Amen, brother. If I were a copyright owner, I'd go after them with diligence just because of that. As far as I'm concerned stuff like screenshots or photos of box art, etc., ought to be in the public domain. I'm sorry, but it doesn't require any creativity to hit "PRINT SCREEN" during a game to take a screenshot and upload it to a website. The creativity was done the animators and graphic artists, not the idiot with the keyboard.
I suppose it is a bit of thin ice though. If we said that the game developer ought to have copyright control over screenshots, then they could easily forbid critical reviews from using any such images. That could have a drastic effect on the reliability of reviews, since only the ones that sucked up could have access to the images.
Obviously, if the photographer has to put a lot of work into arranging the materials, lighting, and so on, that's creative effort and ought to be protected. Simply putting a box into a scanner doesn't seem like the same thing to me.
It is at least some effort to photograph, scan or screenshot something, so I believe that a minimal amount of respect needs to be paid to the person or person(s) doing it in the form of credit, i.e., if you pull material sourced from somewhere or someone else, you should acknowledge it. At the same time, I think things like watermarks defeat the purpose of presenting the material in the way it should be. I do a lot of time consuming photographic and video work (and obviously written) and would be pissed if someone "stole" that without acknowledging my effort (as the source). I'd rather have that though than go to extra effort to watermark my posted materials just to thwart a few unsavory characters--why should the 98% of the good people out there suffer poor presentation because of them?
Wii: 1345 2773 2048 1586 | PS3: ArmchairArcade Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
Amen, brother. If I were a copyright owner, I'd go after them with diligence just because of that. As far as I'm concerned stuff like screenshots or photos of box art, etc., ought to be in the public domain. I'm sorry, but it doesn't require any creativity to hit "PRINT SCREEN" during a game to take a screenshot and upload it to a website. The creativity was done the animators and graphic artists, not the idiot with the keyboard.
I suppose it is a bit of thin ice though. If we said that the game developer ought to have copyright control over screenshots, then they could easily forbid critical reviews from using any such images. That could have a drastic effect on the reliability of reviews, since only the ones that sucked up could have access to the images.
Obviously, if the photographer has to put a lot of work into arranging the materials, lighting, and so on, that's creative effort and ought to be protected. Simply putting a box into a scanner doesn't seem like the same thing to me.
It is at least some effort to photograph, scan or screenshot something, so I believe that a minimal amount of respect needs to be paid to the person or person(s) doing it in the form of credit, i.e., if you pull material sourced from somewhere or someone else, you should acknowledge it. At the same time, I think things like watermarks defeat the purpose of presenting the material in the way it should be. I do a lot of time consuming photographic and video work (and obviously written) and would be pissed if someone "stole" that without acknowledging my effort (as the source). I'd rather have that though than go to extra effort to watermark my posted materials just to thwart a few unsavory characters--why should the 98% of the good people out there suffer poor presentation because of them?
Wii: 1345 2773 2048 1586 | PS3: ArmchairArcade
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.