Regarding Ralph’s original complaint, may I ask this, if material is indeed copywrited is it not necessary to post such on the material itself warning of this fact? Not only is there no such warning posted, the material on said website is a collection of other people’s stuff. This suggests to me that the photo itself is not a creation of the blog’s author but something he also picked up somewhere. Ergo, I can only conclude that Ralph was simply bored last evening and said bug, previously refereed to, was eating away at his large intestines.
Tom, the copyright symbol does not have to be attached, the copyright is still in effect (that’s one of the myths about copyrights in the linked article I posted, did you read those?)
And you there is, as previously mentioned, the problem of leeching. The beer stein photo you linked to was on another site. The stupid smilie above is on http://www.alexanderisings.com. Do you have permission to use their bandwidth? By posting that link, every time someone reads your post, that idiotic art gets pulled from that site. On heavily read sites this can be a significant and expensive strain on resources.
It’s like the classic movie scene where a bum steals an apple from a merchant’s display, then knocks over the display and spills the rest of the apples getting away. The thievery may be minor but the carelessly-caused results can be expensive.
Tom, the copyright symbol does not have to be attached, the copyright is still in effect (that’s one of the myths about copyrights in the linked article I posted, did you read those?)
And you there is, as previously mentioned, the problem of leeching. The beer stein photo you linked to was on another site. The stupid smilie above is on http://www.alexanderisings.com. Do you have permission to use their bandwidth? By posting that link, every time someone reads your post, that idiotic art gets pulled from that site. On heavily read sites this can be a significant and expensive strain on resources.
It’s like the classic movie scene where a bum steals an apple from a merchant’s display, then knocks over the display and spills the rest of the apples getting away. The thievery may be minor but the carelessly-caused results can be expensive.
It’s wrong.
Whatever. Bottom line is, if I’m wrong there’s a whole world of wrongness out there and you, my dear fellow, are paddling upstream on the French Broad. I still gotta ask, did you look at the blog? The guy has a collection of stuff from anyplace but his own mind and none of it is referenced. The second bottom line is, who gives a you know what? As I said, been doing it for years and am yet to hear from anybody’s attorney. I await the opinions of some of our learned associates. ;-) My guess is, this thread will lie dead in the water.
TomH, you’re welcome to use any of my 16,000 photos online - they are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic which means you are welcome to share, copy, distribute, transmit or remix an adaptation of the work as long as you attribute the work to me and it is for non-commercial use. Additionally, if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
Tom, so your defense is just because everyone else is morally wrong, you can be, too?
Zen, I respect your decision to go Creative Commons with such a treasure trove of wonderful photos. And I knew that when I wanted to use your photo of Asheville for “The Amazing Flying Chair” (for which I again say ‘thanks!’) ... but I still asked your permission despite the CC.
Tom, so your defense is just because everyone else is morally wrong, you can be, too?
Zen, I respect your decision to go Creative Commons with such a treasure trove of wonderful photos. And I knew that when I wanted to use your photo of Asheville for “The Amazing Flying Chair” (for which I again say ‘thanks!’) ... but I still asked your permission despite the CC.
There’s a right way to do things.
Morality is a matter of opinion, not common law. That being said, you will have to suffer or ignore my emoticons. They are clearly free for my use with no moral or legal penalties attached. As for being defensive, are you not defensive when attacked? It’s just human nature.
I might add regarding google images, google must be in violation of said copyright laws for posting them on their web site? Actually one source I found suggested there is no violation if you do not claim the photo as your own. I repeat, the photo in question most likely was not created by the blogger so is he in trouble too? Hell, let’s just shut down the whole sheebang and send everybody to jail. ROFLMAO
Ralph -
Like I mentioned in the thread this whole business started on - if you upload a photo onto your own system (from google images, for example) and then upload it into your post - there is no loss of bandwidth to the original location of the photo. The only bandwidth used will be that of the forum that the image has been re-posted on.
I understand that you think that it is morally wrong to use someone’s photography without asking for their permission and giving credit, but in this case it does not appear that would be possible to even do. Where exactly would Tom ask for permission - the blog you mentioned that is also using this photo? the “owner” of the google image?
I did read the links to the articles that you sent in, and while the laws are certainly stricter than I had realized, they also do state that this “crime” is usually handled in the civil courts and is not likely to get anywhere if actual monetary “damages” are not involved.
I do agree that the argument that “everyone does it” is not a good one. If someone was making $$$ with this image (for example, if a beer company appropriated it for their commercial site and gave no credit or financial compensation to the image’s owner), they would deserve to be sued.
One of the greatest myths about copyright law is that if you’re not making money from it, it’s okay.
No… it’s not. It is still against the law. I admit this is a pet subject with me since I’ve made a pretty good living for over 30 years now by understanding copyright law and I currently own or control many thousands (literally) of copyrights.
As to bandwidth theft, the two examples of pics that Tom posted were still linked to their original sites, hence were leeching bandwidth.
