[PRCo] Re: Philadelphia You-Tube Video

[Schneider Fred]

There is another issue here ...

One of morals and ethics.   Whether or not it is legal or you get  
away with it, do you really want to violate someone else's artistic  
creation?

Once it is so old that it is clearly in the public domain, i.e.  
postcards from 1910, then I see nothing wrong with copying them  
unless the original firm is still in business and trying to make  
money selling them.

Harpels Studio in Lebanon, which took some wonderful pictures of  
Lebanon Valley Street Railway, Cornwall Railway, Cornwall and  
Lebanon, and so forth in the 1890s and later, was still more than  
willing to sell prints in 1963.   That, to my mind, would be an  
exception.   The family was still running the business.   They're not  
today.

And in the 1990s the firm in Havertown that did all the photography  
for the Budd Company was still very much alive and more than happy to  
sell pictures of RDC cars, the California Zephyr or anything else  
Budd built and they photographed.   I went through their files on  
behalf of Don Duke when he was doing the RDC books.  I don't see the  
firm on the West Chester Pike any longer.

But if you can they are clearly in the public domain and the firm is  
out of business.   Have at it.  There are a lot of people out there  
who try to scare you off by saying they will prosecute to the fullest  
extent of the law if you steal from them ... and they really own  
nothing.   If they bought a negative from someone who took it in 1930  
and that man sold and traded prints all over the country, sorry, but  
that is in the public domain.   There is nothing he can do to claim  
rights.  He merely owns a negative.

But again ... morals, ethics, and do you want people stamping on you  
in the same way you want to walk on them????

On Dec 27, 2008, at 9:04 AM, BobDietrich wrote:

> It's me again trying to stir up a little controversy.  If this has  
> been
> discussed lately then just ignore me.
>
>   This video on U-tube looked familiar to me but I don't remember from
> where, it seems I saw it from a tape.  Than at the end credits went  
> to Rob
> Moorse (or some such name).  So how do we know a retired truck  
> driver from
> Belgium (Daddycool9) has permission to let the world view it for  
> free?  I
> was never aware of, or concerned with, copyrighting until I got on  
> this
> list.  You all seem very protective of photographs being reproduced  
> without
> permission, isn't this the same thing?
>
> Are we promoting unauthorized u-tube videos here?
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of
> Schneider Fred
> Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 8:30 PM
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Subject: [PRCo] Philadelphia You-Tube Video
>
>
> Many of you probably have seen this before.   If not enjoy. All the
> scenes were taken in West Philadelphia in 1951.
>
> The city had 55% more people living within its borders than there are
> there today and a lot more justification for rail transit as a
> result.  (The inverse number?   A loss of 35%.)   A few years after
> these films were taken, a massive conversion program brought 1,000
> new buses to the city.   What the railfans neglect to tell you was
> that in the process, over 600 transit vehicles simply disappeared
> from the streets of Philadelphia within three years because were no
> loner needed ... people moved to the suburbs; those who remained
> preferred to use automobiles instead of trolleys.   Yes guys, at the
> end of the conversion 1000 buses had replaced 1600 buses and
> streetcars because of declining demand.
>
> We can argue that rail will sustain higher patronage levels but we
> can't argue that rail today would be valid on all the routes that PTC
> had in 1950 because the people just don't live there anymore and the
> jobs are not there either.
>
> But you'll find these interesting.  All were taken within roughly one
> mile of Pennsylvania Railroad's 30th Street Station.   The pictures
> of the street cars and Market Street subway-elevated trains running
> side-by-side are at the 24th and Market Streets portal of the
> subway.   Both came to surface there and crossed the Schuylkill River
> on a bridge.   The film ends with the trolleys coming inbound out
> from under the elevated in front of 30th Street Station and heading
> toward the portal.  In between there are a lot of surface streetcar
> scenes, mostly in the area around the University of Pennsylvania.
> Those lines are, for the most part, buried in the subway extension
> that occurred in the fall of 1955.  (The Market Street subway-
> elevated was extended from 24th to 46th St.), the trolley subway was
> extended over to branches to 36th St.)
>
> Do you not find amazing how fast PTC motormen ran their charges?
> Those were 25 mph cars riding on maximum traction (maximum
> derailment) trucks and they were running them for the most part, flat
> out.    I thought the films might have been speeded up from 16 to 24
> frames per second but the pedestrians look to moving at comfortable
> paces.
>
> Enjoy
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06jIGTbrIUk&feature=related
>
>
>