Fair Use and Blogging
How much text can you cite from another website in your blog before you've crossed the line and entered into copyright infringement? Is it okay to post an image you didn't create in a blog? Even if it's just for window dressing? Does the "educational" use of blogs in our journalism classes give our bloggers greater freedom and protection to cite text and post multimedia?
I think the answer lies in "Fair Use" law -- especially when it comes to educational blogs. It's fine to post an image of a bull on a toilet if you are discussing that image the way, say, an art student or advertising student might. It's okay to post the full text of a poem if the poem is in 'public domain' because it was published over 75 years ago. But perhaps you've crossed the line if you use them just for window dressing or because you want to share something you like.
I'm not posting this to gag or censor anyone. I just thought I'd raise the topic, because I'm curious what you all think. I'm seeing the blogs get looser and looser with other people's property. It ain't all "open source"; publishing a blog comes with the responsibility of the publisher, doesn't it? A lot of this stuff is murky anymore. Thoughts?
Some links regarding questions of "Fair Use":
+ US Copyright Office on Fair Use
+ Stanford's Fair Use Website
+ Fair use of Copyrighted Works
+ Copyright and Fair Use in the Classroom, on the Internet, and the World Wide Web
+ Electronic Frontier Foundation on Fair Use
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Mike called my bluff!
As a professional author who derives income from his fiction, Mike has a clear stake in the mattter -- and many of you will, too, if you have any hopes of earning your living writing or creating or building or discovering.
My general instructions for how to post a picture on a weblog did say that you should download the photo to your hard drive and then upload it to blogs.setonhill.edu. Of course, those instructions assume you have already determined using the grapic is acceptable.
Now, to be very technical, Paul didn't actually make a copy of the bull graphic -- he linked to an existing copy on somebody else's website. But if 500,000 people all link to that same graphic, the site owner may run into bandwidth problems. In such cases, it may be of service to the graphic artist if you make a copy of the image and link to that instead of the source. But you shouldn't assume the owner of the copyright would want you to make a copy like that.
Plenty of websites offer collections of graphics that the webmasters have collected from elsewhere on the Internet, so there's often no guarantee that, even if a webmaster says "yes," you're really covering your bases.
This past July, a US court upheld a ruling against a photographer who argued that a search engine displaing thumbnails (small versions of larger images) was infringing on her copyright.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-1023629.html
But the court didn't give search engines free reign -- read the article to see how the courts are currently drawing the boundaries.
When I create thumbnails on my site, it is always because I am using the thumbnail to recommend that my readers visit the source of the image. So, if I were to make a thumbnail of a picture hanging in Seton Hill's gallery, it would appear in the context of a blurb telling people where the picture was from. (That's fairly close to Mike's point about including a picture because you want to critique or discuss it.)
Thanks for sharing that link to info on thumbnail usage! That was news to me. And thanks for the clarity on this subject. (You were bluffing in your comment under the "And today's show..." topic? You mean "B.S"-ing? HAH!)
I assume, too, that "embedding" an image makes a difference because the file is still in place on its original server and not on the secondary sources' server/hard drive. So it isn't literally "copied"... or is it, in the browser itself? And I don't mean to beat a dead bull, but that Bull image in the nmj blog is from Yugoslavia, where our copyright laws are moot (and there's no way of telling if its original to that web author either). Hmmm...international sampling and fair use are such tough topics!
I see some trackback on this one, but since my nickname isn't a hotlink on this site I'm not being credited (I don't really mind and I'm not even sure I deserve it, but I think it's ironic that the author's name is elided). Click below, would-be citers!
Apparently, we've had our first comment spammer! I have no idea what that message means.
Note... I was referring to a comment that I've since deleted... I wasn't calling Mike Arnzen's thoughtful reply a spam!