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Online Photos Can't Simply Be Republished, EU Court Rules (politico.eu)
The European Court of Justice ruled Tuesday that internet users must ask for a photographer's permission before posting their images online, even if the photos were already freely accessible on other websites. "The posting on a website of a photograph that was freely accessible on another website with the consent of the author requires a new authorization by that author," the EU's top court said in a statement. Politico reports: The court had been asked to decide on a case in Germany, in which a secondary school student downloaded and used a photo that had been freely accessible on a travel website for a school project. The photo was later posted on the school's website as well. The photographer who took the picture argued the school's use of his photo was a copyright infringement because he only gave the travel site permission to use it, and claimed damages amounting to 400 euros (~$463). The ECJ ruled in the photographer's favor, saying that under the EU's Copyright Directive, the school should have gotten his approval before publishing the photo.
This is now copyright law works. Just because one person has permission to publish does not mean every body has the right. Just check for possible licenses attached to the pictures. For example a CC-SA is explicit permission to republish. No explicit mention of license = no clear permission.
Copyright protected images retain their copyright? Even if someone publishes them on a website that is accessible to the public?
I'm shocked at this disturbing turn of events. Next they'll be claiming that news articles retain their copyright even after they've been published online!
How is this even news? We have a lot of anti-IP folks around here, but even they have to acknowledge that this has been settled law... well, as long as there has been an internet. Longer, I guess. I mean, you couldn't just cut a photo out of a magazine and use it in your own ad copy either.
Pre-Brexit:
- Sterling recovering after financial crisis as one of the best performers of developed currencies
- UK fastest growing developed economy in the world
- Fuel, food, and clothing prices lowest for 5 years
- Job market growing at fastest pace
- Crimes at an all time low
Post-Brexit vote:
- Pound sterling at it's worst point in 4 decades
- UK slowest growing developed economy in the world
- Fuel, food, and clothing prices at their highest ever
- Job market growth slowing
- Crimes reaching new highs
Post-Brexit:
- Negative trends intensifying in the face of outcomes that leave us further and further away from the EU as possible.
- UK being run as a dictatorship as hard Brexit is forced upon it by rich banks and toffs like Farage and Rees-Mogg whilst the government is propped by by a billion pound bribe to the political wing of a literal terrorist organisation (the DUP) and despite there having never at any point in time been any democratic mandate for the DUP to be in power, nor for hard Brexit, and the only legitimate mandate existing being for soft Brexit. In the 2017 elections 56% of people voted for soft Brexit parties, in the 2018 local elections 60% of people voted for soft Brexit parties. All polls have shown consistent support only for Brexit and NEVER at any point for hard Brexit, and all recent polls have now turned against Brexit altogether.
So in other words, you have to be a raving fucking idiot to think Brexit isn't a terrible thing. It's tearing the UK apart on every level, socially, politically, and economically.
Meanwhile, the people behind it like Arron Banks whose wife is literally a genuinely exposed Russian spy laugh at the retards who voted for it openly stating they led them down a garden path and lied like crazy to them.
Literally the only way you can think Brexit is good is if you think it's better to have a weaker economy, weaker country, undemocratic more authoritarian rule, and a divided country with increased crime.
It takes a special kind of retard to call that "good". These things are all factual, unlike the entirety of the Brexit campaigns, all of which are now under criminal investigation for breaching spending limits using Russian money.
Sorry, my fault.
Sometime, I forget that I live in one of these countries with slightly saner copyright laws, which also covers specifically school use (sorry only available in FR/DE/IT, no EN), one of the example case is the exact situation from TFA. Here around, the single mistake would have been making the web archive of the student presentation fully public. Everything else is perfectly tolerated (it's for educational purpose, and the picture is a small part of the website).
Now back to Germany : it seems that is has been going through some reform and under the latest variation of these law (according to these sources, I'm to lazy and bad at German legalese to check the original law), there *seems to be indeed* a "fair-use" like exception - up to 15% of a work can be duplicated to be used in teachings, including third party viewing and showing it to the public.
I don't think that the website consisted of entirely one single image. And thus the photo should be definitely less than 15% of the content (more over, the source mention that a single image can be used in its entirety).
The only nitpicking would be whether the use of the secondary school was commercial/advertise (they use the paper to advertise what their students do and to display the kind of education the school is giving... that would be a stretch, it's a public school and these don't advertise in Germany AFAIK) or whether it was educational (the school made it public as a paper informing on a subject written by a student).
So according to the laws in vigor in Germany, the School was completely right to challenge the claim.
Then the German Federal Court escalated the question to the European Court, which ruled this way (photo copyright is photo copyright, no matter the educational context or the proportion that this photo occupies within the orignal website).
It might seem trivial, but copyright vs fair use is hotly debated here around in Europe. It was certainly when the law got reformed in Switzerland, and apparently it is currently in Germany. This EU judging might be the manifestation of such : people and institution who weren't happy with how the law got reformed and make all the can to push it toward their goal. (And I almost expect various members of Pirate Party to soon show up and try pulling in the opposite direction).
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