On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 14:01:38 -0500, "Ted Byers"
wrote:

If that is correct, Google Groups has failed to pay me any royalty for
archiving and redistributing my usenet articles. I wonder how Google
gets away with "illegally" copying and redistributing all those usenet
articles without a having to defend themselves against a myriad of
tort suits. :-)

Probably because the vast majority of copyright holders for the material
they archive don't care about their rights to the material they posted.

More than that, usenet is a public forum and Google is simply
providing a way for users to access that forum. The fact that posts
are archived long after they would be deleted from most newgroups
servers is not a fundemental difference in function. If, however,
Google decided to use your posts in a "Selected copyright discussion
posts" collection that they put on one of their webpages, you might
indeed have a legitimate copyright claim against them.

deg

Larry,

Thanks for the interesting discussion - but this is one area I am not
interested in debating the finer points of copyright law as it applies to
the web. That's what lawyers are for.

I am aware that large news corporations are, with limited success, suing
blogging and other type sites for "deep linking" their content instead of
pointing users to their homepages. This situation with photographs is very
similiar.

In the end, from a purely practical point of view, you are correct. Once a
picture is posted on the WWW for all to see, there is absolutely no way for
the owner to control it after that. Until Microsoft provides a way for web
pages to turn off screen-capture software, the pictures will be copyable on
the vast majority of computers used on the planet.

But I will stand by my position that I have the moral authority, if not the
eventual legal one, to ask that people not use the images I produce for
their own profit.

Thanks,

-Eric in SF

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 22:32:06 -0700, Susan Erickson
wrote in Message-Id: :

Some of them were hijacking pictures from copyrighted sites [...]
sending each visitor thru to the site [containing the pictures]
and tying it up.

What you describe as 'hijacking' is known as linking. It provides a
means of overcoming duplicate content and copyright infringement on
the world wide web and is one of its fundamental concepts.

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 07:29:37 -0800, "Eric Hunt"
wrote in Message-Id: :

Larry,

It's still copyright infringement when you have notices all over your
site
that reuse of your photographs is permitted only for educational
non-commercial use. The original academic users of the internet would
have
respected that. That's no longer the case with the general public.

I have never seen a marketeer with respect for the public. :-)

I almost put up pornography on my site under a bunch of orchid file names
that a guy in the Netherlands was direct-linking from my site in order to
sell his plants, but he stopped linking after I sent him several
nastygrams.
If he'd been in the US, all I would have to have done was email his ISP
and
had his site shut down.

On what grounds? Have you been successful with tactic in the past?
Doubtful.

Us photographers are very particular about how our images are reused. =)

-Eric in SF
http://www.erichunt.com/orchids/SPECIES/ab.html


Eric,

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

Eric Hunt wrote:
But I will stand by my position that I have the moral authority, if not the
eventual legal one, to ask that people not use the images I produce for
their own profit.

You could move to France. French law actually does contain "Droit
Moral". A few other countries have adopted it as well. It's explicitly
not part of US copyright law. US law is strictly economic in scope.
Sadly, you are probably out of scope even for that, since it protects
"unique" artistic works. You will get no meaningful legal guidance
until some of the various "deep linking" suits percolate to the supreme
court and get a definitive ruling. Until then is just isn't settled law
and just a matter of opinion.

garyr

Eric Hunt wrote:
......................I almost put up pornography on my site under a bunch of orchid file names
that a guy in the Netherlands was direct-linking from my site in order to
sell his plants, but he stopped linking after I sent him several nastygrams.
...................................


Eric, what an idea!
What fun you could have if you found someone on eBay linking to your own
web site. Maybe not pornography, but you could substitute some ugly
diseased plant, on your web site, under the exact same file name. People
would take one look and run away.

Has eBay changed the way they do things? Do pictures still link to
another site of your choice off the eBay site? I've never sold anything
on eBay but I did help my brother-in-law set up his first sale (a
trumpet, not an orchid). He just put in a picture from his computer as
he filled in the form to sell the item. Just wondering.

Steve