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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.'"
P.S. not off-topic since this is my commentary on the author's commentary, which is "very meta."
P.P.S quote used under fair use. HAHA!
A certain unnamed media organization (large outfit, huge company, top 10 market) I used to work for had little-to-no idea. When I started working there, they often found pictures for web stories as well as on-air graphics from simple GIS searches. Many of them didn't know what they were doing wrong, and when informed, the general reaction was, "Really? I thought Internet stuff wasn't copyrighted."
The sad thing is, the art department had a better, high resolution, accessible, indexed repository the company was permitted to use, but much of the company wasn't aware, or didn't care, or thought GIS was easier/faster.
Content you create is instantly copyrighted by you. Period. A person must actively release something into a free-use license. Therefore, regardless of what any person thinks of the content they have generated, YOU have no right to use it for any reason unless specifically stated by the creator of that content. Period. This is not a complex science or vague art.
I don't think that's been tested. The web is a publishing medium. So if you publish a photo on the web, I request that photo from your web server and your server sends it to me, how is that different than if I received any other published work from you? If you send me a free magazine there's no problem if I cut out a picture and tack it to my wall.
There IS a problem if I photocopy that picture and redistribute it. If I were to download your picture, turn it into a desktop background and then repost it on my website for other people to download, that would clearly be copyright infringement.
For the desktop background example, many OSes have some method of displaying HTML data as a desktop background. I could just display your web page with the photo, properly cropped (ie window resized so only the picture shows) on my desktop.
Of course, if you live in the US all bets are off. I hear you guys have some pretty crazy copyright laws. Pinups and newspaper clippings probably are illegal there, eh?
The web is a publishing medium only in the sense that television and radio are publishing mediums. While format & time shifting radio and tv are considered fair use, photo copying a pinup & putting the copy on the wall isn't. You can put your pinup or clippings on the wall or in a scrapbook because you haven't duplicated the work - you've simply manipulated an existing copy - hence no copyright violation. Format & time shifting are exceptions to copyright. New desktop backgrounds don't currently have that protection.