Who owns that photograph?

Apparently wedding photographers usually do not give their clients the negatives for the photos they take. I believe the idea is to make the client always come to the photographer to obtain prints. A sort of vendor lock in arrangement. If the ownership photos taken under commission fall to the person who paid the commission, it this even legal? Are photographers under some obligation to turn over the negatives, since they do not own the content of those negatives? Of course with film negatives, there is only one original, so if the photographer gives the negatives to the client, he can no long make prints on behalf of the client without first getting those negatives back. The client may also be deprived of a form of backup, is case of a house fire for instance. If the photographer retains the negatives, the client can get some new prints made once the insurance company comes through. If the client had the negatives and they were destroyed, then they are simply out of luck. Digital photography makes things much simpler, since the client can get "negatives" while allowing the photographer to retain a copy as well. It is then easy for the client to maintain a business relationship with the photographer if they wish to purchase prints, but should the relationship sour, they can be sure that they won't have any trouble obtaining prints of photographs they own.

I should note that our photographer shot digital and gave us a CD of full resolution images, effectively giving us the negatives. Web sized versions are here and here if you are interested.

A bill has recently been introduced in the Senate (I did not even know this was possible!) with the aim of automatically assigning copyright of commissioned photographs to the photographer. The Toronto Star has the story. Automatically assigning copyright to the person who commission's the work seems like the right thing to do. If the photographer wants the right to submit the photograph to a stock photo library or a magazine, or use the photo in their own promotional material, then the onus should be on them to obtain the rights to do so. I believe that in most cases a model release may be required anyway, although I don't know how that fits into news or documentary photographs. There are probably rules regarding exactly what one can do with photos without the permission of the subjects, although they are probably not up-to-date enough to cover internet situations.

The Star article notes that difficulty in determining copyright ownership of old photos is an impediment to archivists interesting in preserving history. Automatically assigning copyright to the photographer may actually help this situation in the future. Photographers usually mark their prints in some way, so it might be simpler to track down a single photographer and obtain blanket rights to their works for archival purposes than it would be to track down numerous clients.

Apparently this is part of an overall trend to reform copyright in favor of content creators. There was a bill introduced in the House of Commons last year with the aim of extending the copyright term. This was the result of lobbying efforts on the part of the estate of Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the Anne of Green Gables books. Presumably the goal was keeping a lock on the rights to those works, which were originally published between 1908 and 1939. This, and the introduction of the photographers bill, seem to be the result of special interests groups. It seems that in the preparation of this legislation, little regard has been given to the overall purpose of copyright and the role copyright occupies in Canadian societal discourse and collective history.

It's not to say that these bills are automatically bad things, but the economic impact they have on a small group of rights holders should not trump the impact they may have on Canadians at large. On the subject of photograph ownership, I suggest drawing up a contract that explicitly states who owns the copyright for a commissioned work.