Slashdot Mirror
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.
An EU court ruled that taking an existing invention and hot-gluing a clock on the side does not count as a totally new invention.
There is no safe harbor provisions where as long as a web site takes copyright material down when notified in a timely manner, they can't be held liable. It's what's lead to the explosive growth of Internet companies...in the US.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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.
In related news, students do not retain any copyright ownership of their work that they turn in to a school. The school can post it online without compensation to the student or permission.
There is no such broad license to completely ignore copyright in the US either. In this story, the school is 100% liable - they put the photo on their web site without any license to do so. (Though the fact that is *is* a school could come into play with the recent changes to German copyright law, making it closer to US law regarding educational use.)
What the US has is a safe harbor for *service providers* who follow the procedure when *someone else* puts infringing material on their network or servers. There are several distinct types of service providers listed in the law. Slashdot is included in one type - *users* have conversations here using the Slashdot server. Slashdot is not responsible for infringement by the users, if they follow proper procedure. Slashdot has no such protection for things Slashdot puts on their site.
BTW what a lot of people don't know is that there is another very important step beyond "take it down when you receive notice". They must also put it back up if they receive a counter-notice, an email saying "nope, my post isn't infringing" (or it's fair use). To have safe harbor, they would take it down if and only if they receive a notice that it is infringing and DON'T receive another notice saying it's not.
If the respondent says it's not infringing, the complainant can either drop it, or file suit in federal court. Filing suit is expensive for the complainant.
No, no, that can't be right. I thought the NHS was going to get an extra £200 million per day after Brexit.
That nice Boris said so, and he's not a dirty lying self-interested scumbag, is he?
It is amazing such a simple case managed to move up to EU Court of Justice.
What did defendant expect?
You nailed it. That I'd personally argue that our worldwide IP laws (particularly regarding copyright and patents) are rather insane and maximalist is in part because of how unyielding things like re-use are, and how narrow and legally perilous the exemptions. And it's why I'm diligent to try to use multimedia under licenses like CC-BY-SA as much as possible, and to put out any media I create personally under such licenses to contribute back. The only thing surprising about this ruling is that it went high up enough for this ruling to be handed down.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
It depends. If you crop so much of the work out that the result is no sort of replacement for the original work, and it doesn't take away the owner's ability to profit from their work, and you aren't profiting from it, and you are using it just for its factual content, then, that can count as Fair Use, at least that's how US law works. I'm under the impression that EU and US are fairly in-sync with their copyright law (thanks, Disney!)
Good. This is how copyright works. Just because I put my photos onto my website or let someone else use my photos DOES NOT GIVE ANYONE ELSE PERMISSION.
I've dealt with this repeatedly. I send the offender a bill for $500. They pay and then they get to use the photo with permission. If they don't pay I contact their ISP, web host, their organization and anyone else to let them know this person is stealing photos from me. Their ISP and web host routinely will shut people down for having stolen copyrighted material.
Don't steal.
No, that is still a copyright violation. The fact that you can't seem to figure that out means you may soon be getting not just a take down letter but a bill for the copyright violation's you do.
When I find people have stolen my photographs I send them a bill. Most pay. Those that don't then get letters sent to their ISP, web host, employer, organization, etc.
Don't steal.
fine...otherwise people here are basically asking to be fined for humming songs or showing their friends links during lunchtime.
Could someone please tell Google of this ruling? Or does it only apply to organizations which have fewer than some secret number of corporate lawyers and funds with which to fight a prosecution?
You make them sound like a gang. Once you're in, the only way out is in a body bag.
US copyright law specifically carves out a fair use exemption for education, which would have covered the student had she been in the US. Publishing it on the school website is fuzzy, depending on the context. Using it for advertising is not straightforward, but publishing it on the website in pursuit of an educational goal, such as spring a web design learning objectivewould clearly be fair use here.
After all, that's the kind of function that the Worldwide Web was designed for and intended for.
If someone didn't want that to happen to their image, they wouldn't have put it at a publicly accessible URL on the WWW.
They would have access-restricted it in a private behind-login part of the web instead.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Humming would be a derivative work and showing people links would be covered by the granting of the original license for publication. Copyright law is well established and works reasonably well (let's ignore businesses buying extensions to it).
There is no 'news' in this article, it's just how the law works currently to prevent theft.
It could have been considered to fall under the various fair use exemption :
- This was done for a school project. I.e.: education.
- The student didn't slurp the whole website, only a small illustrative part (a single photo).
The school DID have reasons to try to challenge the claim.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This is going to ruin the mime business
How much must you alter a photo to get out from under the copy-write law?
Are there any easy tools out there to do the needed modification?
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).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Just because it makes up a small part of the website does not mean it can be used as fair use or fair dealing
One of the two source I've cited literaly says :
Somebody fluent enough in German legalese should check the original law, but it seems that the law considers a picture so small that you might as well cite the whole picture instead of trying to get a 15% crop of it.
The student using the photo is in the clear because it was for educational purposes. However, the school itself may not be for reproducing the photograph itself.
Same source :
From the other source:
Unlike here in Switzerland, in Germany if it is used in a school as part of the teaching, you can publish it for the whole world to see.
(as long it is non commercial :
- advertisement : "Hey look at this example of the amazing educations your kids will get if you enroll them in our school" not okay.
- education : "Here is a school paper on the subject of {some geographic region}" is okay
Given that the school system in Germany is public and mandatory, there's close to no advertisement)
Basically, federal German law says : It's a small part (<15% of website and single pic), it's for school (non-commercial), so fuck your copyright claims(*).
EU stepped in to add : "...but not according to EU rules".
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(*) which some copyright owners might find scary and thus try to fight, of which fighting the fact that this was escalate from national to EU-level might be an example.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]