9th Circuit Court Finds 'Thumbnailing' Fair Use

mark_wilkins writes "A photographer named Leslie Kelly had sued Arriba Soft Corporation for infringing his copyrights to photos when they made thumbnails of his pictures and stored them in a public image search engine. Today the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's ruling that making these thumbnail copies of images for the search engine was 'fair use.' Since the applicability of fair-use defenses to copyright infringement touches on all kinds of common uses of the Internet as well as rulemaking related to the scope of the DMCA, this decision will probably have an effect on the discussion. (Note that this case was decided by a 3-judge panel and thus isn't binding precedent.)" Note that the court also reversed in part the lower court's ruling, specifically saying that the lower court should not have ruled on "whether the display of the larger image is a violation of Kelly's exclusive right to publically display his works."

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully the RIAA wont object to me distributing thumbnails of music as MP3's

One small step for law, one giant leap for freedom!

Leslie Kelly

[Razor Blades are Not]

Leslie Kelly.
Poor guy. He's got *two* girls names.

Makes that poor schmuck Sue sound lucky.

When is a picture not a picture?

[hashish]

When it is a thumbnail :O

Applying the same logic

[immanis]

Does this mean that I can legally share very small versions of pop songs? Like maybe, half a verse and the chorus?

Or does it mean I can legally share the same songs if the volume is very low?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Re:Applying the same logic

[Timesprout]

No it just means you must supply a thumbnail of the cover for the album you are sharing and you can do as you please.., no wait thats not it..

Re:When is a picture not a picture?

[L. VeGas]

So... a thumbnail's worth 10 words?

Re:Applying the same logic

[el-spectre]

It means blink 182 songs are all free...

Courts

[inertia187]

<fat_comic_book_guy_from_the_simpsons>
Oh great. Another ruling from the most overturned appellate court ever.
</fat_comic_book_guy_from_the_simpsons>

Dr Seuss!

[robindmorris]

Any court ruling that footnotes Dr Seuss must be good! (see page 8 of the pdf document)

It IS binding precedent.

[Diglielo]

The decision is binding precedent in the 9th Circuit (many Western states, including California), unless more judges, or the Supreme Court, get together to overrule it.

See Roundy v. Commissioner, 122 F.3d 835, 837 (9th Cir. 1997) ("A three-judge panel is bound by a prior judgment of this court unless the case is taken en banc and the prior decision is overruled.")

(IAAL, but - disclaimer oblige - this is not legal advice)

Re:Good

[dead sun]

So then if tons of people took different 30 second clips and posted them, with said links, maybe we could create some software to grab enough clips to reconstruct. The grabbing the clips couldn't be inherently illegal since we're allowed to harmlessly do so now. Probably the process of reconstruction would be made to be the illegal act. However, if that takes place client side, the RIAA would be hard pressed to track illegal downloaders, since the downloading aspect wouldn't be illegal. Then maybe they'd have to come up with ideas to really pester fans.

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

when can i see a movie in a thumbnail?

When is a picture not a picture? When it's a pixel

[IntelliTubbie]

What if the court stated some metric? Like "must be at least 50% less than the original"... how about cutting the image in halves. Then posting both halves on your site such that they appear as one? Neither half violates individually?

Just to be safe, I cut the picture up into individual pixels and then reassemble them into a single new image. And you can't own a single pixel ... why, that would be tantamount to owning a color. And what kind of twisted company [pepsi.com] would try to trademark a color [adbusters.org]?

Cheers,
IT

Re:When is a picture not a picture?

[Pig Hogger]

Some people act as if slippery slopes can be avoided, but they cannot.

It is the **DUTY** of every lawyer to explore new slippery slopes, to boldly slip where no one has slipped before!!!

Re:Good

[JebusIsLord]

It's true though! If copyrighted images, lossily compressed and shrunk for viewing online, are legal... ...shouldn't music files, lossily compressed, also be legal? Or is it the magnitude of compression they are refering to? I suppose a 1024x768 jpeg of someone's artwork isn't covered...

FirstThirtySeconds.com

[zCyl]

The wisdom in the business is that 30 second clips (this is the magic number for some reason) are perfectly legal to allow people to access without payment.

Good thinking... I'm going to immediately go register FirstThirtySeconds.com, SecondThirtySeconds.com, ThirdThirtySeconds.com, etc, etc... Then someone from Estonia will write a program to recompile these clips.