Par for the course
It's not the first time I've seen architects to do unsporting things with golf balls.
An upgrade to a major US signals intelligence centre in Northamptonshire, UK, has been struck by controversy – after architects acting on behalf of the US Air Force and Blighty's Ministry of Defence nicked a photo of it from a website devoted to uncovering secret military bases in Britain. Alan Turnbull, who runs the excellent …
A secret base design using images marked secret base.
I imagine the site itself is not really that secret albeit the activities may be. A proper architect would use their own drone or similar. Given that the NSA HQ pics used are normally 20-30 years old its hardly a guarantee of accuracy for actually planning to dig holes.
AC, just 'cos a photo is on the Internet does not make it automatically in the public domain! I post my photos on the Internet but they are still protected and you still need to ask my permission to use them, unless by using a particular website I relinquish that right. There are lot of images on WikiCommons and they're free to use but they're still copyrighted to the original photographer, they simply let you use them ideally with credit back.
@FuzzyWuzzys:"AC, just 'cos a photo is on the Internet does not make it automatically in the public domain! "
Totally agree with ya. BTW, don't ever look at @for_exposure_txt on twitter or you'll blow a gasket.
I worked my way through the poorly expressed, spelled and 'grammared' posts to find this gem:
"I think there is a difference between compensating artists for their work, which is obviously a good thing, and allowing them to keep our culture hostage. At a certain point art becomes bigger than the artist."
Oh wow!
"I think there is a difference between compensating artists for their work, which is obviously a good thing, and allowing them to keep our culture hostage. At a certain point art becomes bigger than the artist."
Isn't that the point of copyright? (Before it got abused by people with money and lawyers...) Allow people to correctly profit from their work but not devalue culture overall.
Amen brother.
"did the photographer have permission to photograph what is possibly a prescribed place under the official secrets act?"
Where and what is a "proscribed place" (or more accurately "prohibited") is almost impossible for the "man on the Clapham omnibus" to now work out if even the Ministry of Justice don't have a clue:
http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/foia/2008/09/current-prohibited-places-under-the-official-secrets-act-1911.html
That part of the country is littered with unmarked places that nobody talks about much - I've known a few people who worked in them and they were completely unable to say what they did and had to report everything that they did that might become known or detected by their superiors. Mostly I kept my mouth shut around them too - this was a long time ago, how long? Weed was 16 quid an ounce then.
In the case of an RAF base:
"any work of defence, arsenal, naval or air force establishment or station, factory, dockyard, mine, minefield, camp, ship, or aircraft belonging to or occupied by or on behalf of His Majesty, or any telegraph, telephone, wireless or signal station, or office so belonging or occupied"
Seems fairly obvious, even to a girl from Clapham.
Or, more practically, there tends to be a sign outside.
"any work of defence, arsenal, naval or air force establishment or station, factory, dockyard, mine, minefield, camp, ship, or aircraft belonging to or occupied by or on behalf of His Majesty, or any telegraph, telephone, wireless or signal station, or office so belonging or occupied"
On the other hand, on a visit to an RAF base to do some work recently, I got there a little early so looked for somewhere to eat my sandwiches before going in. I parked in the specially created "viewing area" under the flight line just off the main public road which passes by.
I'm not sure if it was this one, or possibly another "RAF" base elsewhere, but I was chatting to some ex-GCHQ staff, who found it hilarious that at one base the yanks had had enormous trouble with rabbits eating through their cables. "British bunnies munching American cables" was their reaction :)
Being a provincial and not knowing Latin. I googled ipsos custodietting and got a single result pointing to this article. I'll be off. Both for not recognising ipsos custodiet and also for bothering to type this... There's probably grammatical errors to be ashamed about also.
Bye.
There was a 'secret' military listening post just out of town. It had the best conker trees along the outside of its perimeter. We used to sneak up and hide behind the trees when ever there came traffic to and from the base. The innocence of this, thinking no one had spotted us, brigs a smile to my face as I type.
Also, more than once I was, asked directions to the secret air base. We gave them naturally.
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In the early nineties I used to keep my horse next door to some Raytheon offices and labs, one day I saw a bunch of guys panting hardware in the ground along the fence line. I walked over to be most and asked what the gadgets were, One of the security guys told me they were hypersensitive geophones that could pick up anyone crossing the fence line or walking close to it.
Needless to say after that we regularly galloped up and down the fence line to keep them amused.
Well since fair use is an American doctrine, and el Reg is nominally a UK-based site, that should be 'fair dealing'. Except that there is no fair dealing exception which would permit this sort of use. The copying of photographs for the purpose of reporting current events is strictly prohibited by section 30(2) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/30]
I'm afraid you really don't understand how copyright liability works, do you? The putative owner of the copyright (the secretbases site) is based in the UK and so is the corporate base of the Register. Even if the piece had been written by one the Register's US based journalists, the fact that they have a UK trading presence still means the UK is the jurisdiction where the 'harm' occurs. Ergo, any action for infringement would need to be carried on in the UK courts and under UK law. That is not to suggest that the Register has in fact done anything wrong. They claim to have permission to use the image and if true, then there is no problem.
...Mark Thomas flew a hot air balloon over Menwith Hill to piss off the Yanks.