Digital Home Thoughts: Thomas Hawk: Should Fair Use Apply to Your Family Portraits?

"So I explain to the photographer about how I consume photography these days, on how it is of much more value to me to see my work as part of my Media Center PC than on a wall on a $1,000 print and ask if there is a way instead of buying prints, that I can just purchase the images digitally. I'd even happily pay the $2,000 for digital versions of my 5x7s rather than get prints which I don't really want to hang in my home anyways. And here she tells me no... So here's the question. Should or does a fair use right apply to photography? If I were to say buy a CD and then copy it over onto my laptop and listen to it in a form not originally intended, this would be fair use, correct? Heck, I could even make a mix CD of songs coming from my mp3s and give it to my brother, right? This sort of personal fair use would seem permissible. But would it actually be illegal for me to scan these family photographs for display in my home only for my own personal and non commercial use and enjoyment?"

This anecdote by Thomas Hawk is an interesting read. Frankly, I agree with Thomas in that one should have the right to view photographs in any format they want once they have the picture. In fact, one point that he forgets to make, in order to solidify his point of view even more, is that if he had a digital copy of the image, would it be illegal to print out the images? Generally this article brings up a good question about fair use on different mediums of different media.