Posted on 03/20/2019 9:29:07 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Harvard University has “shamelessly” turned a profit from photos of two 19th-century slaves while ignoring requests to turn the photos over to the slaves’ descendants, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Tamara Lanier, of Norwich, Connecticut, is suing the Ivy League school for “wrongful seizure, possession and expropriation” of images she says depict two of her ancestors. Her suit, filed in Massachusetts state court, demands that Harvard immediately turn over the photos, acknowledge her ancestry and pay an unspecified sum in damages.
Harvard spokesman Jonathan Swain said the university “has not yet been served, and with that is in no position to comment on this complaint.”
At the center of the case is a series of 1850 daguerreotypes, an early type of photo, taken of two South Carolina slaves identified as Renty and his daughter, Delia. Both were posed shirtless and photographed from several angles. The images are believed to be the earliest known photos of American slaves. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
LOL!
It needs to be understood that the physical photographs are worth considerable money to a collector. The value of each one is certainly in 5 figures, possibly 6.
The alleged descendants must surely be aware of that factor.
Whoever has the stash of all the old Ellis Island immigrant photos probably have photos of many of our ancestors. I have no claim to those.
Interesting read
https://blog.kenkaminesky.com/photography-copyright-and-the-law/
A1976 law said the copyright is created at the moment of capture
Guess we should should burn every artifact of our past so no one ever gets offended again.
Agreed
Time will tell
I saw your post above and thought about this one day:
True story. In the mid-90's, I was sitting in a college class, and the professor was interrupted by a knock on the door. Someone from an Asian students union entered, holding flyers. Holding up the flyers, he announced that a company was hiring Asian students. Were there any Asian students there interested in a job? It just so happened that no one in that class was of Asian descent. In fact, most of the students in that class were of European descent (white), and a few of them yelled out, "That's racist!"
When the photos were taken, the subjects were the property of their owners and not persons. Like photographing farm equipment or livestock.
https://thelawtog.com/a-quick-photographers-guide-to-photography-copyright-law/
According to the U.S. Copyright Office, the owner of the “work” is generally the photographer or, in certain situations, the employer of the photographer. Even if a person hires a photographer to take pictures of a wedding, for example, the photographer will own the copyright in the photographs unless the copyright in the photographs is transferred, in writing and signed by the copyright owner, to another person. The subject of the photograph generally has nothing to do with the ownership of the copyright in the photograph. If the photographer is no longer living, the rights in the photograph are determined by the photographer’s will or passed as personal property by the applicable laws of intestate succession.
Exactly.
This is a direct attack on intellectual property rights, and generally, on all property rights.
Well considering a lot of the seed capital to really get Harvard going - along with the rest of the Ivy League - came from the New England dominated slave trade industry, this seems entirely in keeping for Harvard. They’ve never been the least bit averse to profiting from slavery.
bookmark
How dare you! Are you implying that anyone in the north was anything besides pure and innocent in the slavery era? You must report to reeducation camp to be able to understand that it was 100% from the south, and that everyone north of the future Mason-Dixon line was always horrified and refused to profit from slavery. And they treated black as brothers and friends... oh wait./s
See my post at 24
Mr. Rhino, your ideas are sadly out of date. In today’s world, every white person, born and yet to be born is guilty for the crimes of the slavery era. Even if your ancestors immigrated to this country after slavery ended—you are guilty and should be willing and happy to pay reparations to those who share skin color with the slaves—even those like the last President whose father and his father’s father were still in Africa when slavery ended.
On a side note, I happen to have a tintype of a black man. Is it no longer mine?
And like I said the subject of the photograph has no claims on the photograph. It does not belong to them.
Did you go and read at the link. Your blanket statement is not accurate
My blanket statement is indeed accurate. The photographer who took the photographs in question did so with the permission of the owner of the slaves.
While slavery is now outlawed it was legal at the time and therefore the consent of the slave owner was required for the photographs.
The Constitution’s clause prohibiting ex-post facto laws prevents the photographer’s then-legal actions from being deemed illegal some 200 years after the fact.
Therefore the subjects (and their possible descendants) of the photographs have no valid claim on the photographs.
for works created after January 1, 1978,
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