Copyright on old postcards

[Sausagenbacon]

Hi, I would be grateful if anyone could advise me on this.
I produce a Facebook page for a local history society. I use images of old postcards, and I'm aware of the copyright regulations on them.
But the issue is, if I have taken the image from another Facebook site, or source on the Internet, do I legally have to request permission to use it, even though the image itself is out of copyright?

Not the point, but unless they watermark everything they post, I'm not sure how they would ever know (or prove it). Postcards were produced in many hundreds of variations - even the same image with colours, tints etc.

And would they take you to court? - of course not. They might ask you to stop, or at least credit their group / site to bring some traffic their way too (that seems a fair compromise to me).

PS I am interested to know who you get the permission from - most of these postcard manufacturers are long out of business?

I’d be careful assuming they’re out of copyright but I’ll take you at your word that they are. In that case then as long as the image is just the postcard then you’ll be ok from a copyright point of view.

The site you took them from could have terms and conditions that mean they have a breach of contract claim if you take the images. These are fairly difficult to litigate though for a number of reasons. Plus as a PP said they probably won’t know/ notice.

thank you both very much. I know about postcard copyright because I worked in a publishers that printed historical books using old postcards, but it's good to have the rest clarified - I guess the answer is that they have no rights to the image but it's good to acknowledge them out of courtesy - which is what I do.

They may have contractual rights.

Where this comes up a fair bit is museums. They’ll have out of copyright paintings but they spend a lot of time and money making beautiful high resolution reproductions of them. They do consider themselves to have some rights in that reproduction and will come quite hard after outfits that take the high res off their websites and make tea towels or calendars. They seek to rely on copyright in the photo of the painting (as opposed to the painting itself) and their own terms and conditions which forbid taking the image and using it.

Very hard to imagine anyone taking this trouble for old postcards.

Just for my own curiosity though - on what basis are they out of copyright?

Thank you Cangar, as you say, I can't see anyone doing this for old postcards.
I know that Francis Frith postcards have closely-guarded copyright, but I believe that all other postcards are out of copyright after 70 years - from when I was working.
However, thinking back, I believe that the feeling was that, as the postcard creators were no longer in business, it was a moot point.
But this was 15 years ago.

This is the website I've been looking at
https://www.thirdshift3.com/2016/07/10/vintage-postcards-copyrighted/#:~:text=of%20the%20author.-,If%20the%20postcard%20was%20a%20corporate%20authorship%2C%20it%20is%20in,the%20death%20of%20the%20author.

"Where this comes up a fair bit is museums."

Going off-topic a bit here, but I've come across this as well.

I've been down to the National Archives a couple of times and taken photos of various documents (they have tables specially set up with camera stands to allow you to do this).

I was interested in sharing a few of these photos of mine online but I wanted to be sure that doing that was ok so I got in touch with the National Archives.

I was told that I was welcome to transcribe and publish the text of any written materials that they held but that any of my own photos that I had made of these documents could not be put on the internet without paying a fee of £48.

I chose not to do that and, instead, just let people know that I had them and emailed the photos to people who were interested.

That is US law. The rules are different in the UK. UK law applies to any photos taken in the UK.

For a photographic postcard, copyright is complicated and depends on when the photo was taken. There is a flowchart on the last page of this document that sets out the rules. Note that a photo can only be classed as of unknown authorship if it is impossible to identify the photographer with reasonable inquiry.

Some organisations make dubious claims that their images are copyright. For example, the Francis Frith Collection claims all their images are copyright. This is unlikely to be true but we won't know for certain unless they take someone to court for copyright infringement.

There is no separate copyright in a simple scan of an image. Some have suggested that there may be separate copyright if the image is enhanced or retouched. This has not been tested in court. However, if the courts are consistent with existing case law, enhancing or retouching an image will not result in the digitised image getting its own copyright as the person enhancing or retouching the image has little or no creative freedom if their object is to accurately reproduce the original.