Don’t try to take a studio portrait to Wal-Mart and scan it to make some prints. According to Wal-Mart "Copyright lasts forever. It’s the law." This is what one customer was told when trying to make prints of an 80 year old photo of her dead grandmother.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
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One Reply to “Yep, Wal-Mart doesn’t understand copyright at all”
It’s just store policy to not allow any prints to be made from something that appears to be professional (yes, I know this is very very subjective). In any case, there is information on the scanner lid explaining this and a notice on the screen before you begin that explains this a little better.
Don’t try to take a studio portrait to Wal-Mart and scan it to make some prints. According to Wal-Mart "Copyright lasts forever. It’s the law." This is what one customer was told when trying to make prints of an 80 year old photo of her dead grandmother.
It’s just store policy to not allow any prints to be made from something that appears to be professional (yes, I know this is very very subjective). In any case, there is information on the scanner lid explaining this and a notice on the screen before you begin that explains this a little better.