Photographers Want Their Cut From Google's Ebooks

It's not just the writers anymore: carluva writes "The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) and several other visual artist groups are suing Google over its digitization of of millions of books, claiming copyright infringement related to images within the books. The photographers initially wanted to be included in the authors' and publishers' class action suit, but filed their own suit after that request was denied. Google and others assert that images are only included in the digital copies when permission has been obtained from the copyright holder."

Comments

And after that, the models will want their cut

[Palestrina]

The complexity is that a modern book can have a large number of owners, who may have come together and agreed to publish a given book, or even a given edition of the book. But republication, translation, adaption for the stage, movies, song lyrics, etc., all need to be negotiated separately. It gets even crazier with video, since then you have musician rights, composer rights, etc.

I think Lessig gave us one of the best reads on this problem a couple of months ago: http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2010/02/05_lessig.html

and in a follow-on report ...

[nblender]

The American Pulp and Paper Manufacturers Association has announced they intend to claim royalties for scans of books printed on paper produced by members of APPMA!

Re:Hmmmm

[WrongSizeGlass]

I wonder how this will develop.

Colorfully?

Re:Hmmmm

[yincrash]

I think this one is clearly black and white.

Photographs

[Andy Smith]

I'm a newspaper photographer. I'll offer this perspective on Google's respect for copyright:

Google recently used some of my photographs on Google News, as the 'headline' photos to represent collected coverage of major stories. This fell outside any reasonable definition of fair use. This was for-profit publication of photographs that other publishers were paying for the right to use. Google used them for free.

Now, it's common in the news business that publishers use breaking news photos without permission, because they need to publish them quickly. But they ALWAYS pay afterwards, market rate, without question. This side of the business works on trust.

When I sent Google a bill, their first reaction was exactly what it should be: They would pay the market rate. They rang up to get my banking details for fund transfer, and that should have been the end of the matter.

Then they wrote to me saying that they wouldn't pay. They even denied publishing the images, which was clearly untrue. They told me that to take the matter further I would need to file a DMCA complaint -- and in doing so I must give Google permission to publish the DMCA complaint online. I believe this is outrageous! I only sell my pictures to UK publishers, yet here was a US company publishing my work without permission, and telling me that I would need to pursue them through the US legal system!

This gives me a fairly clear view of Google's attitude to other people's copyright. It seems that Google will take what they want, publish it however they want, profit, and then to hell with the people who originally produced the material in question.

Re:Photographs

[nblender]

So if I understand you correctly, you want google to pay 'market rate' for an 80x80 portion of a picture that you took with your EOS 5D-II? How small a part of your image does google have to use in order to qualify for "fair use"?

Re:Photographs

[stephanruby]

Google recently used some of my photographs on Google News, as the 'headline' photos to represent collected coverage of major stories.

You mean. Google recently used some photographs of yours on Google News, as the 'thumbnail' image to represent the collected coverage of major stories, linking back to the original online newspaper which originally published your photograph.

This fell outside any reasonable definition of fair use.

Who says? You do, but you're a little biased. Aren't you.

This was for-profit publication of photographs that other publishers were paying for the right to use. Google used them for free.

Yes, Google links thumbnails and summary information to online sources. It does the same thing on its search engine, which is also a for-profit operation. And it does this with the robots.txt (or sitemap.xml) permission of the original newspaper that published your photographs. If the original newspaper had just listed the folder in which your photograph was in, and told the googlebot not to index your photograph, then google wouldn't have used your photograph (to make a thumbnail out of it).

It seems your original beef is with the newspapers that published your photographs, not google. I think many would argue that indexing, linking to, publishing the summary information, and automatically making thumbnails, all because the original web site permits you through the robots.txt file, falls well within the purpose of 'fair use'.

Re:Photographs

[Chyeld]

Actually no, they do it because they either have a marketing agreement with opposing vendors who didn't want free advertising to be given to the competition or because the image was TRADEMARKED and they were worried the use of it in their show might bring legal trouble on that front.

Unless they have an incompetent legal department, they are never doing it because they fear they are infringing copyrights, as it'd be a 100% slam dunk when they showed up for court and said "Your honor, fair use."

Re:Photographs

[cpt kangarooski]

And indeed, that argument was made in Kelly v. Arriba Soft, back in 2002. The court in that case decided that image thumbnails produced as search results were a fair use.

The use was commercial, which counted against defendants, but transformative (instead of being pictures qua pictures, they were merely search result) which counted for. The pictures were creative works, but published, which counted against, but not so much against as it might. They copied the entire work, but this was no more than necessary for users to be able to identify the results, so it counted neither for nor against. And the use as thumbnails in search engine results didn't harm the market for the images themselves, so that counted for.

Re:Me too

[bloodhawk]

Why I agree this is probably a huge case of opportunism, The fact remains google are evil bastards in how they are handling this and really they deserve what they get. An system that can take your property and requires you to "opt out" rather than opt in deserves to have as many law suits thrown at it as humanly possible.

Re:Me too

[beakerMeep]

I don't see how it is so cut and dried. If these artists have legitimate copyrights and Google is presenting the image in results, it certainly could be argued that is a form of republishing. Whether you agree or not, the issue is not exactly just 'me too.' While there may be an element of that TFA is pretty light on details as to what the plaintiffs are claiming represents unauthorized republishing of their work.

Re:Hmmmm

[Vinegar Joe]

You guys are so negative.

Re:Me too

[Chyeld]

That comment is so full of bullshit, I'm not even certain where to start.

Wait, I know, lets start at the start:

• What did Google actually do originally
  • Google went to select libraries and asked their permission to scan in the works that the libraries had access to.
  • Google intended to make the works which were in the public domain available online for free
  • Google intended to make the works which were still covered under copyright search-able, just as a website is, and include them in Google's index.
      THIS SHOULD BE COVERED BY FAIR USE
• What has Google already made available online
  • The only items you can currently view in full on Google's site are the books they have PERMISSION to display, either from the copyrights holder or by virtue of the book being in the public domain
  • Books Google does not have permission to display in full are in some cases search-able (depending on whether the copyright holder has told Google block the book or not

What is evil about what they were originally working on? Where is the blatant disregard for copyright that you are stumping on about? The fact that the GBS greatly expands their plans and what they are doing is not because that is what they were originally planning, it's because that's what the lawyers were able to AGREE upon when they sat down at the table!

Re:Hmmmm

[grcumb]

Most of us agree already that intellectual property goes too far. When it comes to things like movies and music and books, there is at least some real creativity. Photography? Not so much.

Baloney.

I've had formal training in writing and theatre (acting, design and directing) and have worked professionally in a number of creative disciplines. Just as with photography, the majority of writing work is workman-like documentary stuff that anyone with a decent grasp of the English language can manage. Writing clearly is mostly a matter of discipline. It's work, but it's not that difficult.

Telling stories as simply and elegantly as Graham Greene, however, is something to which most of us can't even aspire.

Likewise with photography. Taking a clear, composed and nicely lit photo is mostly a matter of discipline. It's work, but it's not that difficult. Taking a great photo on the level of Don McCullen or Robert Capa, for example, is something most of us will never approach.

If you're going to compare different artistic media (not really advisable at the best of times), at least try to compare similar things. Run-of-the-mill documentary writing, film-making and photography are similar in terms of time, discipline and effort required. (The biggest differentiator is the scope of the work itself. Photographers capture an instant; film-makers capture events.)

Great work in any discipline is likewise exacting, difficult, time-consuming and reserved to a rare, gifted few.