Forum Moderators: not2easy
In a later conversation with this blogger - who is a professional journalist - stated (paraphrasing) that it was better to hotlink the image than copy it outright, because displaying an image that was housed on someone else's server was, in effect, citing the source. He also admitted that omitting my site as the source was an oversight on his part, and ammended his post to credit me.
Since I had already amended my .htaccess file by this time to prevent hotlinking, he took a screen cap of his own, but left the attribution credit.
Putting aside the fact that bandwidth was being leeched, the bigger issue to me is not this one minor incident, but whether the practice of hotlinking as a form of citation is indeed a type of infringement.
I have seen a large wiki-style site also utilize hotlinked images, as what I interpreted as a means of circumventing copyright, but maybe I am way offbase here.
What are your experiences and opinions?
Jim
[law.seattleu.edu...]
I can't find a final opinion/disposition of this case. It's likely that the case settled.
A somewhat different analysis applies to search engines presenting thumbnails of images. A case setting for the analysis is linked here. Basically the court deemed the search results to fall within the fair use exception.
One thing that may have escape some people is the fact that Google does not display paid advertising on either its image results pages nor its news results pages. There's ads everywhere else. ;) A likely explanation for the absence of ads on the image and news results is that such monetizing of the works of other parties would set the stage for a challenge to "fair use". An element of bona fide claim of fair use is the fact that the use is not for the purpose of profiting.
Question: Does the fact that so many scraper sites place AdSense on their pages open the scrapers and Google to an attack based upon copyright violation that does not gain protection under the fair use doctrine?
I can't find a final opinion/disposition of this case. It's likely that the case settled.
Yes, it was.
One thing that may have escape some people is the fact that Google does not display paid advertising on either its image results pages nor its news results pages.
Nor on its "cached" pages. I've been pointing that one out for over a year whenever anyone declares that caching is definitely infringement.
Question: Does the fact that so many scraper sites place AdSense on their pages open the scrapers and Google to an attack based upon copyright violation that does not gain protection under the fair use doctrine?
It certainly increases their potential for liability. Though it still depends on the size of the snippets.
There's an issue of law, which to the best of my knowledge has not been resoloved, and there is (to my mind) the more important issue of what's cool and what's not cool to do to and/or for fellow bloggers.
Bloggers link to each others' stuff -- it's a vital element of what makes blogging work.
It's common -- very common -- for bloggers to simply make copies of pictures posted on the sites of others, and attribute them to the original source, along with a link.
There's a school of thought that says this is the right way to do it.
My own view is that if you're going to link to a site, and you properly attribute it, it's better to use a link to the picture from the site, rather than making a copy of the file. Doing it that way provides the following benefits:
1. It keeps control of the file in the hands of the original poster. They can delete it, modify it or whatever.
2. It "pre-loads" the file for those who choose to link to the item. When the linked page comes up, the picture is likely already loaded in cache in most cases, and boosts the apparent performance of that site.
3. It's less of a copyright violation -- you're not making a copy of a file and keeping it on a server you control, you're just linking to it. It's more akin (though not exactly like) a text-based hyperlink.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that this approach "steals bandwidth." But this seems to me to be a non-issue. First, those who follow the linkn are going to load the picture anyway. And bandwidth "stealing" can be done with conventional links as well. If Slashdot links to your site, it's probably going to crash or cost you a bundle -- no graphic link necessary.
Also: Blogging and bandwidth is cheap. The time we spend on crafting our blogs are the real cost. If a linked picture creates more interest and motivates more readers to view the target site, that creates more visitors for the person who has spent the time and energy to build it.
Thanks for raising this issue here. I've been wanting this conversation to take place in a forum like this for some time.
It would be the polite thing to do, and prevent liability for actual losses should the site being linked to suffer an outage leading to loss of revenue. Even more important, it protects other sites which may share the same server or network infrastructure, and whose loss would not be offset by any increase in traffic or popularity by the blog link these other sites sharing a server might suffer sudden "collateral damage" but gain no long-term benefit.
I understand that this is not the way it is now, with blogs being created and managed rather informally. But in the real world, where commercial interests exist, it's the way it needs to be in order to avoid problems. So now the question becomes, "How can the Web and the blogosphere be made aware of this point of etiquette? Because the underlying rationale is based in technological and legal complexities, making it hard for everyman to understand, and because it throws a damper on the free-for-all that is blogging, how can "Notify and seek permission" become "the cool thing to do?"
Jim
They are two separate worlds, though there are some bloggers that have to live in both worlds. Bloggers have their rules of etiquette, and the corporate world has their own.
While the law may be on the side of the suits more often than the bloggers, that will have no more effect than it has on those that download MP3s (whether legal or not). It is the rules of the group that you belong to that are more important than the laws.
If you care about being part of the blogging community, you don't make a stink about it if it is done to you. If you care about being a part of the corporate community, you will not hotlink to any of their sites.
I'm sure that webwork (or any lawyer for that matter) can tell you about people that have won their legal case, but ruined their reputation in the process.
Sometimes it is better to just let it go and try and see the value in it if the hotlinking doesn't cause any actual problems. The reality is that most blogs are only going to cause a few hundred hits at most. If it is a lot more than that, then of course it would be best to check first.
Personally, I enjoy checking my logs and seeing who is hotlinking to some of the pics on my sites. My favorite one was when a picture of some dirty feet (from backpacking in sandals) started making the rounds on some fetish sites.
Sometimes a site or blog hotlinks and I think to myself, "I really would not mind them hotlinking--they give proper attribution, they link to my site, it's not so bad." But I don't usually put such a site or blog on my hotlink exception list, so they still get the replaced graphic (telling everyone that they swiped the picture without permission).
I think that some webmasters and bloggers don't know that the "This graphic from mysite.com" is showing up for visitors, because the actual picture they wanted to use from my site is in their browser cache, and that's what they're seeing. I am sure that sometimes they are embarassed when it's pointed out to them that the picture they hotlinked isn't showing up--and never was showing up. But too bad, so sad. I'm fed up with hotlinking.
The blogger or webmaster can take my graphic and host it on their own site, and if they do it in a fair use way (link to my site, proper attribution), I won't make a fuss. But I find that probably 90% of hotlinkers and graphics stealers never give my site credit, don't use the graphics they take in any context that is related to my site, and I have no patience for them.
It's even more common for bloggers to simply make copies of a picture or hotlink to a picture without a link and without any attribution.
When those hotlinks cause extra costs for the creator of an image - no wonder blood boils.
That sounds nice in theory, but it doesn't work in practice. Many, many blogs and other sites don't have contact information. And when they do, it can take weeks to get them to respond -- if they respond at all.
Meanwhile, my blog and many others sort of "compete" with a handful of other blogs that are all trying to out-do each other in timeliness. "Beating" each other in getting news, ideas and pictures out there is measured in minutes and seconds.
If I were to adopt a policy of not using someone's picture without permission, I basically wouldn't have any pictures. And photos are a core part of what I'm doing. Meanwhile, the blogs I "compete" with, are just making copies of people's pictures (obviously without prior permission).
The larger point is that displaying someone else's photo by linking to the picture on their site is like grabing a quote from their site, properly attributing it and hyperlinking it to the original post. The quote is as out-of-context as the picture, potentially. When you look at blogs like BoingBoing, you'll notice that they post properly attributed verbaim quotes that are hundreds of words in length. And that's OK. You don't need permission for that.
The question is: why are pictures and text different from a permissions point of view? My view is they are not or should not be different.
Mike
The time we spend on crafting our blogs are the real cost.
And what about the cost of crafting the photos or images? I often travel hundreds of miles to get my photos, then spend some more time editing them. There's a pretty big cost in that too.
If a blogger, or any other webmaster, wants to republish the image, the proper thing to do is obtain permission before publication takes place.
The issue of including components (such as images) from one document in another document was one of the first interesting topics to arise in early hypertext theory. Ted Nelson [en.wikipedia.org], who coined the term "hypertext," referred to this kind of inclusional quotation as "transclusion" and proposed a system for "transcopyright" and "transquotation" coupled with micropayments (a tenth of a cent each time comes to me each time one of my images is viewed via transclusion). If you search for these various words you'll come up with a lot of material.
HTML would have been an even more remarkable thing if transclusion had been possible from the beginning with *text* as well as images. This would have been a simple thing to do: all it would have required is letting URLs specify elements within documents, and not merely whole documents.
Many, many blogs and other sites don't have contact information. And when they do, it can take weeks to get them to respond -- if they respond at all.
"Beating" each other in getting news, ideas and pictures out there is measured in minutes and seconds.
If I were to adopt a policy of not using someone's picture without permission, I basically wouldn't have any pictures.
And photos are a core part of what I'm doing.
The larger point is that displaying someone else's photo by linking to the picture on their site is like grabing a quote from their site, properly attributing it and hyperlinking it to the original post.
A quote doesn't take up our bandwidth--not unless the visitor takes the initiative to click on the link. With hotlinking, the image is pre-loaded, whether the visitor has any interest in seeing it or not. You don't give them the option of clicking the link (going to our site) to see more of what is on *our* site. You just show it to them outright--using our bandwidth in the process.
The quote is as out-of-context as the picture, potentially. When you look at blogs like BoingBoing, you'll notice that they post properly attributed verbaim quotes that are hundreds of words in length. And that's OK. You don't need permission for that.
Like I said before, I don't mind a hotlinker when they use one of my photos to say, "More of this sort of thing at mysite.com" or they make it clear where they got the picture (and the subject they're discussing is related to the content of my site). But most bloggers I encounter don't do that--which is why I now use hotlink protection. I have no patience for this.
I personally experienced a political blogger hotlinking my site logo (a purple crayon) as an illustration for a rant. How can that be OK, especially considering that there are plenty of nice royalty-free images available on CD-ROMs for illustration purposes?
But then they'd have had to a pay a fee, wouldn't they?
Your argument (which clearly is founded in a prevalent attitude among bloggers, as my experience shows) is just a rationalization for actions you take because they are convenient and/or cost-free: taking other people's work.
I work in print publishing. The company I work for uses many excerpts or complete texts from previously published work. Sometimes it takes a long time to get the permission. If we decided not to bother to get permission, because it took too long, I think we'd find that that was no defense when we were taken to court.
If its hard to get permission first, then make the whole image itself a link, with a separate link/attribute
right beneath it. No time wasted, its easy to do.
I check my access logs daily looking for hotlinked images. If I find a nice link and credits I
pretty much let the matter rest. If its unfairly hotlinked (no link/credit) I get busy.
I'd love to see a test case that is not "settled", but results in some ruling. Its not hard to guess
the outcome, I can see why the hot-linkers settle. -Larry
Meanwhile, my blog and many others sort of "compete" with a handful of other blogs that are all trying to out-do each other in timeliness. "Beating" each other in getting news, ideas and pictures out there is measured in minutes and seconds.
This does not give you the right to take someone else's intellectual property. I hope your dealt with appropriately.
The situation was settled amicably. I believe that both ShivaRRR and I are reasonable folks.
I didn't start this thread to crucify him, just to expand the discussion beyond single, minor incident, and beyond the narrow frame of two webmasters.
I believe that the long and short of it is, that it *is* a violation of copyright.
Clearly many bloggers have chosen to solve this problem through the different Creative Commons [creativecommons.org] copyright restrictions.
I am not a participant of the CC, but truthfully this incident has made me rethink it, and I may implement "some rights reserved" on this blog.
I'm all for fair use. But I don't see why bloggers should be treated differently than other of Webmasters. As I've had to pay several times for bloggers who swiped images from my sites, I have no pity for your cause.
I hope that you realize that your action hurts others and cost them money. When I had to block hotlinking from some of my sites, I also suffered inconvenience as it limits my legitimate actions with contents from my own sites.
