Unauthorized use of other people’s images or text on your site is theft. There is not really a nice way to say it any differently. In a past life I was a photographer for a number of years so copyright

By Eric Goldman Crumb v. Amazon.com, Inc., No. CV5-2113 (W.D. Wash. complaint filed Dec. 21, 2005). LA Times story on…

Don’t have license to use an image? Don’t use it. Where it came from is irrelevant.

As to massive crackdowns, that’s hard to say. Normally you don’t sue someone with no assets (IE the poor blogger). However, the trend has been to set examples to curb violations and by all accounts, it appears to be working–at least to some degree.

I am not sure how the music industry is a “cartel”, but going after violators of copyright is not a bad thing.

What If Copyright Law Were Strongly Enforced in the Blogosphere? by Daniel J. Solove. [via #37] Bloggers would then need to hire someone to tell the enforcers to go to…

What If Copyright Law Were Strongly Enforced in the Blogosphere? by Daniel J. Solove. [via #37] Bloggers would then need to hire someone to tell them to go to hell….

In the UK we have the Small Claims Court – a very cheap method to get payment. Trace the person (not that hard with a personal blog), issue an invoice to the person. Say for 10x what you would normally charge. That could be $1000. When they don’t pay, go to the Small Claims Court which will undoubtedly find against them. The Court has the power to freeze their bank account if they don’t pay up.

A site that has Google ads is most definitely a commercial site. The Creative Commons licenses are being widely abused. Other sites have no ads but use content under the guise of non-commercial or fair use to build a business which they then sell. I would say that constitutes commercial use also.

Why should a site make money off the back of my hard work and creativity? I have struggled to earn a living. If anyone gets to benefit from my work it should be me.

I think there is going to be a massive crack-down on this in the future. All the signs are there and any site that is built around stolen content is actually built on sand.

Do you realize that some photographers risk their lives in war zones to bring home photographs? All you have to do is watch a movie like “The Killing Fields” to see what Dith Pran went through to bring you these images. Not all assignments are shooting the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated.

I think bloggers should treat all content creators as they themselves would wish to be treated. Do you wish that someone else would quote sparingly and offer a link back? Then offer the same to the mainstream press. The distinction is really disappearing. Some blogs gross more than small newspapers and many newspapers already offer most of the innovations offered by blogs. It’s just a question of scale. We’re all content producers now.

The non-commercial use tends to weigh heavily in favor of “fair use.” And I would think the Chaplin case would have to be reconsidered after the case in which 2 Live Crew was sued for sampling the riff from Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.” The Supreme Court found fair use, even though the sample was arguably the heart of the song and the rightsholder had refused permission to the band.

Jeff’s point about swiping photos is well-taken — posting such photos carries litigation risk. However, I would also suggest that smaller outfits (as opposed to say, Getty) might consider adopting a policy of allowing noncommercial use with a link credit, perhaps with a condition on the size of a reproduction (e.g., thumbnail only). Then it’s more like an unpaid ad for your site than theft. If an unpaid blogger thinks a photo or gallery is cool, there is no better way to convince vistitors to go to a photo site than a sample image — worth a thousand words, so they say. This aspect isn’t legality so much as it would be good business practice.

It seems to me that one excepts enough of the article that one links to to either a) capture the gist of the article and/or b) capture the interest of a reader so that they actually do click the link.

\\Greg

Going back to the point earlier – how do you calculate how “often” one of your images is used whe posted on a blog – each appearence on a page, or each time the image is reproduced (i.e., every time the page is viewed)? Or do you approach licensing from a different angle?

Simple fact is that if one of my photos is adding value to your site or blog, even if it only in aesthetic design qualities, it’s still representatitive of value transfered. I spend my money to make it, you should pay to benefit from using it. I never understand why that concept is so hard for people to grasp across the web.

Of course, creative common licenses and variations like flicker are great options, but for professionals that make their living providing content, people will have to learn that that content is protected. And that the protection has been around for awhile, and is meant to encourage creative works in commerce, and not stifle free speech. You are FREE to use YOUR CONTENT for YOUR SPEECH. If you want to use MY CONTENT for YOUR SPEECH, ask first, and depending on the use, be prepared to compensate me.

Happy Blogging. Happy Holidays.

Gary Crabbe

Owner, Enlightened Images

If large corporations decided to take action on bloggers copyright infringement (which it is, in my humble opinion), they would definitely have a case, the rest would be up to the courts to decide…

The purpose of media is to inform the public in a way that is useful to society. Most businesses can judge their success with the traditional economic view of supply and demand – if the product is worthy than people will buy it and vice-versa – pretty self explanatory. But this doesn’t work with media. They must be judged by the Public Sphere model, a model that looks at what the media is giving to people to benefit society, basically the amount of useful, and I stress useful, information, because for people to work together we must be able to communicate our ideas and thoughts together.

So…we know that our current day media seems to have a hard time following the Public Sphere model. Now, I am new to the ‘blogosphere’, but this place seems to allow for complete freedom of speech and expressing of ideas. But to do so this requires other information and since consumers are forced to pay for news more than say, hmm, a week old this doesn’t really leave the public sphere model fulfilled, namely the part that says all this useful media should be available at a fair rate to all of society.

Now from what I can tell there are a few blogs that seem to be more of a commercial venture, but most seem to be people writing their ideas about… well, just about everything. Since it costs money to have a website, there is a need for some ad revenue. BUT this revenue is not like what a television or radio station gets for ads where they get paid just to let people hear/see it, but this ad revenue usually comes from evidence that people are actually interested in the product/service in the ad. Not to mention that website ad profits are about 1/1000000 of what a single ad on TV costs.

I guess this wasn’t really a quick though but whatever, I don’t think anyone is going to spend the time to read this, but if you do, the point I am trying to get to is that if the court ruled in favor of the corporations in such a case, it would be silencing the publics opinion. All bloggers are doing is taking social means to the internet. I mean, if your friend came over with a newspaper clip (from a newspaper you didn’t purchase) and a few of you discussed it, is that copyright infringement? Since money seems to make the world turn, I would vote that, if presented to the court right, they would side with the corporations.

Well I will shut up now.

I would thus think that a court would look favorably on hot-linking to the article, since a link to the article actually helps the “victim” of copyright infrigement.