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Summary
DescriptionRalf Hütter 1975.jpg
English: Ralf Hütter in 1975, in a photoshoot by the Maurice Seymour studio in New York City. Distributed by Heller-Fischel Agency to promote the band in the USA.
English: No permission is required for the following reasons:
This work was published in 1975, without a copyright notice. As such, the opportunity for copyright protection on the photo was forfeited and it entered the public domain.
The source images linked above are mechanical scans of the underlying public domain work. These scans are faithful reproductions of the photograph that do not meet the threshold of originality necessary to assert a copyright interest.
This was part of Kraftwerk's Maurice Seymour photoshoot, while other photos such as the ones used in the cover and back cover of Trans-Europe Express (see on Discogs) were copyrighted, this particular photo was only used for promotional puroposes.
Since the photo was taken by a US-based studio and distributed in the US, The "source country" of this picture is USA. There's not enough evidence this photo was first published outside of the USA.
English: This is a publicity still taken and publicly distributed to promote the subject or a work relating to the subject.
As stated by film production expert Eve Light Honathaner in The Complete Film Production Handbook (Focal Press, 2001, p. 211.): "Publicity photos (star headshots) have traditionally not been copyrighted. Since they are disseminated to the public, they are generally considered public domain, and therefore clearance by the studio that produced them is not necessary."
Nancy Wolff, in The Professional Photographer's Legal Handbook (Allworth Communications, 2007, p. 55.), notes: "There is a vast body of photographs, including but not limited to publicity stills, that have no notice as to who may have created them."
Film industry author Gerald Mast, in Film Study and the Copyright Law (1989, p. 87), writes: "According to the old copyright act, such production stills were not automatically copyrighted as part of the film and required separate copyrights as photographic stills. The new copyright act similarly excludes the production still from automatic copyright but gives the film's copyright owner a five-year period in which to copyright the stills. Most studios have never bothered to copyright these stills because they were happy to see them pass into the public domain, to be used by as many people in as many publications as possible."
Kristin Thompson, committee chairperson of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies writes in the conclusion of a 1993 conference of cinema scholars and editors[1], that: "[The conference] expressed the opinion that it is not necessary for authors to request permission to reproduce frame enlargements... [and] some trade presses that publish educational and scholarly film books also take the position that permission is not necessary for reproducing frame enlargements and publicity photographs."
Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (50 p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 p.m.a.), Mexico (100 p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties.
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Ralf Hütter in 1975, in a photoshoot by the Maurice Seymour studio in New York City. Distributed by Heller-Fischel Agency to promote the band in the USA.
Uploaded a work by Maurice Seymour Studio - New York from [https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1975-press-photo-german-electronic-3927282529 Listing] [https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Features122/v4/5b/a0/3b/5ba03bce-75b0-a1f8-f1f5-fd83a61f0f73/ef842922-9ef1-4f31-bcf3-4d9196fd8492.png/1680x2093sr.jpg HQ] Archive: [https://web.archive.org/web/20240518000424/https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1975-press-photo-german-electronic-3927282529 Listing] [https://web.archive.org/web/2024...