Q about our CD cover image.

[kenm]

Hi,

My band has our CD recorded and mastered and are putting together the artwork for the cover. We want to use a NASA space photo, but some of the guys in the band are worried about copyright infringement. I think that since the pictures are available in a high quality format, downloadable from the NASA site, they are fair game. It also seems like since our tax dollars pay for those photos they should be in the public domain. Does anyone know about this?

Thanks,
Ken

[6am eternal]

No they are not public domain, but you should email NASA and ask them if it's ok for you to use them. They'll probably let you use them for free as long as you mention some kind of thank you to them in your liner notes. A friend of mine did that to use a NASA sound sample in one of his songs, and it worked.

Avoid problems and just send them a quick letter or email!

[drummerjoe]

Yeah I would just shoot them an email and save it, so if anything comes of it later then you can show them you got permission. They might have contracted a professional photographer to take that picture, you never know.

[kenm]

Thanks for the advise.

Now for the sarcastic remark:
A photographer? In space? Usually they only let astronauts up there.

Ken

[SomeGuyNamedRob]

Originally posted by kenm
Hi,

My band has our CD recorded and mastered and are putting together the artwork for the cover. We want to use a NASA space photo, but some of the guys in the band are worried about copyright infringement. I think that since the pictures are available in a high quality format, downloadable from the NASA site, they are fair game. It also seems like since our tax dollars pay for those photos they should be in the public domain. Does anyone know about this?

Thanks,
Ken

My wife used to work in the field of photo research. You would have to negotiate a contract - either yourself or through a photo stock house - with whomever owns the rights to the photo that would specify how the image was to be used, including size, color vs. greyscale, exact number of copies of your CD that will be printed, number of times the photo is used (if you use the same photo twice in your CD art, you have to pay twice), etc.

You could try getting away with not doing that, but you're opening yourself up to a lawsuit

You'd be better off having a decent sketch artist draw one for you, and pay him/her for the image so you own it outright.

[SomeGuyNamedRob]

Originally posted by drummerjoe
Yeah I would just shoot them an email and save it, so if anything comes of it later then you can show them you got permission. They might have contracted a professional photographer to take that picture, you never know.

Most stock photography is owned by large companies such as Getty Images or Corbis. The photographers are under contract to these comnies, so very few of the photographers actually own their own images.