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.

Comments

Nothing new

[El_Muerte_TDS]

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.

Re:Nothing new

[AmiMoJo]

I'm just amazed that the school bothered to even challenge this, it's so blindingly obvious.

Re:Nothing new

[DontBeAMoran]

"For 400€ of damages no less."

This is about the law, about applying it and with sane amounts.

I never understood the USA courts asking for millions of dollars for every little fucking thing, when 99.999999999% of people would never be able to pay even 0.1% of such a ruling.

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing this addresses is the entitlement of millennials. They think that just because they can access something online, that they are free to use it for anything they want.

The photographers are the ones with the misplaced sense of entitlement. They are the ones wielding an artificial, government-granted privilege as though it were some kind of natural right.

Also, I dislike this "millennials" charicature. Not everyone born in this age range is entitled, irrational, and deeply intolerant. There are civilized and respectful young people out there, I'm sure of it.

Did I hear that right?

[Cytotoxic]

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.

In other news

[Verdatum]

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.

Good

[pubwvj]

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.

Fair use laws

[DrYak]

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).