Can a cropped thumbnail of an original image be considered as FairUse?

Linking always to the original URL, and citing the author

[sansanotsansha]

Hi.

I am trying to do a cropped thumbail version (200x200) of each one of the hundreds of original images (1200x800) hosted by 'foo.com'. This 'foo.com' website has thousands of generic images, but I would only select those ones related to the topic of my website (birds of Africa).

I would host the cropped thumbnails in my webservers, and I would link them to the original URL at 'foo.com', citing always the name of 'foo.com' and the author of the picture.

Could be this practice considered as "Fair Use"? I would not like any problem with 'foo.com'.

Thabk you very much!

[keyplyr]

Hi sansanotsansha and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

This is not fair use. You need to ask foo.com for permission. If they OK your request, be sure to save it as proof in case of any later issues.

But when in doubt, best to consult with an attorney.

[Peter_S]

Could be this practice considered as "Fair Use"? I would not like any problem with 'foo.com'.

In that case, why don't you simply ask them?

[sansanotsansha]

Thank you, keyplyr, for your kind answer.

I am trying to connect foo.com to request a permission, but they do not answer my emails.

A question, just for curiosity´s sake. Why can Google do this practice (show a thumbnail version of my images)?

Regards.

[keyplyr]

I have no idea how Google gets away with many things. I consider it copyright infringement.

[Peter_S]

Google displays more than a thumbnail, it renders the full image, and by hot linking it.

I agree with keyplyr about Google Images Search. Google doing something, doesn't mean it's legal, Google is big enough to afford crossing the limit. Now, the big difference is that, with Google you have the right to refuse to get your image indexed. And I think that's the trick, image owners have the choice to allow it or not, and if you allow Google to index your image, you accept the idea they display and hot link them.

[keyplyr]

Just to be clear, Google does not actually hot-link the images they display in image search, nor the images they use in Search.

These are scraped using Googlebot-image and cached on Google servers.

[Peter_S]

Just to be clear, Google does not actually hot-link the images they display in image search, nor the images they use in Search.

These are scraped using Googlebot-image and cached on Google servers.

Only the small thumbnail is cached scrapped and cached by Google. If you click on a thumbnail, Google opens its preview pane, in this "preview", Google loads the full size image, using Javascript (I am not talking about the Display Full Size button). If you right click on the Image, you'll see the URL. So it's hot link :)
Bing, Yahoo, Yandex are doing exactly the same too.

[keyplyr]

I'm aware of that. That's why a lot of people mistakenly think their images are hot-linked but they are not. I've run tests.

Your server is not supplying that image. It is merely linked to your image and the path is being displayed. Google has a mechanism to show the original image url.

Do this test. Find one of your images in Google Image Search. Go to the second image... the one you think is hot-linked. Keep that page open. Then rename the image on your server. Clear browser cache. Then reload that page. The image will still be there because it is a cached file on Google servers. If it was a hot-linked image from your server, the one on the Google page would disappear. But it doesn't.

Google Image Search had a dozen of my images up there for about 2 weeks after I removed them from my server and returned a 410 Gone. Finally Googlebot-image recrawled and removed them.

[Peter_S]

I don't know what to say, jut that images at Google Image Search from "my" site are served from "my" server, I am fully affirmative with this. I monitor in real time all hits at my server, with tools I developed myself, and for example, if I search for an image from my site at Google Image Search, when the image is displayed in their preview pane, there is a hit at my server for this image, and with "my" IP. Once, I made an experimentation, to add, over an image, the IP from which it has been accessed (the image being processed by a PHP script), and anyone viewing the preview pane at Google, had their IP address showing over the image.

So may be Google is doing differently with different sites, or may be it depends of the size of images I don't know.

I have more than 500.000 images indexed by Google.

[lucy24]

When they went over to new-style image searching (anomalously, I think google copied from bing) I did the same experiment keyplyr describes. At that time I also noticed that their saved images are always in png format even if the original was jpg; I don't know if this is still the case.

The potential confusion is that the image the user sees is not the image Google requests. If your primary concern is with server load, it may seem an academic distinction.

[Peter_S]

With Google Chrome's developer tool opened, if you go to Google Image Search, you will see that, when you click on a thumbnail to bring the "preview" pan, the image is downloaded from the original server (you see it in the network pan, which shows the network activity of chrome).

[lucy24]

Yes, that's what I meant by “academic distinction”.

[graeme_p]

I suggest you ask a lawyer, or read up in detail. You can probably find a precedent. Reading this:

[fairuse.stanford.edu ]

It looks to me as though your use is "limited and transformative" therefore it is OK (but read the rest of the article).

The problem is that if the web site has deeper pockets than you, even if you are strictly right, the cost of showing it in court may be prohibitive.

[Peter_S]

Thank you graeme_p for this link! I've been looking for it for years! I came upon it some years ago, but forget to bookmark it, then I couldn't remember where it was :). There is another page I am not succeeding to find again, this was some kind of Law School, in the USA, which was offering free legal assistance provided by students. It was free, because it was training for the students, but you could make a donation too.

[londrum]

200x200 is pretty big for a thumbnail. That's large enough for people to use as an image.

[lucy24]

A further potential problem is that example.com themselves may not own rights to the images. They may have contracted with the photographers to display pictures of a particular size and resolution in a particular context. If you're cropping and resizing the images for display on a different site, you may well be infringing on the original photographers' rights. So it's not just one permissions request but hundreds.

[graeme_p]

londrum's point affects whether or not it is fair use. Heavy cropping will help you (i.e. the more different the image is from the original, the more likely it is to be "transformative"), as will the small size relative to be original.

lucy is right that if it is not fair use, they may not be in a position to give you permission because they have limited licences themselves.

I cannot emphasise the point about deeper pockets too much. I recently spent a long time reading a site that I heard about because they had to remove a lot of images taken from another site despite the fact that their usage (images heavily and hilariously annotated) was clearly fair use - but an individual blogger did not want to fight it out in court. Luckily for her a number of other sites have not objected so the site is still mostly intact.

[Marshall]

You might find this useful.
[copyright.gov...]
[copyright.gov...]
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