Your own argument

I feel that the first decision that the court had made was not justified. There was an agreement between the Society of National Geographic and Mr. Greenberg. The agreement was honored and the society had returned all images and copyright back to the author. Later on the Society had again used the images that had belonged to Greenberg on a product that was being published for an anniversary of national Geographic that celebrated the 108 years of establishment. They felt that they had all rights of the images that were being used. They felt this way, due to thinking that they were merely using the images as a revision of a prior collective work. The 11th circuit court found all reason to the Society of National Geographic.
Greenberg had applied for an appeal. They felt that the National Geographic had no rights to use those images without asking.

The copyright infringement law states that: “Contribution to collective works. Copyright in each separate contribution to a collective work is distinct from copyright in the collective work as a whole, and vests initially in the author of the contribution. In the absence of an express transfer of the copyright or of any rights under it, the owner of copyright in the collective work is presumed to have acquired only the privilege of reproducing and distributing the contribution as part of that particular collective work, any revisions of that collective work, and any later collective work in the same series.”

http://www.internetlibrary.com/cases/lib_case504.cfm

With this said. I feel that the 11th circuit courts had decided unfairly. The big item to all the decision is that the society and Greenberg had decided on a contract to finalize all rights of his images after 60 days of publication. I feel that this contract that the Society and Greenberg was ignored to all limits. I also feel that the courts favored to the society due to the lack of rules to technology.
I felt that this case was at every right to be taken to the Supreme Court. There was another case that was similar to Greenberg. New York Times Co. v. Tasini. They ruled favored to Tasini.

“Respondent freelance authors (Authors) wrote articles (Articles) for newspapers and a magazine published by petitioners New York Times Company (Times), Newsday, Inc. (Newsday), and Time, Inc. (Time). The Times, Newsday, and Time (Print Publishers) engaged the Authors as independent contractors under contracts that in no instance secured an Author's consent to placement of an Article in an electronic database.”

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=00-201
This case was similar to Greenberg, the Supreme Court used the ruling from the Tasini case to over rule the courts decision to the Jerry Greenberg v. National Geographic Society.