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Media Your Rights Online

Web Snapshots Are Nabbed for Commercial Uses 92

Posted by timothy from the you-bet-they-are dept.
whoever57 writes "The Washington post has a story about Hollywood studios using photos grabbed off the web without permission. This particular story describes the case of a photo of a dog that was used by Fox. The photo had been uploaded to a personal blog and tagged 'all rights reserved.'"
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Web Snapshots Are Nabbed for Commercial Uses More

Web Snapshots Are Nabbed for Commercial Uses

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  • So, what's the problem? Hollywood, being Hollywood, has the RIGHT to use the material that we, mere mortals, put on the web. I mean, if mere peons had the same right as big corporations, what would the world come to????

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tsa ( 15680 )
      The problem is that Hollywood has so much money that they can do what they like. Even if you sue them you're unlikely to win before you, mere mortal, go bankrupt.

    • Re:So? What's the problem? (Score:4, Informative)

      by xeoron ( 639412 ) on Thursday January 10, 2008 @07:51AM (#21982324) Homepage
      Hollywood was created by thief's, so what do you expect? They want to have their cake and eat it too.From The Pirates Dilemma

      "Some of America's greatest innovators were thought of as pirates. When Thomas Edison invented the phonographic record player, musicians branded him a pirate out to steal their work and destroy the live music business, until a system was established so everyone could be paid royalties, which we today call the record industry. Edison, in turn, went on to invent filmmaking, and demanded a licensing fee from those making movies with his technology. This caused a band of filmmaking pirates, including a man named William, to flee New York for the then still wild West, where they thrived, unlicensed, until Edison's patents expired. These pirates continue to operate there, albeit legally now, in the town they founded: Hollywood. William's last name? Fox."
    • The problem is that when people on the internet (most people lump us all together) have their copyrighted material taken without permission, they threaten legal action, yet these same people are the people that take copyrighted material without permission. Most people are going to miss minute details, like the fact that the people posting these pictures aren't necessarily the same pirating things on the internet, or the fact that pirating a copy for personal use is very different than pirating something for

  • Violating Copyrights (Score:3, Funny)

    by tristian_was_here ( 865394 ) on Wednesday January 09, 2008 @09:07PM (#21978612)
    These people are hypocrites if they wanted to violate copyright laws properly at least use The Pirate Bay.

  • Copyright is easy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ajehals ( 947354 ) on Wednesday January 09, 2008 @09:09PM (#21978648) Journal
    How a large media organisation that happens to receive a large income based on the 'intellectual property' it owns, that shows warnings on its television broadcasts pertaining to copyright and presumably has a legal department and employs well educated staff can do something like this is unbelievable.

    Clearly it is easy to make a mistake, even easier if there is some ambiguity in what you are doing, but in this case surely it would be relatively simple to ensure you know who owns what before using it. Whilst this violation is fairly innocuous and doesn't cause any harm (In a real sense as opposed to a legal one) it is the kind of thing that media companies would prosecute if it were carried out by a normal person (assuming they became aware of it) simply to ensure their 'property' isn't harmed in some way by unauthorised use.

    It is interesting that recently (the last 2 years or so) the number of reported copyright violations carried out by businesses against individuals seems to have increased, especially given the amount of publicity given to 'piracy' of all types (well apart from the one that takes place on the high seas) has jumped significantly. I half expected there to be calls by businesses (apart from media organisations obviously) for reform of copyright law, primarily because looser copyright laws would potentially benefit normal businesses or in the least mitigate some of the potential legal damage caused by an accidental lapse.

    Well I guess the moral of the story (assuming FOX are punished in some way, - I would be happy with an apology an that the image not be used if I were in the owners shoes) is simple, if you don't have express permission to use something, don't use it, seek consent, if you are planning to make use of material on the basis of fair use the make sure you check how to do that in an acceptable way. Personally I think society is losing out massively by having so much culturally valuable materiel locked away for so long for the benefit of the creators and their heirs, I think we are probably scaring people away from building on existing material and to a point scaring people from drawing influences from existing work, but then I haven't got the cash or influence to lobby government for a change in legislation.

    • Harm Done. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gnutoo ( 1154137 ) on Wednesday January 09, 2008 @10:22PM (#21979272) Journal

      These violations are only harmless if your work is worth nothing. Apparently, it's worth using so you should be paid.

      Some of the uses pointed out in the article were much less than harmless. One kid was described as someone to "dump" and another was a posterboy for peeling lead paint. The parents of the child, of course, were mortified.

      The biggest losers in this round of big media hypocrisy and arrogance is big media. It shows better than anything else that copyright is a sham designed to enrich big media. Big media is acting like a perfect bully, while crying for appreciation and special protection. Lessig got it wrong. The victims are not crying out for copyright protection, they are furiously pointing out that copyright is bullshit and it's main proponents are assholes. What little sympathy the industry had left is going down the toilet. Soon they will no more withstand public outrage and technical obsolescence than the Chicago sock yard and Detroit auto makers did.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ajehals ( 947354 )
        I utterly agree. On the value part of the equation I think one of the problems is a kind of 'Intellectual Property' inflation, it is fairly simple for a professional photographer to put a value on an image before it is purchased and to a certain degree use that to determine the price of an *accidentally* misused image. For a non professional there seems to be a feeling that a photo is worth far more than it is, not because that's what its worth to them, or because they have suffered damage to that value, b

    • Re:Copyright is easy (Score:4, Funny)

      by jollyreaper ( 513215 ) on Wednesday January 09, 2008 @11:39PM (#21979934)

      How a large media organisation that happens to receive a large income based on the 'intellectual property' it owns, that shows warnings on its television broadcasts pertaining to copyright and presumably has a legal department and employs well educated staff can do something like this is unbelievable.
      Simple answer: they only care about this essential principle of freedom and commerce and the American way because it suits them in this instance. When the shoe is on the other foot, who the hell cares?

      Whenever a powerful organization with a vested interest is trying to convince me of something, I just think of Col. Sanders sitting down with his chickens to have a chat about how deep-frying is good for the skin.

      • Whenever a powerful organization with a vested interest is trying to convince me of something, I just think of Col. Sanders sitting down with his chickens to have a chat about how deep-frying is good for the skin.


        Depends on your definition of "good". I personally think it makes it damn tasty.

  • Not that hard (Score:5, Insightful)

    by adona1 ( 1078711 ) on Wednesday January 09, 2008 @09:12PM (#21978680)
    With photos it's easy....if it's online, then you most likely don't have the right to use it. If you want a photo, take one yourself or pay someone for theirs.

    However, no one expects the powerful to actually heed the rules...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by daeg ( 828071 )
      A certain unnamed media organization (large outfit, huge company, top 10 market) I used to work for had little-to-no idea. When I started working there, they often found pictures for web stories as well as on-air graphics from simple GIS searches. Many of them didn't know what they were doing wrong, and when informed, the general reaction was, "Really? I thought Internet stuff wasn't copyrighted."

      The sad thing is, the art department had a better, high resolution, accessible, indexed repository the company w

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by deniable ( 76198 )
        GIS = Geographic Information System, right, or do you mean something else? Your post reads a little bit strange.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by daeg ( 828071 )
          GIS, in this case, = Google Image Search. Sorry.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by deniable ( 76198 )
            Yep, that makes a lot of sense. Sounds like these people needed a training course on copyright violation, but that never happens until someone gets sued.

  • Great article... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by KillerCow ( 213458 )
    ... until near the end on the very last page.

    It all gets very meta.


    P.S. not off-topic since this is my commentary on the author's commentary, which is "very meta."
    P.P.S quote used under fair use. HAHA!

  • extreme mooning (Score:5, Funny)

    by 54mc ( 897170 ) <samuelmcraven.gmail@com> on Wednesday January 09, 2008 @09:42PM (#21978948)

    When his initial e-mails to the Microsoft blog asking it to remove links to his photo didn't immediately work, Kennedy replaced the image with one of a man engaging in an activity best described as "extreme mooning." Visitors to the Microsoft blog who clicked on the innocent-looking link were guided to the new photo. Says Kennedy, "They pulled down the link within 15 minutes."
    I can't imagine what image they could possibly be referring to!
  • wasn't the virgin story covered here some time ago?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by radarjd ( 931774 )

      Send them a notice saying that they have two choices: they can comply with the DMCA and take down all content that uses your photos, or they can pay you a nominal fee of $2,500-$5,000/photo to get a full business license to use it in any of their marketing materials online.

      You're getting two legally different concepts confused, I think. First, by "comply with the DMCA", I'm guessing you're referring to the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA which require a service provider to take down a copyrighted work if someone claims ownership of that work. Service provider is defined fairly broadly, but would likely not apply to Fox. It would apply if, for example, someone served a take down notice to Fox's ISP.

      From the summary (naturally, I didn't read the article, I'm merely res

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sharkb8 ( 723587 )
        Except that, unless the copyright's registered, you can only get an injunction and actual damages. You don't get the big money under statutory damages until you register. And if you register after the copying, you don't get statutory damages for the copying that happened prior to the registration.

  • What's really stupid about this... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bones3D_mac ( 324952 ) on Wednesday January 09, 2008 @10:36PM (#21979374)
    ... is that there are massive collections of high-quality royalty free images like these that most of these companies probably already own for their own media productions. Apparently what it's come down to is that it's now far easier to find an image based on any random keyword using google images than it is for these companies to search their own content on their own servers.

    So, how do we fix this without requiring several thousands of man-hours to assign dozens or even hundreds of single word descriptions to each and every image?

    Perhaps one way to go is to create a wikipedia-type system entirely for image collections, then have the content owners submit their content to the system for review by thosands of users at random, each assigning a unique description to each image they encounter. Once a collection has been completely reviewed, the system would then generate a searchable RSS feed specific to that collection that the collection owner could use to let users seach their content locally.

    The actual task of handling the workload wouldn't even have to be considered "work" if you presented it right to the end user. For example, you could set up a multi-player "game" where dozens of people compete within a set time limit to come up with the most unique descriptions, (relative to a dictionary of allowed terms) and then penalize them for repeated descriptions by more than one user. You could even give out weekly prizes to the top players.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by corsec67 ( 627446 )
      Most of the microstock companies that sell Royalty-free images already do that, in the form of tagging and descriptions provided by the photographer.

      For example, my picture of a burning tire [dreamstime.com] has a bunch of tags and a full description so that anyone searching for tires, fire, burning, smoke, etc. can find that picture.

      Now, when the media people buy the images, they just need to keep track of those descriptions and tags, but that is a much smaller problem.

      Google already made that "photo tagging" game, Google [google.com]
      • "Most of the microstock companies that sell Royalty-free images already do that, in the form of tagging and descriptions provided by the photographer.

        For example, my picture of a burning tire has a bunch of tags and a full description so that anyone searching for tires, fire, burning, smoke, etc. can find that picture.

        Now, when the media people buy the images, they just need to keep track of those descriptions and tags, but that is a much smaller problem."

        The problem with that, is that it's only taking desc

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by neomunk ( 913773 )
          What about using google images' search capability with a 'find pictures like this' algorithm ran against your local pile of images? I think that solves everyone's problem, except maybe those who don't have the crunching power to pull off the local search algorithm. I honestly have very little clue as to how much crunch it takes to get THAT particular bowl of Wheaties taken care of, but IIRC it can be done with home-user hardware.

          Scaled up (I assume bigger companies would have bigger repositories of media

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )
      More likely creative people spend a lot of time on line and pilfer stuff from all over the internet, ideas, content, cartoons what ever. Whether it be blogs, web sites or forums like /., I am sure a lot of other peoples work goes on to feed the pigopolists for free.

      Not the most of those people aren't quite happy to share their ideas and content with other people, that just baulk at the idea of sharing 'er' being exploited by greedy ass hat corporations (we reserve the right to steal your stuff and sell it

  • Extreme mooning? (Score:3, Funny)

    by dFaust ( 546790 ) on Wednesday January 09, 2008 @10:57PM (#21979532)

    When his initial e-mails to the Microsoft blog asking it to remove links to his photo didn't immediately work, Kennedy replaced the image with one of a man engaging in an activity best described as "extreme mooning." Visitors to the Microsoft blog who clicked on the innocent-looking link were guided to the new photo.
    Hehehe, I can only assume that's a goatse.cx reference. Linked to from an MS blog. Reading that made me chuckle.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xtracto ( 837672 )
      What I find amazing is that not only did they took the picture but they hotlinked it instead of downloading a copy and hosting it.

      Now, for the legal implications, it could be argued that hotlinking is not distribution or any kind of copyright violation. It is similar to what it is sometimes discussed here in slashdot, if it is in the internet it is available. When you "hotlink" you are not copying or distributing the data, you are just adding a link to such image (see the html source, a href=... source.jpg

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by slcdb ( 317433 )
        IANAL. Now, with that out of the way...

        ... it could be argued that hotlinking is not distribution or any kind of copyright violation.

        I used to feel exactly the same way. But I later realized that there is another exclusive right that copyright holders are granted, the right to make derivative works, which might come into play.

        If the page that is hotlinking to the image can be considered to be a derivative work of another page, or of the photo, then it could still be copyright infringement. Here is the defin

        • IANAL

          You anal? Maybe you should give that guy a call...

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by slcdb ( 317433 )
            LOL. You're right, I should have known better than to use the acronym in a thread titled "Extreme mooning".

            Everytime I see someone say that now, I'll probably think of goatse.cx
            • You know, until I started down that thread, I had never thought of it that way either. Serendipity, I suppose.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by caluml ( 551744 )
        A bunch of RewriteRules will change any image, where the referrer isn't your own domain, into our favourite "extreme mooning" hello.jpg. Stops MySpace people using your pics on their page.
  • No one even begins to discuss the dog's right to be paid for the use of his image!

  • Why would big name corporations even want our point-and-click photographs? [...] "Authenticity is the new consumer sensibility"

    How ironic! While us mere mortals have been struggling for a while in order to emulate professionalism into our amateur work to make it look better, professionals strive to emulate our amateurism to make their work look more "real". Now maybe they'll start teaching photographers and such how to make things look "genuine" (i.e. amateurish) in school. The first lesson's punchline wo

  • If they had copied the photo, hosted it on their own site, and used it without permission, then that would have been copyright infringement.

    What they did, instead, was to link to the photo in its original location. While unethical (leeching), impolite, and potentially costing the photo owner money in the form of bandwidth fees, this is not copyright infringement.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Umuri ( 897961 )
      I'm not sure I follow your assumption.

      They linked to an image, therefore, they used the image, to show something.
      Just because they didn't host a copy of the image themselves doesn't mean they didn't use the image.
      If they linked to the blog or page shell, then it would be attribution, since that page is up there to be viewed.

      A paper and pencil example would be the difference between me opening a book and showing someone a picture in it, and cutting out the picture and pasting it into a report. The first is
    • ... wait, so you're saying that the linking in and of itself is not copyright theft?

      So linking to torrents themselves is not copyright theft, excellent... that finally settled.

      K.
  • I once "nabbed" a half-dozen AP photos & put them on my website for quasi-personal use (grouped the key Elian Gonzales photos into a .gif animation to enhance effect, posted for a few friends to see). Within a few hours, the image was linked to by Drudge Report. Wasn't long before AP lawyers were leaving phone messages for me to cease-and-desist immediately.

    You'd think groups so (justifiably) paranoid about copyright issues would be keenly aware about the legalities of using other peoples' IP.

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