Slashdot Mirror
Web Snapshots Are Nabbed for Commercial Uses
whoever57 writes "The Washington post has a story about Hollywood studios using photos grabbed off the web without permission. This particular story describes the case of a photo of a dog that was used by Fox. The photo had been uploaded to a personal blog and tagged 'all rights reserved.'"
So, what's the problem? Hollywood, being Hollywood, has the RIGHT to use the material that we, mere mortals, put on the web. I mean, if mere peons had the same right as big corporations, what would the world come to????
How a large media organisation that happens to receive a large income based on the 'intellectual property' it owns, that shows warnings on its television broadcasts pertaining to copyright and presumably has a legal department and employs well educated staff can do something like this is unbelievable.
Clearly it is easy to make a mistake, even easier if there is some ambiguity in what you are doing, but in this case surely it would be relatively simple to ensure you know who owns what before using it. Whilst this violation is fairly innocuous and doesn't cause any harm (In a real sense as opposed to a legal one) it is the kind of thing that media companies would prosecute if it were carried out by a normal person (assuming they became aware of it) simply to ensure their 'property' isn't harmed in some way by unauthorised use.
It is interesting that recently (the last 2 years or so) the number of reported copyright violations carried out by businesses against individuals seems to have increased, especially given the amount of publicity given to 'piracy' of all types (well apart from the one that takes place on the high seas) has jumped significantly. I half expected there to be calls by businesses (apart from media organisations obviously) for reform of copyright law, primarily because looser copyright laws would potentially benefit normal businesses or in the least mitigate some of the potential legal damage caused by an accidental lapse.
Well I guess the moral of the story (assuming FOX are punished in some way, - I would be happy with an apology an that the image not be used if I were in the owners shoes) is simple, if you don't have express permission to use something, don't use it, seek consent, if you are planning to make use of material on the basis of fair use the make sure you check how to do that in an acceptable way. Personally I think society is losing out massively by having so much culturally valuable materiel locked away for so long for the benefit of the creators and their heirs, I think we are probably scaring people away from building on existing material and to a point scaring people from drawing influences from existing work, but then I haven't got the cash or influence to lobby government for a change in legislation.
With photos it's easy....if it's online, then you most likely don't have the right to use it. If you want a photo, take one yourself or pay someone for theirs.
However, no one expects the powerful to actually heed the rules...
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
Apparently it does have value because Fox used it. You're well within your rights to use pictures you find on the internet for you desktop background or whatever, but if you want to use them for commercial purposes, or re-publish them, then you need to pay, or at least ask for, that privilege.
If you make pictures of your pet available, I should be free to use them as I see fit.
uhhh, no. that's not how it works. if you attach a (c) or even if you DON'T its assumed you have rights to your image.
come on - this IS the studios DOING the stealing now even though they are first to yell when someone 'steals' from them.
if they want us to respect their (c) they must respect ours!
(yes, I shoot photos. often I will give them away but you must ask first!)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Read TFA, they have value to marketers because they are genuine.
It has nothing to do with the value of the picture. There was no real harm done, however, if the media companies are going to be dicks about copyright, and enforce it to within the last nanometer of the law, individuals can and should do the same back to them when the big guys violate copyright. Turnabout is fair play, after all.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
These violations are only harmless if your work is worth nothing. Apparently, it's worth using so you should be paid.
Some of the uses pointed out in the article were much less than harmless. One kid was described as someone to "dump" and another was a posterboy for peeling lead paint. The parents of the child, of course, were mortified.
The biggest losers in this round of big media hypocrisy and arrogance is big media. It shows better than anything else that copyright is a sham designed to enrich big media. Big media is acting like a perfect bully, while crying for appreciation and special protection. Lessig got it wrong. The victims are not crying out for copyright protection, they are furiously pointing out that copyright is bullshit and it's main proponents are assholes. What little sympathy the industry had left is going down the toilet. Soon they will no more withstand public outrage and technical obsolescence than the Chicago sock yard and Detroit auto makers did.
... is that there are massive collections of high-quality royalty free images like these that most of these companies probably already own for their own media productions. Apparently what it's come down to is that it's now far easier to find an image based on any random keyword using google images than it is for these companies to search their own content on their own servers.
So, how do we fix this without requiring several thousands of man-hours to assign dozens or even hundreds of single word descriptions to each and every image?
Perhaps one way to go is to create a wikipedia-type system entirely for image collections, then have the content owners submit their content to the system for review by thosands of users at random, each assigning a unique description to each image they encounter. Once a collection has been completely reviewed, the system would then generate a searchable RSS feed specific to that collection that the collection owner could use to let users seach their content locally.
The actual task of handling the workload wouldn't even have to be considered "work" if you presented it right to the end user. For example, you could set up a multi-player "game" where dozens of people compete within a set time limit to come up with the most unique descriptions, (relative to a dictionary of allowed terms) and then penalize them for repeated descriptions by more than one user. You could even give out weekly prizes to the top players.
8==8 Bones 8==8