Larry,

One reason for your disagreement with Eric may be that you are speaking
about two different ways of linking. I was searching for a good article that
would explain the different types of linking and their legal implications,
here is one article that I found http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkLaw --
though, if someone else knows a better one, please post the URL to it.

A problematic ebay posting might look something like this:

Phal violacea for sale.

[Image]

Price $30

The image counld be linked through "embedded linking" (the term is explained
in the article, see URL above) also called "direct linking", so that the
user actually sees the image and unless they are paying careful attention
and check the source, the user could have no way of knowing that the Image
is actually a linked image and not a part of this eBay page.

People whose images are used that way have been arguing quite persuasively
that this is a kind of theft. Even though the image is not copied, it is
misrepresented as property of the person who posted on eBay. Another
argument that has been put forth is that this is bandwidth theft, since all
of a sudden the photographer is getting much more traffic through their Web
site, which might slow down their connection or overload the server, and yet
the photographer gets no credit for this.

Some photographers have been signing their photos with copyright notices
within the photo. However, personally I find that often this spoils the
effect of the photo.

Hope this helps,
Joanna

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...

Because we seem to disagree, perhaps I fail to understand the issue
completely. Let me recap my understanding, and perhaps you can spot
my misapprehension.

1. A photographer freely publishes copies of his photographs on
the World Wide Web for public viewing.

2. A commercial orchid-sales web site provides links to some of
the photographer's images for the purpose of providing his customers
with an idea of the appearance of the orchid species s/he is selling.
The photographer's images are not copied nor hosted from the
commercial orchid-sales web site.

3. The photographer feels that his copyright is being infringed,
because s/he has not been credited nor compensated for the commercial
use of his work that s/he freely published on the WWW for public
access.

Is this correct?

If so, I fail to see how the photographer's creative work (placed in
the public domain for public access over the WWW) is being used in
violation of the photographer's copyright. The commercial orchid
marketer has not taken nor copied the photographer's creative work.
S/he has merely provided his customers the address URL to the
copyrighted work the photographer has himself freely provided to the
public.

So if there has been _no copying_, how can the copyright have been
infringed? And the photographer's act of providing the public free
access to his work verges on placing it into the public domain and
thus forfeiting his copyright to exclusive use.

I would suggest that photographers place copyright notices directly on
the publicly accessible versions of their images, so that they receive
due credit whenever their images are viewed.

Further, I would characterize the posting of notices attempting to
limit the use of the photographer's images, accessed through a URL to
the photographer's web site, to 'non commercial use only' as absurdly
unenforceable. The photographer has placed his work on the WWW for
public viewing; in doing so s/he has obviously given up the right to
control who views his images, unless a password is required.

In any event, I see no fundamental difference between a commercial
orchid-sales web site and Google or Yahoo providing public links to
the photographs you have provided for public viewing; they all do so
in conjunction with a commercial venture.

If I've got it all wrong, I'm sure someone will attempt to correct me.
:-)

--

The true Axis Of Evil in America is our genious at marketing
coupled with the stupidity of our people. -- Bill Maher