Legal Question

[ngauger]

I think its interesting that people claim "Oh, you have to ask permission because the owner should control how it is distributed!"

So, essentially, the only difference between uploading or [img] tagging the picture, is that the person who is seeing the picture is now seeing it somewhere else away from the content they were reading, instead of right there where it would make sense. You still linked to the photo, and the link and its contents are still associated with whatever it is you posted.

What is the difference then? The only difference is that providing JUST a link can be tedious and inefficient. In the end, the photographer's content is still associated with whatever it is you were discussing. Providing the photo with the link is just the best way to do it.

Again, I agree with you, given the current "ideal" for photo referencing on these boards, a direct link seems to be the safest option, but its just absolutely silly that this should even be a problem.

It shouldn't matter how you post it on the forums, as long as a person can find there way back to the original.

Time to give my 2 cents

I hardly ever post about all my other interests but when I think it's necessary to speak my peace, I will

I'm an amateur photographer, classic auto nut, Geocacher and part owner of Big Blue

As a Geocacher, I run the geocaching website for the Delaware Geocachers. Therefore I have way, way too many opportunities to take pictures. Just to support my point, I will mention here that I'm now on my 6th digital camera, I traded up since my first and now own a very nice 14mp Canon. As far as being a classic car nut, I take pics of cars at shows. Note: I then own the picture of the car I take, but not the car itself

I have 2 hard drives and an external drive with complete copies of all my pics since i began taking digi-pics. The external hard drive holds the master copy of all the pictures, so that all 3 drives would have to fail at the same time for me to lose even one picture. Reason??? They are mostly family and pictures that can never be replaced.. all 20,000 of them... Yes 20,000...... Ok - 19,678 as of this minute

So..... About this copyright stuff... There are a few different levels to the argument that confuses the issue.

There is the amateur -- that takes pics of his or her family, hobbies, friend's cars, and "the general public's" items. Our members mostly fit in here. (as do I)

There is the professional -- who gets paid for every single picture they take.

The web designer -- who works to create a website that shows their wares - Most personal sites fall in this category as do the many file sharing sites -- Photobucket for example.

Then the "paid sites"... most any site that has ads is here.,... and the movie pirate sites are here as is the "professional paid sites" any magazine (MRR, Kalmbach) - any site that Demands you pay by credit card to even "enter the site". FYI - Big Blue "should" be here - but since we accept member's donations, we are still "Privately owned" and fit in, above

You see the various gray areas here?????

A picture of a steam engine is owned and copyrighted by the photographer, the second the shutter closes in the camera. If I post such a picture on one of my sites, then it would be nice if someone linked to the pic and brought others into the site to see the picture as I intended it to be presented not just abusing the pic by "tagging" it and changing the original intent of the information around the picture... Do I care? Somewhat, but I don't get upset - I actually haven't come across any of the 300 - 400 pics I have posted here and other places online anywhere except where I originally posted them.

But...... If the site (MRR & Others) thrives on visitors and "Click through" ads.... they would be VERY upset with someone just "linking" to a pic and not generating them any "page view" traffic.. Zealot and Crowdgather come to mind ....

Further... If the law passes, those "pirate video" sites will suffer. Why?.. They are a gray area in that they draw traffic to their ad-laden sites by posting pirated pics and videos, for all to download and the site makes money on ads and click-throughs... buy using Other People's material. Example: Newly released movies and CD's. If you're an artist and you make your living in music and instead of selling 10,000 CD's - 10,000 people download it for free... It'll cut a bit into your profit.

So, the answer seems to be... If it's business as usual here.. Yes, "img" link and post the link to the picture, at least make the effort to let people have a chance to visit the original site, but no - it's not the politically correct thing to do. Linking to the picture is better. No they won't come after us at first, but they still may. If we find that the act is written that anyone here (especially Don & I as owners) are responsible for materials against the act as written, we will have to go into every forum and change all the "off-site tagged" pictures to links only.

But really, everything online is owned by someone. Either the site owner and/or the original creator of the work. If it's not "your work" then consider the person that does own it. Consider that they posted it there, to be seen as they posted it, in it's original context, not to be "moved by img tags" to another site, to enhance the information on that site, for someone else's "free use"...

Sorry for being so long winded But I'm learning from Don