Is Putting Every Frame Of A Movie Into A Photo Copyright Infringement? Should It Be?

from the questions,-questions,-questions dept

There's been a bit of buzz going around the blog/social media world over someone who made a photograph that shows a snapshot from every second of the movie The Big Lebowski (most of the posts about it erroneously claim that it's every frame of the movie, but a quick scan through the images shows that it's more like one frame every second -- i.e., approximately 1 frame out of every 30). What's interesting to me, though, is that the photo is listed under a Creative Commons license -- and I'm wondering if Universal Studios (NBC Universal) knows about this, and if it would freak out. It's difficult to see how this photo could possibly hurt the commercial viability of The Big Lebowski. It's quite clear that, if anything, it's a celebration of the movie.

And that's one of the key points of conflict that people run into with copyright these days. So many efforts by fans to celebrate, promote or otherwise share some aspect of a movie is often viewed as copyright infringement by the copyright holders. Hopefully, Universal chooses to overlook this creative endeavor -- or, even better, help promote it. But, given the way NBC Universal has reacted in the past, somehow that seems unlikely.

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