Federal Judge Says Embedding a Tweet Can Be Copyright Infringement (eff.org) 149
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Rejecting years of settled precedent, a federal court in New York has ruled [PDF] that you could infringe copyright simply by embedding a tweet in a web page. Even worse, the logic of the ruling applies to all in-line linking, not just embedding tweets. If adopted by other courts, this legally and technically misguided decision would threaten millions of ordinary Internet users with infringement liability.
This case began when Justin Goldman accused online publications, including Breitbart, Time, Yahoo, Vox Media, and the Boston Globe, of copyright infringement for publishing articles that linked to a photo of NFL star Tom Brady. Goldman took the photo, someone else tweeted it, and the news organizations embedded a link to the tweet in their coverage (the photo was newsworthy because it showed Brady in the Hamptons while the Celtics were trying to recruit Kevin Durant). Goldman said those stories infringe his copyright. "[W]hen defendants caused the embedded Tweets to appear on their websites, their actions violated plaintiff's exclusive display right; the fact that the image was hosted on a server owned and operated by an unrelated third party (Twitter) does not shield them from this result," Judge Katherine Forrest said.
This case began when Justin Goldman accused online publications, including Breitbart, Time, Yahoo, Vox Media, and the Boston Globe, of copyright infringement for publishing articles that linked to a photo of NFL star Tom Brady. Goldman took the photo, someone else tweeted it, and the news organizations embedded a link to the tweet in their coverage (the photo was newsworthy because it showed Brady in the Hamptons while the Celtics were trying to recruit Kevin Durant). Goldman said those stories infringe his copyright. "[W]hen defendants caused the embedded Tweets to appear on their websites, their actions violated plaintiff's exclusive display right; the fact that the image was hosted on a server owned and operated by an unrelated third party (Twitter) does not shield them from this result," Judge Katherine Forrest said.
Obviously (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course news orgs should pay royaltees but should Google and Twitter who do it automatically (no)?
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Why should they pay royalties?
It is a tweet, not a book. Why should a tweet be considered to have more artistic value than any other short statement.
Does this mean that we are no longer allowed to cite people without their consent? If that is the case we might just as well shut down every newspaper and news channel right now.
The judge is wrong and his statement is a threat to free speech.
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This is not about some 140 or 280 character statement. This was concerning a photo.
Why should a photo shared via Twitter be treated as having less artistic value than if published on an another web page, printed in a magazine or displayed at a gallery?
Having said that, it is not the embedding of the tweet that should have been addressed, but rather any unauthorised use of that photo in the first place. If the person uploading the photo to Twitter didn't have the right to do so, that person should be dragged
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Looks like Twitter should set up some kind of automatic micro-payment syndication system between their users and the other companies like Google. If an image or tweet is used then the royalties are paid for automatically by an account registered to Google.
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Informative)
Images uploaded to social media are provided under a non-exclusive agreement that the platform can copy and display it within their own framework. That framework extends to embedding because it's part of the structure.
That the original uploader didn't have the right to upload it isn't (or shouldn't be, given this case) on Twitter or any other platform. It's on the person that uploaded it. To require social media--or any other distribution platform--to confirm rights prior to accepting a submission would end every hosted service, not just social media. Web hosting providers could no longer safely operate due to the risk that their customers might upload some content to which they don't have rights.
The DMCA has plenty of flaws, but the safe harbor provision is a cornerstone of how the web works.
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Yeah, but that mope didn't have any cash, so we're flailing for someone else to sue.
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And a word evokes 1000 images.
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Speaking of book, the old proverb comes to mind; an image is worth 1,000 words.
And a word evokes 1000 images.
And this is how we get inflation.
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Trial court judges do not have remotely the power that you ascribe. These kinds of rulings do not have precedence. Precedence requires response from the appellate courts. In fact, these kinds of rulings are the very reason that appeals courts exist: to review the case and ensure that the law was properly applied.
This came from a bad reading of the law. It happens. Even the best judges screw up sometimes. Then appeals happen and the rulings get overturned and remanded. The judge issues a new ruling, or carri
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And none of what you cite has happened yet. It's now a part of case law, flawed (or not) as it might be. For now, it has a chilling effect on speech, somewhere in the fulcrum between original rights holders/copyright owners of a photo, and those that might disseminate the photo.
The web has serious ambiguity problems as regards the use of photos on other sites. Take Flickr, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snap(stuff), and more. Unless one reads the ToS of each site and acts appropriately, the copyright
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The ruling came down yesterday. No appeal is filed and heard that fast absent extremely exigent circumstances, and this doesn't qualify. At this point, the defendants (listed below) can choose to appeal and have the resources to do so, and given the effect of such a ruling, I'm sure they are doing just that.
Defendants:
Boston Globe Media Partners, Inc.
Breitbart News Network, Llc
Gannett Company, Inc.
Heavy, Inc.
Herald Media, Inc.,
New England Sports Network, Inc.
Time, Inc.
Vox Media, Inc.
Yahoo, Inc.
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Honestly, I don't know if news orgs should have to pay royalties. If someone posts something publicly on twitter, that becomes a statement of public record. As far as I know, news agencies don't have any obligation to pay copyright royalties to quote public statements. It gets a little tricky with the question, "Can a photo be considered a quote?" but in the context of a tweet, I think they should be able to quote the entire tweet with any content it includes.
Some guy copies the photo and posts it witho
Re:Obviously (Score:4, Insightful)
If someone posts something publicly on twitter, that becomes a statement of public record.
By that logic then, if the New York Times posts one of their staff photographer's photos on Twitter, that's a part of the public record, and anyone else, including other newspapers can use it as well, since that becomes a statement of public record.
Re:Obviously (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly, basically... yes. I think if the New York Times tweets something, then as a public statement, it should be able to be "quoted" as an issue of fair use-- especially for the purpose of reporting news. It's like if I go out into a public forum and make a statement, and then the news reports exactly what I said, word for word, I shouldn't be allowed to sue them for copyright violation.
Now it's not as simple as all that. There can be and should be limits. A public figure shouldn't be able to sue a news agency for copyright violation for accurately reporting what they say. However, if you write a play and have a public performance, I think it's fair to say that it's a copyright violation to reproduce the entire play, publishing the entire script or performing the play in full. However, I don't think it's a copyright violation to quote a line from the play. It's not a copyright violation for the news to show a picture of the play, or to report what happens in a scene of the play.
And that's where this gets a bit dicey: Can a picture be part of a quote? If a newspaper can quote a public statement, and I make a public statement with a photo attached as an integral part of that statement, can the picture be "quoted" under fair use? I would say yes, that makes sense to me. I don't know if there's a particular law or precedent that addresses it specifically, but given the multimedia nature of modern computing, I would think a news organization should be able to report a "quote" that includes an image or even a video clip, under fair use.
So under that logic, a newspaper shouldn't be able to simply take a staff photographer's image from a NYT twitter post, and post it as their own on the front page. However, they should be able to write a story that includes that tweet, reporting "The New York Times tweeted this picture."
And I think it gets even harder to argue it's inappropriate when it's an embedded tweet. If the New York Times knowingly posts a picture onto a platform that allows an encourages people to embed content in other sites, then they should expect that it will be embedded. Twitter's Terms of Service includes this:
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). This license authorizes us to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same.
Given all of this, I don't think news agencies should be held responsible for embedding an entire tweet, reporting "someone has tweeted this." If the someone else posted your copyrighted content on Twitter, then the person who posted it should be responsible for copyright violation. Or perhaps you could argue that Twitter is responsible because they have inadequate copyright protections.
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Honestly, basically... yes. I think if the New York Times tweets something, then as a public statement, it should be able to be "quoted" as an issue of fair use-- especially for the purpose of reporting news.
Isn't the judge making a distinction between quoting wording and copying an image? If that's the case, someone should create a webpage that takes the words of a tweet and reformats those words into a different image. That should get around the judge's objection.
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I only skimmed the decision, but I didn't actually see where the judge made that distinction.
I don't think the issue is that the embedded tweet is appearing as an image, and someone is claiming that reproducing the exact image of the tweet's text is a copyright violation. Rather, newspapers are being sued because they embedded a tweet that includes a photo, and the copyright owner of that photo is claiming infringement.
So then I was making the point that, although words can be copyrighted, if I say, "Tom
Re: Obviously (Score:2)
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That is correct because that action releases it to the public domain. I can't even believe you didn't already realize this. That is not the issue here. The rightsholder didn't post to Twitter, an unauthorized third party did.
I misunderstood the issue. Mea culpa. Thanks for the clarification.
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
Implications and whether or not current copyright law is fit for purpose aside, legislation under the Berne Convention is pretty clear: unauthorised reproduction that does not comply with any explicitly granted permissions of use is a breach of copyright, and that applies to code under the GPL and Creative Commons (amongst licenses) as well as traditional publications, photographs, audio, video and so on. In the case of a photograph, then the copyright belongs to the photographer in the first case, and their agency/publisher only if they have agreed to transfer the rights - if anyone else re-uses that image without express permission, then they have breached the copyright.
Now, if you want to try and assign responsibility for an image embedded in a tweet (or any other form of online post), it's going to get messy however you slice it. Copyright is all about controling others ability to reproduce the data, and the owner of the copyright putting some data into a public forum like Twitter or whatever does not change that right. Publishing a book puts the text into a public forum, yet you can't arbitrarily decide to OCR it and publish your own version of the book without any fear or legal repercussion, for instance. So, unless there is an explicit granting of a license to retweet an image, by doing so - technically - you are going to be in breach of copyright, not Twitter. At best, Twitter can be accused of helping to facilitiate that infringement and perhaps not taking sufficient steps (quite what those might be, however... asking for an affirmative consent to retweet, blocking all image retweets?) to prevent it, only far too many people turn a blind eye to this because retweets = higher profile = (hopefully!) profit. This is why such services often try to cut through the whole mess by including a clause in their ToS/EULA that grants them - as a platform - the right to reproduce the content at will within the confines of that platform; take an image from Twitter and post it elsewhere, and that is no longer Twitter's problem if the copyright owner decides to sue. And that's before you consider the issue of fair use; a snippet of a larger text is one thing, an image is (usually) the entire work, so where do you draw the line for something in the public interest, just how do you define public interest, and should that be any different to a random picture of whatever?
There's a lot of scary implications for both the operators and users of online services here, whichever way any potential legislative ruling might decide to view this kind of thing. While we tend to prefer things to be nice and clear cut with a clear demarcation line separating black from white, in this instance I think it might actually be better for the majority of people on all sides to just leave things in a grey area and rely on the spirit of the law and likely intent as the decider in any legal action that might be undertaken.
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Copyright is all about controling others ability to reproduce the data, and the owner of the copyright putting some data into a public forum like Twitter or whatever does not change that right.
Posting your content to Twitter actually does change that. It has to. If you don't give a social media company some rights to reproduce your work, then they simply can't host it. All of their data is reproduced, cached, and distributed constantly, so you need to grant some kind of license for them to do that.
More specifically, from Twitter's terms of service:
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). This license authorizes us to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same. You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to provide, promote, and improve the Services and to make Content submitted to or through the Services available to other companies, organizations or individuals for the syndication, broadcast, distribution, promotion or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use. Such additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services.
So that's still a bit vague. You can look at phrases like, "subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use", which would lead you to rev
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Twitter's transfer of rights is probably not binding, because they didn't pay for it. IANAL, but I have done some recording. When we hired sidemen for our project, our lawyer told us we had to pay them (even if they were friends who would play for barter). If we weren't paying the going rate for X hours of recording time, the work for hire agreements would be tossed if any issues came up.
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Not all photographers work that way. Many photographers do flat-fee photography as a work for hire, where they charge you a flat fee for the amount of time spent, and you own the results. The ones that don't do that are mostly portrait photographers. They do the sitting significantly below cost, and in exchange, they require that you buy any copies of the photo through them in the hopes of making up the difference.
IMO, the best approach is to offer both models, at the customer's option. If the customer
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It gets a little tricky with the question, "Can a photo be considered a quote?"
It isn't tricky at all. It's been settled for a long time that a photograph is protected by copyright.
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Words are also protected by copyright. However, you can still quote people. Movies are protected by copyright, but the news can still show clips.
As I've pointed out elsewhere, posting material on Twitter already gives Twitter a wide license to distribute that material. However, all of that aside, if Twitter is selling itself as a public forum and source of news, and it's encouraging news organizations to embed and report on their tweets, then I don't think you can blame news organizations for reporting,
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Words are also protected by copyright. However, you can still quote people.
Words are only protected by copyright when they are put in a fixed, tangible medium. Something a person says during an interview can not be protected.
Movies are protected by copyright, but the news can still show clips.
If it's a small percentage of the work shown for the purpose of criticism or analysis, then yes, there would be a fair use exemption. A news agency still can't post the entire work, which is what posting a photograph would be. The press is granted more leeway when it comes to copyright, but it has been settled for a long time that that doesn't include reproduc
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As I've pointed out elsewhere, posting material on Twitter already gives Twitter a wide license to distribute that material.
That doesn't matter if the person posting the material doesn't own the copyright and therefore doesn't have the right to grant Twitter that license.
It absolutely does.
Twitter acted in good faith, believing that they have been granted a license.
People commonly post photographs that they have taken to twitter. They had no reason to believe that the person posting this image did not have the right to do so.
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On a practical level, it can't work that way. If Twitter is responsible for verifying that the photos in tweets aren't violating copyright, then Twitter can't allow people to post photos. In addition, you could use that logic to argue that Google is responsible for making sure that they don't index or cache any copyrighted data, and ISPs might be responsible for making sure that they don't allow copyrighted information to pass over their network.
My understanding of how it works is that each of these comp
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So I should clarify my earlier statements. Twitter isn't liable if a user posts protected material and other people view it; Twitter still doesn't have "a wide license to distribute that material", they just aren't liable for damages. That is also different from
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Twitter isn't liable if a user posts protected material and other people view it; Twitter still doesn't have "a wide license to distribute that material", they just aren't liable for damages.
Well no, you're mixing up two things. What you're talking about protects Twitter from liability for copyright violation in cases where a Twitter user posts something that violates copyright. If a user uploads pirated material, for example, Twitter is not liable as long as they take the content down when notified of the violation. That's one thing.
Then, on a separate subject, there's the question of why Twitter isn't liable for copyright violations when a copyright holder tweets his own material. The an
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Well no, you're mixing up two things. What you're talking about protects Twitter from liability for copyright violation in cases where a Twitter user posts something that violates copyright. If a user uploads pirated material, for example, Twitter is not liable as long as they take the content down when notified of the violation. That's one thing.
Then, on a separate subject, there's the question of why Twitter isn't liable for copyright violations when a copyright holder tweets his own material. The answer is, Twitter's terms of service provides a wide license for Twitter to redistribute that content.
I wasn't mixing up those things, it's just that the topic of this thread has drifted enough that it isn't clear anymore exactly what we're talking about. Both of your statements here are true, and I didn't mean to disagree with either of them. I was just trying to say that, as in the case of the article, if a user posts someone else's protected material to Twitter, Twitter doesn't technically have a license for that material, because the user doesn't have the right to grant a license. As you pointed out, th
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Words are only protected by copyright when they are put in a fixed, tangible medium.
Speeches are often written down first, and news agencies can still quote them. They can also quote books and other "fixed, tangible media".
If it's a small percentage of the work shown for the purpose of criticism or analysis, then yes, there would be a fair use exemption.
That's not exactly true. I'm not a lawyer, but this is my understanding:
Fair Use doesn't necessarily require that it's used for "criticism or analysis". There are a bunch of different purposes that can justify a fair use exemption, one of them being the news. Also, it's not exactly true that the reproduction must only be a small percentage of the work. The reproduc
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As I understand the law, the person who tweeted the photo is guilty of copyright infringement, almost certainly criminal copyright infringement. (Note: my understanding should NOT be taken as approval.) If the photographer did not send Twitter a DMCA notice, Twitter's fine. If Twitter were to ignore a DMCA takedown request, Twitter would be just as liable (and has deeper pockets). That applies to everyone who linked to it, and if the photographer wanted those photos taken down the photographer needed
Billboard sign (Score:2)
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It's just illegal for news agencies to report that you posted it.
It isn't illegal for a news agency to report that you posted protected material, but it is illegal for them to post additional copies themselves.
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next up, copy & paste made illegal (Score:2)
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Copyright law not are not just for elecronic media (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is the problem.
Copyrights were made back in the printed press days. In order to violate a copyright law you needed an expensive printing press. That often required a business of printing/publishing material. So the individual copyright violator should be expected to pay large penalty, because if they have the resources to gain access to a printing press, they also have enough resources to understand the law, and they would be part of a small number of people who may be hurting the copyright holder.
However today, it is harder to not break a copyright law then to follow it. Because digital media which is cheap and acceptable by all, is designed to make exact copies and spread them very easily. So we are having 18th century punishment aimed at obvious offenders, hitting individuals who just wanted to share some interesting information, that takes two button presses.
Re:Copyright law not are not just for elecronic me (Score:5, Insightful)
So we are having 18th century punishment aimed at obvious offenders, hitting individuals who just wanted to share some interesting information, that takes two button presses.
I wouldn't be so hard on the 18th century.
It's us who won't let Steamboat Willie enter the public domain almost a century after it was created, not them. They understood reasonable copyright terms.
Re:Copyright law not are not just for elecronic me (Score:5, Funny)
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You raise an interesting point. What I don't understand is how independent photographers are supposed to make a living if the large news organizations can use their content for free. It seems like copyright only works for large corporations.
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It is a general problem with the justice system. Where people who have more, have the resources to more aggressively protect themselves while the individual who have less, cannot. At least without the cost of trying to fight such battles.
If you give up, you loose a month of income. If you win, you are in debt for life. Only if you win big then you can get both sides.
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They can make a living the same way other contract workers do. Charge a higher fixed fee for services rendered rather than try and claim ownership of all work created and charge fees for use or reproduction.
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It's not just that. Copyright terms are long. This might make sense in a world where copying is hard and distribution is slow; but in a world with rapid communication, copyrighted material gets consumed quickly. It ceases to be unique and new in a short time, and becomes common; then, it remains owned.
It seems the whole monetization process happens a lot faster now, and so terms should be shorter.
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Youtube realizes this. Which is why new channels can't monetize their Youtube videos until after they went viral. (eg. no until until after one week after 1000 subs)
Rmember when you said... (Score:1, Insightful)
Remember when you said "the judge should rule on the 'right' thing instead of on the letter of the law and the facts of the matter?" This is the result.
The last decade has seen an amazing number of cases of judges exceeding their authority, ignoring precedent/case law (that is their prerogative, though), and ignoring the laws as written (that is the part that is most troubling). Conservatives derisively refer to judges that do that sort of thing as "activist judges", progressi
Re:Rmember when you said... (Score:5, Insightful)
. Conservatives derisively refer to judges that do that sort of thing as "activist judges", progressives applaud those judges for "doing the right thing", and the result is at some point the judicial branch will no longer respect its role as a co-equal branch of government and instead think it is superior to the others.
Almost- both ends of the political spectrum get very angry when judges do this when it in the direction they don't like. The right just doesn't label those as "activist judges." Complicating matters even further, the most prominent cases we notice are cases going to the Supreme Court. And the easy cases don't get there which means that generally the cases people notice are the cases that involve vague wording or trying to use very old precedents to understand new technologies, or otherwise somehow unique, and so by nature the justices have substantially less to go on than simply interpreting a narrowly written law.
Re:Rmember when you said... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when you said "the judge should rule on the 'right' thing instead of on the letter of the law and the facts of the matter?" This is the result.
No, I certainly never said that. I don't know anyone who has argued in favor of that. What you're talking about is the "liberal" tendency to oppose "originalists".
The problem is, even being an originalist requires interpretation. How exactly does 18th century copyright law apply to computing? There was no original intention for how it should apply to computing, because computers didn't exist. Absent a new law that is designed to apply to computing, an originalist needs to make a bunch of guesses and interpretations about how that law should apply.
But people who call themselves "originalists" are generally too dim to recognize that. They make arbitrary decisions that fail to recognize context or the subtlety of language. Others are simply dishonest-- they know they're making interpretations, but they're cynically using the concept of "originalism" to justify crappy judgements that suit their own political interests.
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I'm a liberal, and I oppose people who claim that their particular reading of the Constitution is the one everyone should go by. I prefer reading the actual words for myself, and I'll happily argue interpretations.
As far as copyright law goes, the Constitution permits Congress to allow limited-time monopolies for purpose of the advancement of science and the useful arts. Therefore, how copyright law applies to computers and such depends on what Congress decides to do with this authority. There are law
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The last decade has seen an amazing number of cases of judges exceeding their authority... and ignoring the laws as written (that is the part that is most troubling).
Can you point to a not-insignificant number of cases where a judge simply ignored a law, as opposed to ruling that a law contradicts some other law or the Constitution?
regardless of how you feel about the travel ban, there is practically no question at all the executive gets to decide who enters the country and who gets kept out based on current immigration law and judges acting the way they did subverted both the legislature and the executive
Obviously there's a question, because numerous judges ruled that the travel ban was not legal. I don't know the specific details of the immigration laws, but in general, the executive branch cannot change policies on a whim. As was made clear in cases last year, such as with certain changes made by the EPA, the law dictates the exact procedur
Wingnut projection (Score:3)
The judges who are the most "activist" and actively ignore the wording of the Constitution are conservatives....and people who claim to be originalists, like St. Scalia. [nytimes.com]
Who has money? (Score:5, Insightful)
If anyone violated the copyright I would think it was the person who originally tweeted the picture since they distributed a copyrighted image. I understand the argument the judge appears to make that if they display a copyrighted image without permission they are guilty of copyright infringement regardless of who actually hosts the image, I can see why the photographer went after them since they have the money, and would have done much more infringement due to the widespread views, to pay out if they ultimately lose, vs. some random Twitter user.
This is yet another example of how copyright laws need to be updated and clarified for the digital age. In print it was a lot harder to get and use an image and who published it was clear; now you can scope images off the web easily and once someone takes an image it is still available even if the original is no longer available. Another issue is 99.99% of the stuff tweeted or otherwise distributed by users is worthless garbage; so how do you balance protection for artists and keeping the garbage flowing freely?
Well ... Ugh. (Score:4, Insightful)
User A takes a picture. They have a copyright on said picture.
User B shares that picture on social media. This is the first copyright violation. (But is it necessarily User B's fault? Linking to a story/page often automatically includes an image, which is most likely copyrighted).
User C embeds User B's twitter post, on their site, including the infringing content.
Should User C be held liable for the copyright violation, but not User B?
Should User B be held liable for User C's violation?
If the social media service (or 3rd party client), when User B shares a link to a page containing the image, automatically adds the image to the post, thus resulting in an inadvertent copyright violation on the user's behalf, should the social media service (or 3rd party client) be held liable, or is it still User B's responsibility, and social media service doesn't give a rat's ass because they're covered under DMCA?
Re:Well ... Ugh. (Score:4, Funny)
If the social media service (or 3rd party client), when User B shares a link to a page containing the image, automatically adds the image to the post, thus resulting in an inadvertent copyright violation on the user's behalf, should the social media service (or 3rd party client) be held liable,
Hold the social media service liable. Sharing photos should be banned on socialist media sites, since the only purpose of sharing is copyright violation. It's just like torrent sites whose sole purpose is piracy.
Ban all sharing on socialist media! This will also save incredible amounts of bandwidth on the Internet.
So your friend has a cute picture of his cat and can't share it with you. Too bad. If you really want see the damn cat, go visit your friend, instead of committing piracy copyright violations.
All copyrights on pictures belong to the manufacturer of the camera. That's nice and simple.
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If the social media service (or 3rd party client), when User B shares a link to a page containing the image, automatically adds the image to the post, thus resulting in an inadvertent copyright violation on the user's behalf, should the social media service (or 3rd party client) be held liable,
Hold the social media service liable. Sharing photos should be banned on socialist media sites, since the only purpose of sharing is copyright violation. It's just like torrent sites whose sole purpose is piracy.
The social media service is shielded by the DMCA, provided that they respond to legitimate copyright claims by removing the infringing content.
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Should User C be held liable for the copyright violation, but not User B?
There's no reason that both User B and User C can't be liable for their separate acts of infringement.
Should User B be held liable for User C's violation?
It is possible that User C could successfully sue User B to recover the damages that User C had to pay. It would probably depend on a lot of the details of the case.
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Honestly it depends on how B & C are using it. In this particular case User C is using the image commercially and could be diminishing the value of the work (e.g. the photographer sells photos to media). On the other hand user B isn't using the image commercially and depending on how they used the image it could even be fair use.
The other fact to remember with User C is that their infringement is wilful, they should have a clear understanding of copyright and a policy for sourcing images. Despite this
Try reading the TOS (Score:3)
Emphasis mine:
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). This license authorizes us to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same. You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to provide, promote, and improve the Services and to make Content submitted to or through the Services available to other companies, organizations or individuals for the syndication, broadcast, distribution, promotion or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use. Such additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services.
Mod parent up (Score:2)
This. Exactly. The person who is liable for both the original infringement as well as the newspaper's is the person who violated the TOS. Twitter is at least obligated to shut down the original infringer's account (or they can be sued for failing to do so).
If there were no such wording in the TOS, they would ordinarily each be responsible for their own infringement.
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[Terms of Service Snipped]
None of what you posted is relevant to this case, though. The copyright owner did not tweet it; someone else did.
That said, this judgment is highly flawed, and made by someone who apparently has zero knowledge of how the Web works (or, apparently, the Internet itself). Here is a common scenario ignored by the judge:
1) Someone posts something on the Web, and the entire posting is Copyright clean.
2) Someone else links to the posting.
3) The original someone subsequently alters the o
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2) Someone else links to the posting.
Linking to a page is not the same as including a copy of it in your own page.
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Linking to a page is not the same as including a copy of it in your own page.
But that's exactly what happened in this case. Someone merely linked to an existing tweet, and this judge said that was copyright infringement.
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[W]hen defendants caused the embedded Tweets to appear on their websites, their actions violated plaintiff's exclusive display right;
The pages were showing the message, including the photograph, not just a link to Twitter's web site.
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But according to the headline, "Federal Judge Says Embedding a Tweet Can Be Copyright Infringement". The embedder did not violate copyright, or at least can't be held liable due to DMCA safe harbor. They legally embedded a Tweet that they were allowed to embed. The person who posted the Tweet is the one who violated copyright. If the tweet is removed, the embeds will also be removed.
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Justin Goldman did not post the photo to Twitter himself. His Copyright was violated by the person that submitted the photo to Twitter without his consent.
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I'm not claiming no copyright was violated. I'm just saying the third party embedders aren't the ones who violated it. The original tweeter who posted the image did.
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Twitter's lawyers aren't there to protect you. Those lawyers aren't the defendants' lawyers, and they don't represent the defendants. Terms of Service don't protect users from anything. As far as I can see, they're irrelevant in this court case.
The people who uploaded the photo wronged the copyright holder. So did the defendants. I'm no lawyer, but I find it hard to argue with those facts.
It seems to me the defendants (news websites) must have known they risked being sued when they embedded those tweets.
I'm
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Aside from the fact that the photographer didn't upload it himself, that contract probably isn't valid because Twitter hasn't paid for the copyrighted material.
When I was making a music album a few years back, our lawyer told us that "work for hire" couldn't apply unless we paid the going wage to any other musicians who recorded with us (even if they were friends who would work for barter).
The twitter contract might hold up as long as they didn't make any money off of it, but as soon as they are accepting a
...and another judge dismissed a simliar case. (Score:1)
Meanwhile, a federal judge has dismissed a case Playboy brought against Happy Mutants, the parent company of Boing Boing for doing something similar.
The article on Ars: https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
From the article:
Back in November 2017, Playboy Entertainment Group sued Boing Boing, accusing it of violating the company’s copyright when, in February 2016, the website simply linked to a separate online collection of "Every Playboy Playmate Centerfold Ever." That portfolio, which was hosted on Imgur
Wouldn't the only possible responsible party be... (Score:4, Informative)
...whatever person posted it to Twitter?
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Isn't this what a DMCA takedown request is for?
Good (Score:2)
Twitter Gives You Embeddng Code (Score:3)
When you try to share a tweet, Twitter gives you code to embed it on a page. Is Twitter contributing to copyright infringement?
You can't have your cake and eat it (Score:2)
Tim Berners-Lee made his opinion about this perfectly clear in a 1997 document. The bottom line is simple: if you don't want something linked to, don't put it on the World Wide Web.
'Myth: "A normal link is an incitement to copy the linked document in a way which infringes copyright".
'This is a serious misunderstanding. The ability to refer to a document (or a person or any thing else) is in general a fundamental right of free speech to the same extent that speech is free. Making the reference with a hyperte
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To be fair, I don't think this guy put the image online. Other people did. However, the person to go after would be the person who put it online in the first place, knowing it was copyrighted.
News Agencies and Copyright (Score:2)
I thought News Agencies were given a pretty wide latitude when it came to copyright. They can play portions of copyrighted content or show copyrighted images without paying the content owners. Even if you accepted the "linking = infringement" line (which I don't), wouldn't the news agencies be all but immune to this kind of "infringement"?
Do photographs deserve copyright protection? (Score:2)
May be only the photographs registered by paying a fee would be protected by copyright. All other photos are public domain by default.
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The cameras are ubiquitous, and everyone is taking pictures. Is clicking a button a creative process?
Yes. The creativity comes in the framing, composition, lighting, deciding what to take, etc. Most pictures are garbage but that doesn't mean there wasn't a creative process involved.
With so much of anti shake tech, dynamic range tech, image processing enhancement, done by software behind the scenes, how much of artistic work is involved in these clicks?
While those help improve the technical aspects thy don't replace the yet of a great photographer. All the tech in the world won't help you duplicate the majesty of Adam's Moon Over Half Dome
May be only the photographs registered by paying a fee would be protected by copyright. All other photos are public domain by default.
It sort of works that way as you are only able to sue for damages if you register but copyright occurs as soon as you take the picture. May
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A photograph is normally considered a creative work, and so it's under copyright (and not public domain) as soon as it's in a tangible form, which would be immediately on taking it. There advantages in registering the copyright, should your copyright be infringed, but registration costs a little money.
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D'oh! My mom picked up the phone while I was trying to use the Internet (she's supposed to come down to the basement and ask first), so I missed parts of your post. Were you talking about typing letters and words and thoughts and algorithms and novels on keyboards?
Bogus (Score:2)
"[W]hen defendants caused the embedded Tweets to appear on their websites, their actions violated plaintiff's exclusive display right; the fact that the image was hosted on a server owned and operated by an unrelated third party (Twitter) does not shield them from this result,"
This Judge doesn't sufficiently understand what Linking means to make a competent ruling. The website embedding content doesn't Display that content --- visitors' browsers "Display" that content which is presented to the vi
Doesn't twitter own your tweets? (Score:2)
Twitter should change terms (Score:2)
Definitely a bad precedent, though Twitter could change the terms to make clear that that embedding is acceptable and the nature of the beast.
Twitter could also add a no embed options to profiles and in then add provide an option to ignore profiles that donâ(TM)t want embedding? In other words: You donâ(TM)t want visibility: weâ(TM)ll provide you the option, but it comes with potential consequences.
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Twitter should be fine in this case, if they didn't ignore a DMCA takedown notice. It really doesn't matter what Twitter does with profiles and/or terms of service, since the person who uploaded the picture didn't have any right to do so, so Twitter can't offer any rights or follow instructions from the actual photographer's profile (if he has one).
The very definition of a bad ruling (Score:3)
This ruling is a giant step backwards for the modern communication of information. Maybe we need a new kind of court for technical questions of law. We have specialty courts for bankruptcy and specific fields of law, maybe it's time to add a branch for technology and staff it with people who know the difference between embedding a tweet and actual copyright infringement.
Options as a society (Score:2)
Either:
We have to all understand that copying media we didn't actually make without the artists or owner's permission violates at least some social contract to treat artists fairly, despite how easy it is to copy things (even if it requires no action on our part)
Or:
We need to understand that sharing a little bit and sharing with everyone carries no distinction. Uploading to any sort of sharing service that is not intrinsically private is effectively giving something to the public domain. The distinction is
The whole internet is infringing copyright (Score:2)
I support this judgement (Score:2)
I might be in a minority here, but I support this judgement. If you're linking to something you're pointing the user to someone else's content, if you're embedding content you're making it part of your content. If a a photographer put up his own photos on his blog, linking to that blog is how the Internet is supposed to work. If you're hot-linking the photos that's rude, but not illegal since the site is serving them up freely. Implement referrer checks if you don't like it. If somebody else is embedding th
Convoluted (Score:3)
The problem is with copyright law still not being updated and having proper provisions for cases like these that are all too common.
There are two sides to this.
1. It can be frightening to some people the slippery slope that this leads... being sued for embedding a tweet on your blog/website sounds a bit too much, and it shouldn't be allowed. But seeing things like this is just a very very one-sided outlook on the matter. This probably isn't what this case is about;
2. Why do you think big publication websites are being sued on this? Because most likely, they refused to pay the photographer for his work, and instead used the embedded tweet as a workaround to just steal and use his work free of charge. I'm gonna bet that intention was fully estabilished in this case. It's just these publications acting like assholes to exploit the photographer work without paying him. Cases like these have already happened before... in fact, it happens all the time, but in most cases the photographer doesn't have enough money to sue.
If you heard about cases of photographers being fired in masse on media publications, it also has a bit to do with this. Why pay a full time photographer when they can just steal photos online?
The details of the case should estabilish guilt... but I'm betting this is yet another case, like multiple ones I've already read in photography blogs, where the photographer saw the infringement, tried to contact publications about it, they played dumb or outright refused any acknowledgement, and it ended up in court.
And people should know about this: for media publications that will be actively using work of photographers and whatnot, they fully know they can't just yank a photo from the Internet and publish it willy nilly, doesn't matter where it's hosted or by whom. The basis here is that these publications are exploiting the work of photographers without paying for it, while using it to get advertiser or whatever more money for their own profit.
We had extremely debated cases in the past with artists using photography for their own work... I think it was Instagram photos or something to pass as art and reinterpretation, which caused a whole lot of discussion around copyright law, but in cases like media websites it's far more clear cut. As soon as a judge interprets it as intentional usage of photographer work without payment or licensing deal, as a significant part of the article, post, or whatever, they will be in the wrong and have to pay for it.
DMCA should provide immunity (Score:2)
Twitter is bound by the DMCA takedown rules as a 3rd party hoster of content. If someone uses their service to post copyright infringing content, then the copyright holder can send them a DMCA takedown notice. If twitter complies, they are immune from infringement. Twitter generally complies. A 4th party who wishes to link to content hosted at the 3rd party should have even more immunity. Either no DMCA takedown was sent, in which case no liability exists at all for anyone, or one was sent. The 4th parties
HuffPo (Score:2)
Snapchat (Score:2)
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I've been complaining about the braking industry's complete lack of empathy in this area for years.