Legal Question

[MountainMan]

Google and Bing do not own the images, and their use falls under "fair use". You'll notice that (for example) Google's image results page has much smaller images than the actual one you get when you click. You'll also notice that when you do click, you are directed to the original page (or as near to original as Google can get).


Some places, like the aforementioned Flickr grant themselves a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to do pretty much whatever they like with your uploaded images. They do not claim copyright, but allowing them to copy and freely use and distribute the image pretty much renders your copyright moot. You are still free to sell, grant (or not) permissions, etc, but it's kind of pointless once the image is distributed this way.

As for information that appears word for word on multiple sites, some content is made expressly for this purpose. Some is distributed free of charge (maybe by a drug company, etc), and some requires a subscription fee (e.g. some news services). Although the originator still technically retains copyright, they are not likely to come after you for copying and distributing, since that is the reason the content was created in the first place. However, you still need to comply with the rules of use - for example, company X making a generic copy of a drug that company Y also makes, could not take Y's info sheet and simply copy it while replacing Y's name with X.

Bottom line is that copyright is inherent in all materials found on the Internet, regardless of how the originator acts, what people think of the medium, the intention of the originator, or the user's final use of the "acquired" material.

Andrew

Drugs are not pictures, they are proprietary inventions under patent law, not copywrite. I practiced medicine for thirty years, and I know how it works. I also know that after a mere seven years those patent rights expire and it's a free-for-all.

Bing images all belong to Bing, according the "properties" label that pops up, and you get the image itself, not a site. Bing has cataloged millions of images of things people want to look up, and only those that are marked otherwise across the image or are blocked are not available to be copied for non-commercial uses by a visitor. That's one of the reasons I use Bing. I do not use Google if I can possibly avoid it because they are too heavily commercialized, have been caught repeatedly violating privacy rules, and agreed to censor the internet for China. A dog and a damned fool get one chance and they've had theirs.


It's obvious from the anxious tone of this discussion that we will no longer be seeing many - if any - "public images" without a major change in policy, because very few images that I have seen posted here from other sites give any credit to the originator. Too bad, because this is largely a visual hobby and very much a visual forum.