Fair Use and Images

Thumbnails from originating articles

[bsterz]

Greetings.

I'm creating a newsletter which basically displays excerps from industry-related articles with a link to the article. Is it OK fair use-wise to use a thumbnail from the article in my newsletter?

I'm not looking for definitive legal advice - just common practice experience.

Thanks!

Bill

[stapel]

"Fair Use" generally requires that the use be "transformative". For instance, if you were reviewing a book, you could include a short snippet as an example of the author's phraseology. You would have transformed the original text (part of, say, a novel) into a discussion on a meta-level ("This author couldn't conjugate his way out of a paper bag. For example, '[quote]'. Dreadful!")

On the other hand, "creating" a newsletter by compiling articles from other newsletters is not transformative, because all you've done is turn newsletters into newsletters.

I don't know what you mean by a "thumbnail" of an article. How does one "thumbnail" text? Please clarify what you are wanting to do. Thank you.

Eliz.

Naturally, you'll want to consult with a copyright attorney for iron-clad specifics.

[bsterz]

Hmm..

I didn't say I'd be doing newsletters of newsletters, I said that I'd be doing a newsletter that features articles from industry-related sites. In my newsletter I am considering including an excerpt from the article and a thumbnail from a representative image on the article.

Thanks,

Bill

[stapel]

Okay, so you'll be taking articles and turning them into... collections of articles. How is this "transformative"?

This sounds very much like the "Kinko's" case. Universities didn't want to pay the publishers for "readers", compilations of excepts from various literary and/or historical works. So they took the excerpts they wanted, claimed "Fair Use", and paid Kinko's to print them up. Kinko's was charged with copyright violation, and lost the case.

What you're doing (saving people the cost of subscriptions by providing them with cut-rate excerpts): How is this different from the basic tenor of the "Kinko's" case?

Eliz.

[bsterz]

hmm..good info - thanks

But I'm not giving cut-rate excerpts to save people money..

This is a newsletter that POINTS readers to interesting articles in their industry. Like a blog or RSS feed only in email form. The value to them is that I take the time to aggregate the articles for them.

I get your point on transformative - thanks for the input.

Bill

[Leosghost]

I suspect that these people [news.google.com] may have beaten you to the concept ;)( including using "thumbnails" ..they may even have patented the idea ;)..they may even be being sued for breach / infringement of copyright as we discuss this ;)..do you have their legal capacity and "warchest" to stall the court cases whilst you make money from the idea ..as they are doing?

if so ..use their page as your "thumbnail" ..and see if they sue you for breach /infringement of copyright and or patent ;))

wouldst they dare?

[bsterz]

leosghost - yeah, I saw that under several legal sites as an example for fair-use (news).

My newsletter isn't "news" like that. It's just a plain old newsletter.

[HRoth]

Do you mean making a thumbnail of a screenshot of their site?

[bsterz]

Here is what I'm thinking:

I own industrial-widgets.whatever. I have a house list of email addresses that I want to send a mailing to every month. I decide to send an overview of industry news and events.

So every month I would send an HTML email to my house-list with links to 4 or 5 articles on other websites regarding news and events in my industry. Most of these articles will have images associated with them. With the headline of the article and a brief overview, I was considering adding a thumbnail of the articles main image.

Does that help?

Bill

[HRoth]

I was thinking if the thumbnail were so small it couldn't be read, you wouldn't have to worry about copyright. But these places might have the whole layout copyrighted also. Then I don't know. Isn't there something, though, about it being okay to reproduce a graphic if what you end up with is less than 20% of what you are reproducing? I think also it has to be not recognizable as that graphic. Seems like I remember reading something like that at copyright.gov. Anyone know?