ABSTRACT Striking the proper balance between private intellectual property interests and the public interest is especially important in the context of news, given its fundamental role in democracy. This article examines the scope of copyright protection for photojournalism, as well as the First Amendment safeguards that may limit that protection. It focuses on current understandings of the fair use doctrine and the idea/expression dichotomy (and idea/expression merger.) Next it focuses on the federal district court ruling in the Zapruder film case, which was based on one of the fair use doctrine’s key questions, but which also considered and rejected an idea/expression merger defense. An analysis of that case, and also a pair of key law review articles on copyright and images, leads to a proposal for a new “public-interest merger” doctrine for balancing public and rights holders’ interests in cases involving news images. That proposal argues for focus on whether the news images are exclusive (or at least nearly so), and evidentiary.

中文翻译：

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版权事实？新闻图片的所有权

摘要在新闻领域，鉴于其在民主中的基本作用，在私人知识产权和公共利益之间寻求适当的平衡尤为重要。本文研究了新闻摄影的版权保护范围，以及可能限制该保护的第一修正案保障措施。它着重于对合理使用原则和观念/表达二分法（以及观念/表达合并）的当前理解。接下来，它着重探讨扎普鲁德电影案中的联邦地方法院裁决，该裁决基于合理使用原则的关键之一。问题，但也考虑并拒绝了想法/表达合并辩护。对该案的分析，以及一对主要法律对版权和图像的评论文章，导致提出一项新的“公共利益合并”学说，以在涉及新闻图片的案件中平衡公众和权利持有者的利益。该提议主张将重点放在新闻图像是否具有排他性（或至少几乎如此）和证据上。