"Posting Images... Etiquette and Copyright" Topic

So let's say you see something at a wargamer's blog that you like, so you post a link on the TMP forum and make a recommendation that people should go look.

That's fair, it's on the internet, it's public.

But what if you see a picture on that blog that you like? If you post a link to the picture – thus making the picture visible on the forum – are you breaking copyright laws? do you need permission first?

Would like your input, please.

I think most people would like any link to their website, however that's not the case. If the owner of a website complains, his or her wishes should be the final word.

Ah, free legal advice on TMP. Worth every penny.
We used to have not one but TWO "IP" lawyers as frequent contributors. Now, neither one is here any more.

I have over 10,000 photos on my blog, Bunker Talk. If someone wants to post a couple of them on line in order to direct people to my site, I am okay with that.

As for copyright law, I have no idea.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
bunkermeister.blogspot.com

If the owner did't advice about it… it's public domain.

Amicalement
Armand

But what if you see a picture on that blog that you like? If you post a link to the picture – thus making the picture visible on the forum – are you breaking copyright laws? do you need permission first?

No, you are not breaking copyright law and no you do not need permission.

Careful MajorB (and Tango), that's incorrect as far as UK (and most EU) copyright law is concerned.

Using someone else's photos (eg via an embedded image in a forum thread) is an infringement of the photo owner's IP rights. If its just a link to something elsewhere it's laregely fine* but once you start using and republishing the images within posts then its a different matter. (*leaving issues around hotlinking and bandwith aside)

Now in the real (wargaming) world most people wont care as long as they are properly linked and credited, but if for any reason the owner objected then the images would have to be removed.

Now I wont claim to be an 'IP lawyer', but I am a commercial lawyer by day and deal with IP ownership issues all of the time. There are three very simple rules to IP:

1) You either own the IP; *OR*
2) You have a licence (ie permission) to use the IP; *OR*
3) You are infringing the IP.

Some places like the US have some implied permissions (eg limited fair use rules) that get you over the line for #2 but that isn't the case in the UK and many other places.

Just because something is made available on the internet by the IP owner, it doesn't mean that those images are fair game for everybody else to use unless the IP owner has very clearly said that people can use them without limitation.

(To illustrate it with a silly example, if you left your car unlocked on a public street, you wouldn't expect someone else to come along and just borrow it)

Careful MajorB (and Tango), that's incorrect as far as UK (and most EU) copyright law is concerned.

Using someone else's photos (eg via an embedded image in a forum thread) is an infringement of the photo owner's IP rights.

You need to be careful too. The original proposition put forward by Bill in his OP was:
"If you post a link to the picture – thus making the picture visible on the forum"

This means that the only thing that is stored in TMP is a link to the picture, not the picture itself. Indeed TMP has no method for storing pictures anyway.

When the page is displayed in the browser, the picture is fetched from the address in the link and displayed. The picture is therefore NOT embedded in TMP.

"The most significant legal fact about inline linking, relative to copyright law considerations, is that the inline linker does not place a copy of the image file on its own Internet server. Rather, the inline linker places a pointer on its Internet server that points to the server on which the proprietor of the image has placed the image file. This pointer causes a user's browser to jump to the proprietor's server and fetch the image file to the user's computer. US courts have considered this a decisive fact in copyright analysis. Thus, in Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc.,[6] the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit explained why inline linking did not violate US copyright law:"
link

This is stuff of legal battles search engines and content providers are involved in all the time.

Wikipedia link: link

In the small niche hobby world of wargaming this probably is not a real issue.

If the owner did't advice about it… it's public domain.

Please tell me you are being facetious.

Facetious?

I know there may be a trace of Germanic-Aryan-Viking blood in Tango's blood somewhere, but calling him a FACETIOUS is rather beyond the pale, eh wot?

Unless he's of Italian descent, then just add a vowel add the end!

MajorB, I'm commenting from a UK perspective. Whilst interesting, you've referred to an American case relating to US copyright law arising from a slightly different set of facts to what Bill is talking about.

It's a developing area of law over here, and there are some good EU level judgments (Svensson, Bestwater)that would indicate that in certain circumstances inline/deep linking etc of publically available material is fine, but those same cases are also clear that in other circumstances it is not fine. It all depends on the particular facts of the case and source of the material. It's simply in correct to say that it is always permissible to do it.

If all Bill wants is a rule of thumb, then a good one to follow (insofar as UK and I suggest EU protected material goes) is to assume that if the rights holder complains, he ought to be removing the content.

Now I'm happy to discuss over a beer whether he is actually legally obliged to remove the content (as there are some potentially interesting nuances around whether an image is published to a different public audience, which is infringement, and when its published to the same public audience, which might not be infringement) but given Bill's wider question also addresses etiquette, I'd suggest that its only good manners to remove the content if the rights holder doesn't want it being displayed.

MajorB, I'm commenting from a UK perspective. Whilst interesting, you've referred to an American case relating to US copyright law arising from a slightly different set of facts to what Bill is talking about.

Bill is a US citizen and TMP is hosted in America, therefore US law applies I think?

If all Bill wants is a rule of thumb, then a good one to follow (insofar as UK and I suggest EU protected material goes) is to assume that if the rights holder complains, he ought to be removing the content.

I would not deny the copyright holder the opportunity to request the removal. However, as I understand it, under US law there has been no copyright infringement by the inclusion of a link on TMP.

there are some potentially interesting nuances around whether an image is published to a different public audience, which is infringement, and when its published to the same public audience, which might not be infringement

One would imagine that the potential audence is the same for a wargaming blog as for TMP.

A link to it making it appear on your blog? I'm not sure. If you copy it and host the image on your website it is copyright infringement though. Things being on the Internet make them no more in the public domain than things being in library's does. I have had to resort to legal threats to have images I took for work to be taken down from websites before.
Will you get caught? Probably not. Will you actually get sued? Almost certainly not. The worst that will happen is you website provider will be forced to remove the images after the copyright owner files a DCMA complaint.
Images are copywriter the moment they are created, regardless of warnings, filing with the library of congress or where they are posted online or physically in the real world.

For reference, here's the appropriate Wikipedia link on the subject. Given how important links and quotes are to Wikipedia, I think many of the usual caveats can be ignored:

link

MajorB:

"Bill is a US citizen and TMP is hosted in America, therefore US law applies I think?"

It depends where the content originated. So (generalising a lot here) US origin content will be governed by US law, English origin content by English & some EU law, Russian origin content governed by Russian law etc. Now his location is highly relevant when it comes to whether or not it's ever worth trying to take him to court, or whether he cares one iota*… But in principle someone with more money than sense could try to enforce their rights in the US via the Berne convention or get a local court judgment and then ask a US court to enforce that judgment in the US (I wouldn't fancy their chances, but…).

*Now it's a perfectly pragmatic view to just say ‘sod it, I'm US based, I don't care what applies elsewhere as I'm never going to need to worry about it' and there's nothing really wrong with that. On a risk based assessment it's the logical conclusion. Particularly when you look at what the site is that and these are images of toy soldiers! But its an international facing website, so Bill might want to play fair by everyone wherever they are based. Bill's site, Bill's judgment on that one.

"However, as I understand it, under US law there has been no copyright infringement by the inclusion of a link on TMP."

Provided the fair use/public benefit exemption applies etc. It ‘might' be different if the website that the images are on is itself infringing someone's IP and that infringement is brought to Bill's attention but he doesn't do anything about it? Google gets away with it because its a search engine that can't easily police its own search results. But here? Shrug, I'm not a US attorney so I don't know.

"One would imagine that the potential audence is the same for a wargaming blog as for TMP."

If the blog is publically available, I suspect you're right. But examples that may muddy the waters could include: (i) If the images come from a French blog written in French so clearly something that has a French-speaking audience. Is that the same ‘public' as the audience of TMP? (ii) I have blog pages that a few people know about for the purposes of sharing ideas but which I don't publicise at all. If images on those get circulated more widely, are my colleagues the same ‘public' as punters on TMP? (iii) Moving away from blogs, what about images linked from a website only viewed by registered users or from behind a paywall? I suspect you're on thinner ice with the last ones especially.

As you might have picked up, there is no 'one size fits all answer'. And this is assuming we're talking about 'Hey, look at this great blog!' type posts. Very different issues at play if it's Company X using Company Y's images, or someone is passing images off as their own, etc etc.

Now the legal position is one thing, reality is very different and in practical terms no-one is ever ever going to sue TMP for IP infringement from having images linked, even in the US. So in this instance its an interesting academic discussion but compliance with the various relevant laws is in reality going to be voluntary. But Bill asked for input so hopefully this all gives a bit of an idea of some of the complexities.

Have good weekends all!

Moving away from blogs, what about images linked from a website only viewed by registered users or from behind a paywall? I suspect you're on thinner ice with the last ones especially.

If the linked images are only viewable by registered users or are behind a paywall then the links won't work.

Depends where the content is actually hosted mate – often you have paywalls in place to get access into a particular set of pages but the content itself could be hosted elsewhere in a non-protected environment. There are plenty of cases concerning people linking up to online streams of sporting events where the links are accessed from behind paywals but the streams themselves sit elsewhere (and so can be linked to once you have the URL etc).

To bring us back to something more relevant and less hypothetical, what if someone posts some images from their private photobucket in a thread in one of the TMP Lounge boards that are only viewable to supporting members, which someone else then links to in a general TMP thread? Is the TMP Lounge public domain enough for it to be ok to splash it across the wider TMP site? You can argue that both ways.

The TL:DR answer to the OP is to forget the legalities and just go by what is good etiquette and common sense. Saves tedious legal discussions on a Friday :)

In practice, if no money is made or diverted, a simple apology and retraction will avoid any further legal nastiness.

what Kyote just said. If people took anything from my website/blog and re-used it without permission I'd request it taken down. Also regards just re-posting the url or a link, some places have limited bandwidth on hosting (odd I know) but some people may not want too much traffic to their site. As a rule of thumb, rather than just do what you want or share stuff willy-nilly, as the people if they mind first – get permission.

Depends where the content is actually hosted mate – often you have paywalls in place to get access into a particular set of pages but the content itself could be hosted elsewhere in a non-protected environment. There are plenty of cases concerning people linking up to online streams of sporting events where the links are accessed from behind paywals but the streams themselves sit elsewhere (and so can be linked to once you have the URL etc).

So if the images are hosted elsewhere other than ACTUALLY behind the paywall, the paywall is effectively irrelevant.

It's too bad you didn't see the example, I did. The picture was displayed on TMP. The blogger was from the U.K. Evidently, this was not the first time that this had happened and the blogger took exception to it.

Reposts are ok, as long as they don't openly claim that the photo, diagram, image, graphics, text, etc., was theirs.

And they're even better when you include a link to the source you got it from.

Dan

Technically yes you are probably violating one or another copyright law. But usually it is so small potatoes to these companies, it isn't worth the trouble to go to court.

The Fair Use Clause is your friend. Don't use the picture in a way that discredits it's maker. Don't Photo-Shop it or distort it. You should be fine. You need to show credit. Credit who owns the image and if known, the photographer.

Now try using the pictures or music on a for-profit website then you may have problems. The two companies you need to avoid having trouble with are Paramount and Disney. Also keep in mind that unclassified government photos can be use as often and wherever you want.

Also keep in mind that unclassified government photos can be use as often and wherever you want.

Sometimes, sometimes not. NASA does a good job of indicating which of the photos they host can be re-used. It's most of them, but there are exceptions — primarily images created by one of their partners.

(To illustrate it with a silly example, if you left your car unlocked on a public street, you wouldn't expect someone else to come along and just borrow it)

Actually I do, which is why I lock my car.

The Fair Use Clause is your friend."

Only if your purpose is criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, whether or not you are doing it for profit. Citing the owner does not make it fair use either.

Happily this is all pretty established by now. UNH has a review article at

link

You can also look up the Fair Use laws, which are pretty straight forward.

I would note that none of these concepts are intuitive based on their names. But- they are all well defined and easy to read about.

B.

IP law is an evil and vexatious burden designed to limit, control and commercialize what has been traditionally a common and free activity – communication. It is an attempt to enclose commonly held notions and ideas for ownership. No one can own an idea because all ideas are built upon other ideas. A photo is a snap shot of a part of our commonly shared universe and can be no more owned than a fond memory. This should be common property, not private poperty. Come the revolution the IP lawyers will be the first lined up against the wall! Mike Bravo Miniatures, you're safe because you have great miniatures but the rest of the legal profession (Geoff excluded too) better start looking over their shoulders!
Long live the FREE mind!
Rod Robertson, Rebel of the Synaptic Left. (Not cleft, left!)

Long live the FREE mind!

Please tell us that this post was an over-the-top parody!

"In practice, if no money is made or diverted, a simple apology and retraction will usually avoid any further legal nastiness

There are those who will pursue on a point of principle, even where it may not be cost effective… Getty Images are kinda noted for it.

That's fair, it's on the internet, it's public

Yeah, that's not the case. Actually it's a very dangerous position to assume, and some quite prominent companies have paid a fairly hefty price for assuming just that.

Try this US case, based around unauthorised use of a photo on a blog, that cost them $8 USDk: link

Some points they highlighted:

Current Fair Use image copyright laws say that you're financially liable for posting copyrighted images, even if:

You did it by accident
You immediately take down the picture after receiving a DMCA takedown notice
The picture is resized
If the picture is licensed to your web developer (Getty Images requires that you get your own license, thankyouverymuch)
You link back to the photo source and cite the photographer's name
Your site isn't commercial and you make no money from your blog
You have a disclaimer on the site
The pic is embedded instead of saved on your server
You found it on the Internet (that's not an excuse!)

Even the church isn't safe: link

"one church in Lichfield, Staffordshire, faced a different fundraising problem: to pay a £6,000.00 GBP bill demanded for photographs used on its website. The case came to the attention of Gavin Drake, the communications director for the diocese's 600 churches. In creating the church's website, a volunteer had included a couple of images sourced from Getty, a large picture agency, without paying for them. A couple of months later, Getty sent the church a demand for £6,000.00 GBP"

Granted that was use of an image from an image bank, but it is also acknowledged that there are some bloggers freely using these images without payment or acknowledgement, which people then assume are free… there are cases of the end user unwittingly assuming they are free, then getting the bill.

Never assume… YouTube link

…the rest of the legal profession (Geoff excluded too) better start looking over their shoulders…

I had to read that twice… thank you. :-)

Perhaps good manners (i.e. asking before using) is the wisest decision.

IP law is an evil and vexatious burden designed to limit, control and commercialize what has been traditionally a common and free activity

IP law has been around for a couple of centuries. Not really an Internet or even 20th Century thing as many people think…

link

… then again, lots of people think LOLcats started with the Internet, too.

Perhaps good manners (i.e. asking before using) is the wisest decision.

Common courtesy isn't common.

I have a few commercial sources (minis I photograph, illustration tools and their content, etc.) that I use frequently for illustrations in my rules. While all have said, "Go ahead. No acknowledgement or royalties necessary." I still go back once a year and give them a heads up I am still doing it (hopefully this isn't annoying), and provide a credit and link back to them in the finished product.

That said, I probably dork this up on occasion. That's one of the benefits of having a couple of sets of eyes on a thing. "Dude, don't you usually link to ..?"

If I had someone say no or counter with a proposal that I couldn't support, I'd just politely reply and move on to something else. No big.

I think people not liking "rejection" may be part of the challenge with civility. Also, I would guess the immediacy of current media is also a big driver.

Always a good idea, and will very often elicit a positive response.

"It would be interesting to discover how far a seriously critical view of the benefits to society of the law of copyright … would have a chance of being publicly stated in a society in which the channels of expression are so largely controlled by people who have a vested interest in the existing situation."

— Friedrich A. Hayek, "The Intellectuals and Socialism"

freenation.org/a/f31l1.html

freenation.org/a/f31l1.html

A Dispute Among Libertarians

Who cares?

The Historical Argument

Malformed. The fact that the single instance of government monopoly referred to was called "copyright" a couple hundred years ago and the same word is used for one part of the modern IP concept does not make them the same thing, and therefore a legitimate analogy.

It's equivalent to saying the "political left/right" is completely inconsistent because when I look at statements made by the left/right in the US and UK, they don't present a coherent argument. Currently, "political left" and "political right" have different meanings in the US and UK.

The Ethical Argument

"Ethically, property rights of any kind have to be justified as extensions of the right of individuals to control their own lives."

This is not some universal truth. But at least it is phrased so as to be vague and apply differently in different contexts.

"Thus any alleged property rights that conflict with this moral basis — like the "right" to own slaves — are invalidated."

Good start by using an adjective with negative connotations to describe property rights when no adjective was needed for clarity.

Great reference to slavery as a contrast. He should have also invoked Hitler.

Also, good use of the universal "any". Any conflict invalidates IP. When you have a weak and spurious argument, it is important to set up a low standard of comparison for it. It is, however, good for a laugh to use absolute terms, rather than the idea of weight concerns relatively on their merits, when making "ethical" and "moral" judgments.

"To enforce copyright laws and the like is to prevent people from making peaceful use of the information they possess."

And, of course, you must make overly broad claims about the thing you are arguing against. Copyright laws are extremely narrowly defined. They don't address what you can think. They don't address your personal behaviour. They only address interactions among people.

"If you have acquired the information legitimately (say, by buying a book), then on what grounds can you be prevented from using it, reproducing it, trading it?"

Absolutely none. No copyright law prevents any of those things.

"But information is not a concrete thing an individual can control; it is a universal, existing in other people's minds and other people's property, and over these the originator has no legitimate sovereignty."

This a great contradiction. Why is information I provided, that is not my property, that you have in your mind your property?

"You cannot own information without owning other people."

Once again, overly broad. And even if you accept the contradictory predicate from the previous sentence, it doesn't flow from the argument as a general principle. If I have the right to own a physical piece of property, can I not allow others to use it while still retaining ownership and not owning the people using it?

"Suppose I write a poem, and you read it and memorize it. By memorizing it, you have in effect created a "software" duplicate of the poem to be stored in your brain."

I have no clue how to even address this inappropriate use of the word "software".

"But clearly I can claim no rights over that copy so long as you remain a free and autonomous individual. That copy in your head is yours and no one else's."

Once again, the author is claiming that the "copy" in your head can actually be property, contradicting his own assertion that these things are not concrete, and therefore cannot be owned. I agree with the point, and relish the idea that the author had to contradict the earlier point to make it.

"But now suppose you proceed to transcribe my poem, to make a "hard copy" of the information stored in your brain. The materials you use — pen and ink — are your own property. The information template which you used — that is, the stored memory of the poem — is also your own property."

This is also a good overgeneralization. This is one form of copying – memorizing and physically rewriting – that is being equated to others.

And it ignores the source material and its state as part of the equation. It assumes they are completely divorced from each other, when one is clearly necessary for the other. Without the original work, you wouldn't have the "copy" in your mind.

That connection between the source and the result after the fact is the same ethical principle that allows people to be paid for work. Yeah, you cut my lawn. But my lawn is cut now and you aren't doing it. Once you're done, you have no equities in any part of it in the future.

And this is at the heart of the problem with the argument. To believe that every and all right to the work and its effects ends with a purchase of a copy says that the consumer has the inviolable right to establish where others' rights end. They get no say. It is unethical to negotiate how those rights transfer, and any transference other than immediate and complete ownership, even if agreed upon beforehand, is immoral.

Ultimately, the lawn cutting is a great analogy. What is being protected in copyright is not the book itself (no matter how many times the author incorrectly wants to assert that it is). What is being protected is the work put into creating the information, and the worker's right to negotiate their own terms on how that is transferred.

If you don't like the social contract in a copyrighted work, then don't purchase copyrighted works.

The moral case against patents is even clearer. A patent is, in effect, a claim of ownership over a law of nature.

Patent doesn't establish ownership over laws of nature. It established ownership over the work put into devising new ways of doing things. A lightbulb is not a law of nature. The patent on it does not establish ownership of the flow of current, the properties of a vacuum, the nature of tungsten, the existence of glass. It simply establishes ownership of the work done to bring those things together to create a new thing that is very useful to others, and gives that ownership to the person who invested the work.

This is just so far off from the reality of what a patent is that there really is no point in continuing to discuss it.

But the article overall is a hoot. I recommend reading it. I am considering using it as source material for a class on logical fallacies. I wonder if the author thinks I should ask him first? :)

Etotheipl:
I hope you realize I've been taking the piss out of IP law and that I have not been serious! You seem rather invested in this and my intention was not to upset you or anyone else. If my postings have done so you have my apologies.
However, that being said, I do not support IP law which has mushroomed out of control since the early 1980's. There is no justification in my mind for patenting biological processes. The legal reversal of 1980 allowing that was a huge mistake in my mind. Likewise, the serial extension of patent and copyright protection to immortal corporations long after an inventor or artist is dead is abusive.
The human experience is not a commodity to be bought and sold. Those who say it is and use IP law towards that end are attempting to put their fellow human beings into a servile relationship, replacing bonds of iron with the shackles of the law. The root justification for IP law should and must be that the granting of protection is a temporary reward, giving the inventor temporary relief from completion in order to reward creativity which is judged to be in the public good. The moment that protection begins to allow parasitic exploitation by third parties, it is unwarranted, abusive and should be stopped. This is exploitation and should not be tolerated.
Rod Robertson.

Damn autocorrect! That should be competition not completion in the fourth to last line!
Rod Robertson.

Not in the least upset. The article you linked to was just a horrible mismash of inconsistent garbage.

There is no patenting of biological processes. Like other patents, the bio patents are protecting the work that went in to isolating genes, deducing their processes, and discovering a novel use for the biological processes they control. Without that work, like other natural processes, those things would still exist and function, but no-one would know what was working or why, nor how to replicate the effect for others.

Without that protection, people who sponsor the research would not be able to recoup their costs, so people would stop investing. If you don't believe that, realize that there is nothing in IP law that prevents everyone on earth from donating to research by insitutions that will release their results to the public domain. List the medical advances made that way.

I'm with you on corporations not being entities in the sense IP laws were written for. They should be given commensurate expiration dates on protection.