An interesting international story, that may be used as legal precedence on indexing of images: Google has lost two copyright cases in Germany, over the display of photos as thumbnails in image search results. In one of the cases, a Hamburg court has ruled in favour of a German photographer, saying that
“It doesn’t matter that thumbnails are much smaller than original pictures and are displayed in a lower resolution…By using photos in thumbnails, no new work is created.” [via Bloomberg]
Google has been facing issues over copyrighted content in India, and YouTube has been the prime target for content owners, in particular – T-Series. More on those issues here. Bear in mind that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is not applicable in India.
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This development is also particularly interesting in the context of media companies in India taking content published on blogs. Mint did a fairly exhaustive story on media companies taking photographs off Flickr; Freelance writer Nita J. Kulkarni has published a list of instances of media companies taking content from bloggers, namely:
– Meeta K vs Times of India
– Nita J. Kulkarni vs Hindustan Times
– Priyanka vs Times of India
– Archana vs Hindustan Times
– Srinidhi Hande vs Times of India
More and more people are now writing about such instances, and photographers who publish their content online are now sharing notes, and holding focused discussions. Here’s the agenda for a Photo Theft Seminar; at Barcamp Delhi, over the weekend, Priyanka offered some suggestions for dealing with such situations:
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4 Comments until now.
I find it strange that a blogger who is so vocal in her demand for ethics violates ethics herself.
Fact: What’s Hot erred by printing her photograph without credit/compensation.
Fact: Priyanka took umbrage and succeeded in spreading this virally online and improved page views and Google rank of her own blog by using Times of India in her tags (she admitted this in her presentation at IIT).
Fact: she accepted Rs 10,000 as compensation from The Times of India but claims.
And yet, she continues to malign the newspaper and – worse – individuals by name!
Double standards? You bet!! If you accepted the money, why keep flogging this and crowing about it? Why drag individuals into this? Whose ethics is it anyway?
And was Times of India so dumb that they didn’t get her to agree to a ’silence’ clause?
Gawd… we’re all selfish, aren’t we?
I doubt there was malafide in the pictures being picked up from the internet. Perhaps an extensive training on the desk that pictures cannot just be picked up from the Internet, wil solve the problem for the Times.
If the woman made as much as 10K (which I doubt) good for her. Now she should shut up. She has now been paid.
Lord Haw Haw: it’s a Pandora’s box, to be honest. Both sides need to be careful about copyrights; as useful as a creative commons license has been in allowing sharing of content (with linkbacks as a plus), it has complicated matters, with multiple licenses. Bloggers can keep blaming mainstream media, but there’s every chance that the mainstream can go after them as well, if there have been any instances of copyright violation.
I get really uncomfortable when something like this comes up in India. Copyright protection laws are draconian and old and do not conform to the digital age. It tries to stifle innovation in a world which is getting more and more collaborative everyday.
I DO NOT in any way, condone these big media companies scraping off of the work of others. But please, do not think you can beat off everyone with a copyright act lawsuit. We already have Movie industry asking for a 100 year copyright. How far are we from RIAA and MPAAs ?
Coming to the point in question. Yes, the photos should have be credited and if someone is making money out of the remix the original work should also get a cut. But then, you should’ve attached some license to it. “All Rights Reserved” (from the presentation) is not going to work in the free-flowing web economy. People would be happy to credit you and pay you and give you your rights as long as they are within limits of web sanity. But beyond that, you are on your own.
My advice for you would be go for creative commons license and bask in the glory of your creative self.