Quite a conundrum- Photos of a watch I own, taken by others- mine or not?.

“Hidden rules”
Lol
You’re not doing yourself any favors.

@Mr.Bliss Since it’s now crystal clear that your sales post is in violation of forum rules, why is it still there?

Remove it, take some photos (this time turn on some lights) and repost it. This isn’t exactly an ambiguous situation.

Maybe there should be a 200 post requirement AND you have to pass a quiz.

I think it is time to lock this thread. Hopefully the OP learned a few things, but there is no need for piling on and being small spirited now. 👍

Thank you! I was meandering through this thread and was hoping someone would break down the simple black and white bits of this: photos of anything remain the property of the original photographer, at least stateside.

I worked in copyright approval for an art website for several years - as far as images go, if you didn't create (take) it, and you are using it without significant modification (here we get into comedic use, obfuscation of visible marks like a 'Coca-Cola' logo, etc) - essentially you are if even in a relatively harmless way infringing on someone else's rights to that 'creative work'. In some cases although not all, mentioning the image is not your property or the name of the right's holder is enough...but almost never in the case of any sort of 'profit' being made - i.e. you might lose money on a watch you bought, but if you're using someone else's photos to sell it, they can still demand and be well within their rights to have it taken down.

Whether the notification of "TAKE IT DOWN!" comes via a flowery message from the rights holder themselves or through their attorney in a "You're about to get your butt sued off..." sort of way, the simplest answer is; you probably have no leg to stand on legally or morally, and it's going to need to get taken down toot suite...or someone else will almost inevitably do it for you.

P.S. As someone who used to have the job of being the guy who randomly removed 'infringing' works - it's not a moderator's fault; it's their job whether they are getting paid or volunteering. It's the way the rules work, and quite frankly while it may seem easy to send a note saying why, it usually isn't.

I haven’t read the whole thread so forgive me if this point has been made.

What interests me here is the way the dispute so quickly escalated.

The FS went up with pictures taken by someone else. The OP hadn’t read the rules. This set the ensuing tragedy in motion, known in drama as “the inciting moment”.

The sale was deleted because the rules were broken, but the mods didn’t send a message explaining which rule had been violated. Doing so might have nipped the thing in the bud. Then again, it’s not realistic for us the expect the mods to nanny members who ought to know the rules, and besides, when the sale was removed, the OP could have contacted the mods to ask what had happened.

But prior to that an even better opportunity was missed. Why didn’t the owner of the pictures just PM the seller asking him not to use pictures that the seller did not have the right to do? Why burden the mods with the task when they do enough for us anyway for little or no recompense when this could have been dealt with member to member?

(It’s possible that the owner of the pictures didn’t know what has happened before the mods took the sale down, but if that’s the case I find it strange that he suddenly got involved in an aggressive way second time round. Even if he had reported it first time to the mods, he could have gone back to them when the ad went up again.)

So, with the sale deleted, the OP relisted, thinking some mistake had taken place because he was ignorant of the rules. Nobody had reached out to him to tell him what was going on, nevertheless, this was a provocative move because it rests upon the notion that the member, who after all is new and therefore inexperienced here, is right, and the mods have got it wrong. At this point the seller should have asked for guidance, or checked the rules instead of, rather arrogantly, I suggest, going ahead and re-listing. Another opportunity missed.

Now with the listing up for a second time the owner of the pictures contacted the OP and “demanded” he take the pictures down. Not having seen the message, I don’t know how angry the “demand” was, so again, I can only go by the OPs perception of it. I can however understand how the owner of the pics would be miffed, if they had reported the rule-transgressing sale to the mods, and then the seller basically ignored the mods by re-listing. But let’s also not forget that the demand message will have come out of the blue to a person who still hadn’t been told what they’d done wrong, so would have been something of a surprise.

And so this was another missed opportunity for a peaceful solution. The owner of the pics could have sent a polite PM asking him to take the pictures down and explaining why. But he evidently didn’t.

The OP then starts a new thread asking the court of public opinion to adjudicate, thus escalating the thing further.and now we’re several pages into a conversation that needn’t have started if the initial communication had been a little more thoughtful and measured.

A plague on everyone’s house.

It's a serious misconception to think that images are not subject to copyright just because they were posted on a forum.
Posting them again without permission or attribution could get you in court and will certainly piss off the owner. Especially when part of your defense is how hard it is to take good photos.