Slashdot Mirror
Federal Judge Says Embedding a Tweet Can Be Copyright Infringement (eff.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Rejecting years of settled precedent, a federal court in New York has ruled [PDF] that you could infringe copyright simply by embedding a tweet in a web page. Even worse, the logic of the ruling applies to all in-line linking, not just embedding tweets. If adopted by other courts, this legally and technically misguided decision would threaten millions of ordinary Internet users with infringement liability.
This case began when Justin Goldman accused online publications, including Breitbart, Time, Yahoo, Vox Media, and the Boston Globe, of copyright infringement for publishing articles that linked to a photo of NFL star Tom Brady. Goldman took the photo, someone else tweeted it, and the news organizations embedded a link to the tweet in their coverage (the photo was newsworthy because it showed Brady in the Hamptons while the Celtics were trying to recruit Kevin Durant). Goldman said those stories infringe his copyright. "[W]hen defendants caused the embedded Tweets to appear on their websites, their actions violated plaintiff's exclusive display right; the fact that the image was hosted on a server owned and operated by an unrelated third party (Twitter) does not shield them from this result," Judge Katherine Forrest said.
This case began when Justin Goldman accused online publications, including Breitbart, Time, Yahoo, Vox Media, and the Boston Globe, of copyright infringement for publishing articles that linked to a photo of NFL star Tom Brady. Goldman took the photo, someone else tweeted it, and the news organizations embedded a link to the tweet in their coverage (the photo was newsworthy because it showed Brady in the Hamptons while the Celtics were trying to recruit Kevin Durant). Goldman said those stories infringe his copyright. "[W]hen defendants caused the embedded Tweets to appear on their websites, their actions violated plaintiff's exclusive display right; the fact that the image was hosted on a server owned and operated by an unrelated third party (Twitter) does not shield them from this result," Judge Katherine Forrest said.
Of course news orgs should pay royaltees but should Google and Twitter who do it automatically (no)?
And then they complain that they're getting free advertising by having their content be linked to? I don't get how badly Twitter shit this bed.
Twitter users do not receive ad revenue for their tweets, why should media companies be able to use them to draw in users, then get the ad revenue?
The ruling, in my opinion, is 100% correct.
This won't stick. It funsamentally misunderstands the medium, and is therefore not enforcable. By that logic a retweet is breaking copyright. Even better, it would mean that basically every single site there is is violating copyright law. Good luck with that.
So.. if I take a picture of a billboard sign on a highway and post it to Facebook, is it copyright infringement?
We'll make great pets
Please get some adult supervision to this judge. Or fix broken laws.
Or add to twitter etc. a simple "I relinquish all copyrights to the content I post and if I'm posting content copyrighted by others, sue me and not someone else who reposts it [OK]"
(tho I thought Twitter terms of use already were kinda like that, no?)
so if you copy and paste this comment you could find yourself on a chain-gang clearing weeds and picking up trash on the side of the highway somewhere in the south while shotgun toting prison guards wearing mirrored sunglasses beat you with a horse whip
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Here is the problem.
Copyrights were made back in the printed press days. In order to violate a copyright law you needed an expensive printing press. That often required a business of printing/publishing material. So the individual copyright violator should be expected to pay large penalty, because if they have the resources to gain access to a printing press, they also have enough resources to understand the law, and they would be part of a small number of people who may be hurting the copyright holder.
However today, it is harder to not break a copyright law then to follow it. Because digital media which is cheap and acceptable by all, is designed to make exact copies and spread them very easily. So we are having 18th century punishment aimed at obvious offenders, hitting individuals who just wanted to share some interesting information, that takes two button presses.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Remember when you said "the judge should rule on the 'right' thing instead of on the letter of the law and the facts of the matter?" This is the result.
The last decade has seen an amazing number of cases of judges exceeding their authority, ignoring precedent/case law (that is their prerogative, though), and ignoring the laws as written (that is the part that is most troubling). Conservatives derisively refer to judges that do that sort of thing as "activist judges", progressives applaud those judges for "doing the right thing", and the result is at some point the judicial branch will no longer respect its role as a co-equal branch of government and instead think it is superior to the others.
If you applauded the national injunctions against the Trump travel ban last year (regardless of how you feel about the travel ban, there is practically no question at all the executive gets to decide who enters the country and who gets kept out based on current immigration law and judges acting the way they did subverted both the legislature and the executive), then this ridiculous ruling that something that amounts to quoting someone else is copyright infringement is what you get.
So, in summary, if you cheered when judges were ignoring laws you did not like, then don't be surprised when they start ignoring laws that when ignored make you a criminal.
If anyone violated the copyright I would think it was the person who originally tweeted the picture since they distributed a copyrighted image. I understand the argument the judge appears to make that if they display a copyrighted image without permission they are guilty of copyright infringement regardless of who actually hosts the image, I can see why the photographer went after them since they have the money, and would have done much more infringement due to the widespread views, to pay out if they ultimately lose, vs. some random Twitter user.
This is yet another example of how copyright laws need to be updated and clarified for the digital age. In print it was a lot harder to get and use an image and who published it was clear; now you can scope images off the web easily and once someone takes an image it is still available even if the original is no longer available. Another issue is 99.99% of the stuff tweeted or otherwise distributed by users is worthless garbage; so how do you balance protection for artists and keeping the garbage flowing freely?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
my tweets are gonna start like this
A
b
c
d
e
then onto words
and im gonna sue everyone
Defendant put up a news web page that appeared to have the infringing photo on it, but in fact, it just linked to content on a 3rd party site.
To infringe copyright by publishing or copying, you should have to do some specific act.
In this case, the 3rd party server did this. But the defendant got the benefit.
OTOH, the defendant set up the situation for the user's computer to automatically do the copyright violation.
Closest old world analog might be an illusion with a billboard that appears to have an infringing image on it, but in fact has a mirror which merges an infringing image from a 3rd party with the defendant's content. In the old world, one might tell the defendant 'neat trick' and go after the 3rd party. In the Internet world, the third party is likely not in jurisdiction, and the only available target is the defendant.
The problem with this analog is that the mirror actually does make a sort of copy, but what the web page does is provide instructions for constructing an infringement using the 3rd party content. The defendant might be encouraging the copyright violation by providing instructions for how the user's computer should construct the violating image, but he is in no way actually doing the act of making a copy.
The purpose of copyright is to advance the useful arts. Few would argue that the world wide web makes great strides towards the same goal. The problem with this ruling is that it may be broad enough to break a fundamental underpinning of the web, namely hyperlinks. It would have been much more useful if the ruling had drawn a clear line between inserting a hyperlink that automatically loads from one the requires a separate click. With the ruling as it stands, I guess most content needs to be scrubbed of links to possibly infringing content. Is it even possible for Google, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook to do this and still exist?
User A takes a picture. They have a copyright on said picture.
User B shares that picture on social media. This is the first copyright violation. (But is it necessarily User B's fault? Linking to a story/page often automatically includes an image, which is most likely copyrighted).
User C embeds User B's twitter post, on their site, including the infringing content.
Should User C be held liable for the copyright violation, but not User B?
Should User B be held liable for User C's violation?
If the social media service (or 3rd party client), when User B shares a link to a page containing the image, automatically adds the image to the post, thus resulting in an inadvertent copyright violation on the user's behalf, should the social media service (or 3rd party client) be held liable, or is it still User B's responsibility, and social media service doesn't give a rat's ass because they're covered under DMCA?
Emphasis mine:
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). This license authorizes us to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same. You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to provide, promote, and improve the Services and to make Content submitted to or through the Services available to other companies, organizations or individuals for the syndication, broadcast, distribution, promotion or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use. Such additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services.
Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
So we are having 18th century punishment aimed at obvious offenders, hitting individuals who just wanted to share some interesting information, that takes two button presses.
I wouldn't be so hard on the 18th century.
It's us who won't let Steamboat Willie enter the public domain almost a century after it was created, not them. They understood reasonable copyright terms.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has dismissed a case Playboy brought against Happy Mutants, the parent company of Boing Boing for doing something similar.
The article on Ars: https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
From the article:
Back in November 2017, Playboy Entertainment Group sued Boing Boing, accusing it of violating the company’s copyright when, in February 2016, the website simply linked to a separate online collection of "Every Playboy Playmate Centerfold Ever." That portfolio, which was hosted on Imgur, has since been removed. Imgur did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.
Because Boing Boing has advertising on its site, Playboy argued, it is profiting from those unauthorized images.
However in a Wednesday order, US District Judge Fernando Olguin slammed Playboy Entertainment in polite legalese.
"The court is skeptical that plaintiff has sufficiently alleged facts to support either its inducement or material contribution theories of copyright infringement," he wrote.
This. Exactly. The person who is liable for both the original infringement as well as the newspaper's is the person who violated the TOS. Twitter is at least obligated to shut down the original infringer's account (or they can be sued for failing to do so).
If there were no such wording in the TOS, they would ordinarily each be responsible for their own infringement.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
...whatever person posted it to Twitter?
Loading...
Anything that causes there to be fewer photos of Tom Brady going around the internet is a good thing. My only wish is that the ruling involved the Kardashians instead.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Isn't this what a DMCA takedown request is for?
Loading...
When you try to share a tweet, Twitter gives you code to embed it on a page. Is Twitter contributing to copyright infringement?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
You raise an interesting point. What I don't understand is how independent photographers are supposed to make a living if the large news organizations can use their content for free. It seems like copyright only works for large corporations.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Mod this up +5 +65 +life of the author
Nothing posted to
Tim Berners-Lee made his opinion about this perfectly clear in a 1997 document. The bottom line is simple: if you don't want something linked to, don't put it on the World Wide Web.
'Myth: "A normal link is an incitement to copy the linked document in a way which infringes copyright".
'This is a serious misunderstanding. The ability to refer to a document (or a person or any thing else) is in general a fundamental right of free speech to the same extent that speech is free. Making the reference with a hypertext link is more efficient but changes nothing else.
'When the "speech" itself is illegal, whether or not it contains hypertext links, then its illegality should not be affected by the fact that it is in electronic form.
'Users and information providers and lawyers have to share this convention. If they do not, people will be frightened to make links for fear of legal implications. I received a mail message asking for "permission" to link to our site. I refused as I insisted that permission was not needed'.
https://www.w3.org/DesignIssue...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Slashdot can close now. (you have my permission to show this comment)
It's not just that. Copyright terms are long. This might make sense in a world where copying is hard and distribution is slow; but in a world with rapid communication, copyrighted material gets consumed quickly. It ceases to be unique and new in a short time, and becomes common; then, it remains owned.
It seems the whole monetization process happens a lot faster now, and so terms should be shorter.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I thought News Agencies were given a pretty wide latitude when it came to copyright. They can play portions of copyrighted content or show copyrighted images without paying the content owners. Even if you accepted the "linking = infringement" line (which I don't), wouldn't the news agencies be all but immune to this kind of "infringement"?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
So we are having 18th century punishment aimed at obvious offenders
Worse. We (or at least some scumbags like disney) are trying to add even harsher punishments for things like breaking DRM. Even if it would normally fall under "fair use". I'm pretty sure the 18th century had a doctrine of first sale, in common law or something like that.
Sorry Twitter (and all other social media), I'd like to use you and share pictures with my friends (and non-friend followers), but lawyers won't let me. Bye. We had fun but I have to go.
May be only the photographs registered by paying a fee would be protected by copyright. All other photos are public domain by default.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"[W]hen defendants caused the embedded Tweets to appear on their websites, their actions violated plaintiff's exclusive display right; the fact that the image was hosted on a server owned and operated by an unrelated third party (Twitter) does not shield them from this result,"
This Judge doesn't sufficiently understand what Linking means to make a competent ruling. The website embedding content doesn't Display that content --- visitors' browsers "Display" that content which is presented to the visitor by a third party that has been given the right to display that content and allows embedding to navigate to the media.
So the original tweet using the copyrighted picture was fair use? If not, then why wasn't twitter asked to remove the tweet?
Never mind making the term shorter because the speed of distribution has gone up so much. It would be enough to just restore the term to exactly what it was when copying was hard and distribution was slow.
It is a general problem with the justice system. Where people who have more, have the resources to more aggressively protect themselves while the individual who have less, cannot. At least without the cost of trying to fight such battles.
If you give up, you loose a month of income. If you win, you are in debt for life. Only if you win big then you can get both sides.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Youtube realizes this. Which is why new channels can't monetize their Youtube videos until after they went viral. (eg. no until until after one week after 1000 subs)
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Please refrain from the use of the R word, just as you would refrain from using the N word. Unless you're trolling , in which case, have at.
Consider if you or a loved one has a kid who's , say, Downs. Would you *ever* use the R word?
Again, if you'd refer to the kid around loved ones as "that little R****d," then have at.
A PSA from the slashdot civility police. I'm not intending to censor y'all, just have you consider your ignorant word choice.
I've been complaining about the braking industry's complete lack of empathy in this area for years.
Fuck you, you retarded n1gger faggot.
Maybe, what needs to go (due to the internet age!) is not (software) patents, but copyright? :-)
I'm pretty sure they do. Maybe some of the big guys (like Trump) have custom contracts.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Then copyright is in violation of the 1st Amendment, which explictly states, without any exceptions, "no law". All the judges that have ruled otherwise need to be taken out to the woodshed for a good ass whipping.
Definitely a bad precedent, though Twitter could change the terms to make clear that that embedding is acceptable and the nature of the beast.
Twitter could also add a no embed options to profiles and in then add provide an option to ignore profiles that donâ(TM)t want embedding? In other words: You donâ(TM)t want visibility: weâ(TM)ll provide you the option, but it comes with potential consequences.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
This ruling is a giant step backwards for the modern communication of information. Maybe we need a new kind of court for technical questions of law. We have specialty courts for bankruptcy and specific fields of law, maybe it's time to add a branch for technology and staff it with people who know the difference between embedding a tweet and actual copyright infringement.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Either:
We have to all understand that copying media we didn't actually make without the artists or owner's permission violates at least some social contract to treat artists fairly, despite how easy it is to copy things (even if it requires no action on our part)
Or:
We need to understand that sharing a little bit and sharing with everyone carries no distinction. Uploading to any sort of sharing service that is not intrinsically private is effectively giving something to the public domain. The distinction is easy to see if you're paying for security or using a site described as "social" for free.
In this case, the photographer uploaded his image to Snapchat... fast forward a few copies and re-postings and his image ends up with someone else's name associated with it on a news website. The root issue here is not copying from Snapchat, it's uploading to Snapchat in the first place.
If you dont like how the internet works stay off the internet. We made it for us not your company.
Cuntherine Forrest sounds like a cunt who doesn't know how to apply existing fair use laws.
I think the photographer is an idiot and greedy. Posting on twiter is like putting something into the public forum, especially since the point of twitter is to share things. The photographer shared the tweet with the intention of major news agencies to share this information and then attempts to sue them, this is the kind of thing that will make people shy away from twitter as it pretty much breaks the entire re-tweeting and news process which is a major part in bringing in profit for twitter. Think about if Trump starting suing anyone who embedded a tweet. Clearly the judge has no understanding of unintended consequences and in the end if the photographer really wanted to get paid for the photo he would have hosted it on his own website as a photo for sale or spent the small amount of effort and actually shopped it around to the news agencies. He is just a lazy sob that wants to capitalize on another entity(twitter) doing his work for him.
Every single day the entire Internet infringes on copyright, then. Better shut the whole thing down, arrest everyone using it, and chop Tim Berners-Lee's head off.
The judges who are the most "activist" and actively ignore the wording of the Constitution are conservatives....and people who claim to be originalists, like St. Scalia.
I might be in a minority here, but I support this judgement. If you're linking to something you're pointing the user to someone else's content, if you're embedding content you're making it part of your content. If a a photographer put up his own photos on his blog, linking to that blog is how the Internet is supposed to work. If you're hot-linking the photos that's rude, but not illegal since the site is serving them up freely. Implement referrer checks if you don't like it. If somebody else is embedding them in their page with <img> tags I'd say that's copyright infringement. You never agreed to have them published in that context, even if the derivative work is built on-the-fly by the client.
Twitter should be shielded under the DMCA, they serve user-generated content. The newspapers should not be shielded, these tweets didn't appear on their newspaper by accident they made an editorial decision to embed it and that makes them liable. They failed to make sure a third party had the proper right to do that, tough. Otherwise all download/streaming cases would be trivially dismissed with "I just assumed that whoever was distributing it had the legal right to distribute it." or better yet by putting up a torrent where it automatically becomes re-distributed "Because that's how torrents work I assumed it was an implied license to re-distribute it myself".
Well shit, that's not how it works. If you take an illegally posted work and do something that violates copyright then you're liable too, you can't wash it clean. That's why they call it strict liability, that's why they have reduced liability for "innocent infringers". Maybe these newspapers could qualify for that, if it was reasonable to assume that it was properly licensed. But getting off harmless by pointing the finger to someone else as the guilty man? It's never worked for anyone else, I don't see why it should start now. That would be a major earthquake in copyright enforcement.
P.S. About how the content of a embed can change, there's also the "guilty mind" part of criminal liability. So if someone swaps out the embedded photo with something else the criminal intent would be lacking and you should be acquitted. At least in theory, it only works in practice if you can prove that it was swapped out from under you without your knowledge. Civil liability though... innocent infringer, you're liable for causing harm even if you didn't intend to harm the copyright holder. It's a risk you take when you embed something else you don't control into your work.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The problem is with copyright law still not being updated and having proper provisions for cases like these that are all too common.
There are two sides to this.
1. It can be frightening to some people the slippery slope that this leads... being sued for embedding a tweet on your blog/website sounds a bit too much, and it shouldn't be allowed. But seeing things like this is just a very very one-sided outlook on the matter. This probably isn't what this case is about;
2. Why do you think big publication websites are being sued on this? Because most likely, they refused to pay the photographer for his work, and instead used the embedded tweet as a workaround to just steal and use his work free of charge. I'm gonna bet that intention was fully estabilished in this case. It's just these publications acting like assholes to exploit the photographer work without paying him. Cases like these have already happened before... in fact, it happens all the time, but in most cases the photographer doesn't have enough money to sue.
If you heard about cases of photographers being fired in masse on media publications, it also has a bit to do with this. Why pay a full time photographer when they can just steal photos online?
The details of the case should estabilish guilt... but I'm betting this is yet another case, like multiple ones I've already read in photography blogs, where the photographer saw the infringement, tried to contact publications about it, they played dumb or outright refused any acknowledgement, and it ended up in court.
And people should know about this: for media publications that will be actively using work of photographers and whatnot, they fully know they can't just yank a photo from the Internet and publish it willy nilly, doesn't matter where it's hosted or by whom. The basis here is that these publications are exploiting the work of photographers without paying for it, while using it to get advertiser or whatever more money for their own profit.
We had extremely debated cases in the past with artists using photography for their own work... I think it was Instagram photos or something to pass as art and reinterpretation, which caused a whole lot of discussion around copyright law, but in cases like media websites it's far more clear cut. As soon as a judge interprets it as intentional usage of photographer work without payment or licensing deal, as a significant part of the article, post, or whatever, they will be in the wrong and have to pay for it.
It's always fucking photographers. Fucking musicians and bands have long since figured out that fighting the internet mob is useless, so you might as well figure out a way to make it pay. But fucking photographers are still stuck in 1975.
Twitter and other social media sites should embed a clause that basically says "If you upload a picture/media (or words), it's automatically put into Creative Commons if you are the original copyright holder. If you don't hold copyright, we will remove it" and remove all auto-previews for links. Fuck it, if you want to be an asshole, get off the goddamned internet.
Just adding my salt grain.
I've skimmed through the document, and nowhere have I seen the picture's origin. It's just at some point, some twitter accounts posted it, and linking it cause problems.
Does that mean that the plaintiff own those twitter accounts? Because it sound like he is trying to ban any form of linking.
Tend to be blithering idiots. I think it's a job requirement.
Twitter is bound by the DMCA takedown rules as a 3rd party hoster of content. If someone uses their service to post copyright infringing content, then the copyright holder can send them a DMCA takedown notice. If twitter complies, they are immune from infringement. Twitter generally complies. A 4th party who wishes to link to content hosted at the 3rd party should have even more immunity. Either no DMCA takedown was sent, in which case no liability exists at all for anyone, or one was sent. The 4th parties should be able to rely on the 3rd party complying and all the liability should land on the 3rd party. If Twitter got a valid DMCA takedown and ignored it, then the 4th parties linking to their site should still be immune from the liability. Twitter and only twitter can control twitter's content and other should be able to assume this is the case.
It might be different if the 3rd party is out of reach of the DMCA, such as on foreign servers and from a site whose primary function is evading copyright laws. But that is certainly not the case here for Twitter.
Don't you explicitly allow this usage when you post a tweet, agreed to in the terms of use?
HuffPost is in a lot of trouble. They haven't written a "news" article without at least three tweets in it for two or three years!
The photographer originally uploaded the photo to Snapchat. "Shortly thereafter, he uploaded the photograph to his Snapchat Story". He chose to upload to a public forum, It went viral from there.
They can make a living the same way other contract workers do. Charge a higher fixed fee for services rendered rather than try and claim ownership of all work created and charge fees for use or reproduction.