Okay, I've done some research. We can't give up on this website, there is no other domain like this on the planet, we NEED to save it before it's too late. Although Dylan is Canadian, these laws may be similar in terms of
Copyright and
Fair Use:
According to
Harvard University, four major definititions of Fair Use are as follows:
-The purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
-The nature of the copyrighted work
-The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
-The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
These factors are not exclusive, but are the primary—and in many cases the only—factors courts examine.
Now let's take a look at what Dylan says; He says that this had to have been done for legal reasons and he didn't have any legal consultation. I have seen most of the drawings our incredible illustrators have done, very few were derived works from pre-existing renderings and photographs. As for the designs of the Proposed and U/C buildings, their designs have been made public whether through an official annoucement by the building developer, or a third party site like ArchDaily so the designs would not be considered "confidential"
With that out of the way, let's now get to the meat and potatoes of this dilemma: Fair Use
Once again referring to fair use, our site would most likely fall under the Noncommercial use, since this site doesn't outright ask for money .
Harvard University states that:
"One important consideration is whether the use in question advances a
socially beneficial activity like those listed in the statute: criticism, comment, news reporting,
teaching, scholarship, or
research. Other important considerations are whether the use is commercial or noncommercial and whether the use is “
transformative.”
The bolded words are most important here. The drawings by our illustrators could be classified as a socially beneficial activity, since our website is a compilation of world skyscrapers which also falls into the teaching and research category.
According to the United States Supreme Court,
"A work is transformative if it adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message.”
This can apply to our diagrams considering that they serve to give a visual idea of what some of the tallest buildings look like. They aren't used in the design process of the development and aren't even acknowledged by the architects themselves. Even if that isn't considered, the illustrators modify their drawings so that it's not a building elevation used for the construction process like this:
If you look at this drawing of One World Trade Center by user X(y)L, there are similarities between their drawing and this official elevation:
Although there are similarities between X(y)L's drawing and SOM's Elevation Diagram, X(y)L's drawing is classified as Fair Use because of how different it is compared to the original.
My conclusion:
SkyscraperPage Illustrators are
NOT infringing on copyright, if a building's design was made public by the building's developers, our illustrators can derive works from renderings provided and create drawings that fall under
Fair Use