AboutJohn Wilson Expertise Over 27 years specializing exclusively in professional wedding photography. I can answer most questions relating directly to wedding photography concerning the business, film, digital, traditional & digital labs, marketing, effects, pricing & packaging, shooting outdoors and in-studio with multiple flash, color management and creating magazine style wedding albums. I can't answer questions regarding other fields of photography.
Experience Over 27 years experience photographing weddings professionally. Past 4 years shooting digital exclusively.
Organizations Better Business Bureau.
Education/Credentials Going to photography seminars and reading all the wedding photography books I can find then applying the techniques and new styles I've learned with each wedding. You always need to grow and learn to keep up in this field. With each new wedding you photograph, you must challenge yourself to do better work than your previous wedding. You must always have the goal of making the wedding photographs for a bride & groom be the best photographs they have seen of any wedding.
Question Our high school has purchased the rights to do You're A Good Man Charlie Brown through Tams Witmark. We are planning on creating advertising material to promote the play including table tents, posters, window painting, and shirts. We also want to put the character's images in the program so the kids seeing the show can relate. Do we need any additional permission from Tams or United Feature Syndicate Inc? We do plan to put both Tams and UFS acknowledgements in the program.
Answer Hi Francine,
Thank you for your questions concerning "purchased rights".
On the Tams Witmark home page at http://www.tamswitmark.com/ they state that they do NOT license parts of shows or individual songs from shows. You mentioned that the high school purchased the rights to do You're A Good Man Charlie Brown. I don't know if you are talking about "full" rights or more limited rights. Not that this really matters. I just want to point out that "rights" are not always full rights and the owner may or may not offer to sell various kinds of limited rights. Since the high school purchased "the rights", you should simply check the documents which should detail what you may and may not do.
I can tell you this for certain. Simply providing an acknowledgement does not provide you a protective shield IF you violated a copyright owners copyright. You must get any copyright release or purchase rights from the owner - or you are liable for copyright infringement.
I don't know if Tams has permission from United Feature Syndicate Inc to use anything from the Charlie Brown franchise. Since you are concerned about this and since you know who they are, I would recommend contacting United Feature Syndicate Inc to check.
Here is a copyright notice by United Feature Syndicate Inc:
PEANUTS United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
No part of the PEANUTS materials may be copied, reproduced, used or performed in any form (graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems) for any purpose without the express written permission of United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
That copyright notice seems to indicate you will need the expressed written permission directly from UFS.
