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9th Circuit: Thumbnails Are Big Enough For Fair Use
An anonymous reader submits: "According to an article from law.com, yesterday's decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (U.S.) will have far-reaching effects on web publishing. From the article: '... The court found that reproducing photographs to create thumbnail images is a fair use of the material, but displaying full-sized images violates the copyright owner's exclusive right to publicly display his works....But the court found that displaying the full-sized images through linking and framing was not transformative and harmed the market for the original photographs.' One lawyer is quoted as saying, 'It's basically going to do away with linking or framing without permission.'"
Based on what they stated, any adjustment to the actual image can be considered enough of a change. One could scale to 99% the width and 99% the height and use that image to link to. Or perhaps just use the img width and height tags to display the linked image in a smaller size; you may be linking to the image but it's displayed in an altered form.
I wonder if that's sufficient to get around the ruling.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
This is a great thing for the most infernal practice on the web - people loading other people's work into their frameset, with their titles and their content on either side of it.
If this isn't allowed, finally we'll be able to have some place where the author of the work has either the rest of his website recognized or has it branched away from the "link-pirate".
... but is a serious question.
What effect does this decision have on everyone in the world who isn't in the USA?
Would enforcement rely on a Skylarov effect, or an 'effective place of publication' ruling, or both?
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
heh, the ninth court of appeals is reversed constantly. don't be too optimistic about this ruling standing up in higher courts, since the ninth court has a particularly bad record with reversals.
some references:
"Let's say this is a court on the cutting edge of jurisprudence," Richards said of the 9th Circuit court. "It may be the most reversed court."
"Of course, this is the Ninth Circuit, the most reversed court in the country, so the road is likely to be bumpy."
"Our final area of concern is that we are talking about the Ninth Circuit. That Circuit is much too large, which has made it difficult to develop any collegiality. As a result, judges have not developed common legal approaches to their decisions, and they are often even unaware of each other's decisions. The case law that has developed from this situation is often conflicting within the Circuit. Further, as judges have learned to act as laws unto themselves, they have frequently made unconstitutional decisions. It is by far the most reversed court in the country."
jon
-- http://www.cerastes.org
Note: Reality filter in effect, suggested changes added in parentheses.
On another note, this decision really has nothing to do with hyperlinking, only with embdding other content into a page without attributing it, i.e. either using frames or the SRC of an IMG. The only way it even vaguely relates to hyperlinks is that it's not really clear under this decision whether creating a hyperlink to an image directly instead of linking to the page that contains the image is forbidden. I don't see any language to that effect, but it could be considered unattributed display nonetheless.