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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.
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.
This is not about some 140 or 280 character statement. This was concerning a photo.
Why should a photo shared via Twitter be treated as having less artistic value than if published on an another web page, printed in a magazine or displayed at a gallery?
Having said that, it is not the embedding of the tweet that should have been addressed, but rather any unauthorised use of that photo in the first place. If the person uploading the photo to Twitter didn't have the right to do so, that person should be dragged into court for copyright infringement. If the judge should consider that it was retweeted/embedded a lot when determining a fine or not, is up for debate. One might argue that it added to the injury done to the photographer, and her right to monetize her work.
Not allowing embedding is wrong. Widening this ruling is even more so.
Honestly, I don't know if news orgs should have to pay royalties. If someone posts something publicly on twitter, that becomes a statement of public record. As far as I know, news agencies don't have any obligation to pay copyright royalties to quote public statements. It gets a little tricky with the question, "Can a photo be considered a quote?" but in the context of a tweet, I think they should be able to quote the entire tweet with any content it includes.
Some guy copies the photo and posts it without permission on a site. That site happily hosts the photo and encourages the whole world to embed their tweets and treat them like news. It seems like, if anyone is violating copyright, it's either the guy who tweeted it, or the company who hosts it and publicizes it. It's not the news for reporting on it.
On the other hand, I might be ok with this. The news (and other sites) won't be able to quote, cite, or embed any tweets without opening themselves to copyright violation. Maybe this will kill Twitter (which I'd be fine with), or at least stop news organizations from treating tweets like they're news.
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?
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.
If someone posts something publicly on twitter, that becomes a statement of public record.
By that logic then, if the New York Times posts one of their staff photographer's photos on Twitter, that's a part of the public record, and anyone else, including other newspapers can use it as well, since that becomes a statement of public record.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I am a photographer
Photographers are the scum of the earth.
If I hire a contractor to build me a deck, that deck becomes mine.
If i hire a software developer, what i hired them for becomes mine.
If i hire a photographer to take a portrait of my family, they claim its theirs forever, if i want prints i am at their mercey.
Fuck that.
Go die in a hole, please.