about the printing of potentially copyrighted images, when they have all been posted here on Dave's forum for quite some time? It would seem the copyright infringement horse is already out of the barn.

Considering the legal advice given thus far, if I was Dave, I'd delete the whole damn thing now.

Besides, I really don't think this proposed book is going to turn a profit anyway. How many people are actually going to purchase a largely fictional account, filled with conjecture, about a gun maker who allegedly had over 300 imaginary gunmaking employees????... except nobody can find a trace of any but a small handful of them.

"Besides, I really don't think this proposed book is going to turn a profit anyway."

Well, while many if not most books are published for profit, a good number are not. For instance, my "proposed book" (presently in the process of layout) is in this non-profit category and I will be happy if I get my money back. There are many other reasons besides profit to publish a book. On the other hand my first book was for profit, but those were different times, before Internet.

And to address the original question. I had similar problems, and it took a lot of time - and nerves - to solve them. One major picure source, a prominent European auction house, flatly denied the use of their photos in my book. Many others just did not answer at all. But fortunately a number of other prominent auction houses gave me a permission to use their material (with proper credit, needless to say). And I also organized shooting of original photos expressly for my book, which took a lot of effort not to mention years of time ... In retrospect, I'm inclined to say that writing the book was the easy part.

Cheers,
Jani

Thanks Jani. That is very helpful. I will not turn a profit on this book. But some very prominent gun writers and authors have urged me to preserve it by getting it into print. The internet is not forever. I'll do my best to run down the permissions from auction houses. Gene

Heard back from Holts. There is someone answering the mail.

Good Morning Mr Williams,

I have been forwarded your email regarding your forthcoming publication and your request to use a quantity of our photographs.
I am happy to grant permission for you to use any of our photographs as required without charge but on the sole condition that wherever and whenever any of Holts Auctioneers images are reproduced, either online or hardcopy publication they are accompanied by a relevant Photo Credit:

© Andrew Orr – Holts Auctioneers