A few days ago I was asked about the legality of sharing or selling MX-6000 templates that contain images from professional sports teams. Today I'd like to share the answer with you, because I suspect the same question has come up with many installers from time to time.First off: these days the terms "copyright" and "copy protection" tend to get used interchangeably, even though they are very different things. In fact, they actually have very different goals. Copy protection is a physical or electronic means of attempting to stop you from ever making a duplicate of some form of media. Copyright is a legal status, establishing someone as the owner of a piece of media that they created. Copyright doesn't protect you as the licensee of a piece of media you've purchased—it protects the rights of the creator of that media from unauthorized distribution.
Many people think that media must have some form of copyright marking on it to be covered by copyright. That's not true. A few decades ago, the law was changed so that the act of creating media automatically grants you the copyright to that media. You don't have to file any papers or pay any fees. If you produce a creative work, you are now the owner of that work, by law. Feel free to slap a name, date, and copyright symbol on there if you want. But you don't have to do that. You can file for a copyright, which makes defending yourself in court and/or receiving damages for violation much, much easier should you ever need to do so, but again, it's not required.
Here's a little primer on how copyright applies to programming control systems:
Unless you have written permission, distributing someone else's copyrighted material, even for free, is a violation of copyright law. And in the case of remote programming, there's really no way to separate the programming from the graphics.
As an example, imagine if someone copied images of Mickey Mouse, framed them, then sold the result for $50. They might assert that they are selling the frame, but giving away the image of Mickey Mouse. In this case, the copyrighted image still adds value to the sales proposition, even if it is not explicitly paid for. So the seller is in violation of the law.
However, in that same example, you can't even give away the copied images of Mickey Mouse. The reason is that copyright law grants the copyright holder the right to establish the price for their work. If, for example, the holder establishes a price of $10 for the image of Mickey Mouse, then you give away that image, you have caused material damage to the copyright holder, even though you did not profit yourself.
And the final factor in this is when the copyright holder establishes a price of zero for the work: even then, copyright law grants the copyright holder the sole right to determine how their work is distributed. Even when the original image is free, you can't give away copies of Mickey Mouse because, legally, you are using someone else's property in a manner they have not authorized. If this weren't the law, any non-profit organization could use images of Mickey Mouse to try to get people to believe there was a connection between their cause and the owners of the Mickey Mouse copyright.
So clearly, you can get in big trouble for including copyrighted images in your remote programming. The exceptions to this are when you're the copyright holder, or have written permission from the copyright holder. But be careful here too: if you strap on your telephoto lens and head out to the football stadium to take your own photos of your favorite team, remember that you're photographing something that's already protected by copyright. The team logos, the design of their uniforms, and even their specific color schemes are often protected by copyright. Just being the photographer doesn't automatically grant you the rights to sell your own photos, believe it or not!
If you want to use custom images in your programming, I suggest getting a membership to one of the online stock photo sites, such as Fotolia.com. Sites like that let you inexpensively purchase the right to use a photo in your work, keeping your legal footing solid and your profits in your pocket, right where they belong.
