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Copying Graphics - What is Fair Use? 74

Posted by Cliff from the toeing-that-fine-line dept.
it0 asks: "I'm writing a web application and since I can't create good graphics, I'll be ripping them from other places on the web. The decent thing to do would be to ask permission, and at least specify where you got the graphic, however I don't see this happening much on other websites. Here's an example: I copied a trashcan icon that seems to be used by everyone and nobody seems to specify its original source. What about wallpapers? I've see a lot of models without references? I've also seen a lot of images that imitate the Windows GUI, and I've yet to notice anyone getting sued! For those interested, here is more information on the subject."
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Copying Graphics - What is Fair Use? More

Copying Graphics - What is Fair Use?

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  • You know the answer, right? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @06:22PM (#6052070) Journal
    The decent thing to do would be to ask permission, and at least specify where you got the graphic...

    Well, yeah. Obviously, as you note, ripping some other site's rainbow horizontal line gif or animated pen-writing-on-paper-turns-into-an-envelope is routine, and hardly the same thing as setting up a porn site of copyrighted images served off somone else's server.

    But it would be decent to ask, and you may want to really be a good guy and stick to downloading stock images off sites that explicitly give permission. (It's not like there's a shortage of rainbow horizontal line gifs.)

  • Trash Can is Patented (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We all remember when Apple patented the trash can, right?

    Yet another "throw away" patent, if you ask me. ;)

  • use a bibliography of sorts (Score:4, Informative)

    by miyako ( 632510 ) <miyako AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @06:40PM (#6052237) Homepage Journal
    I'm not sure if using graphics you ripped off other peoples sites is legal under fair use, but either way it seems like kind of a shitty thing to do.
    I took a couple of web publishing classes in highschool, where we were required to make all our own graphics or prove that the image we used was in the public domain.
    Although I normally make all my own graphics, in the rara occassion that I do use one from someone elses site, I first try to email them and check if it's ok. I then compile a list of any sites I don't get responses from and make sure to list them in a section of a links page with a little thanks and a note saying what graphic I used.
    Also make sure that you don't link to the graphic on the persons page, not only is this stealing their bandwidth, but if something happens and the page is gone then you are without your graphic.

    --"If I put in my two cents, and it's a penny for my thoughts, do I get change back?" --unknown

  • Sued (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Catholic ( 676438 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @06:50PM (#6052317)
    I've yet to notice anyone getting sued!

    Out of curiosity...how did you expect to notice? Cease and desist letters are sent out on a daily basis in any country's legal system. Lawsuits about copyright infringement happen regularly.

    • Re:Sued (Score:2, Interesting)

      by it0 ( 567968 )
      I notice that no sites are getting shut down who use GUI from an os. Or sites that have wallpapers from models or artwork. Both are common on the web.

      In the same spirit you cannot have a fan site with pictures? I know fan sites have been sued in the past, on the other hand many other fan sites still exist.

      Since so many sites seem to get away with it, I thought that perhaps there was a special excemption.
      • I've had a look at some of those sites that look like Windows and they are written using FrontPage. I don't have FrontPage but my guess is Microsoft provide a "Windows" template for royalty free use.

        Why anyone would choose to use such a template I don't know... I was most surprised to find the Richard Feynman [scs-intl.com] official website using this design. If I were him, I'd be spinning in my grave.

  • take what you can get away with (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Copy the graphics you need, if they send you a cease and desist or otherwise contact you, take it down immediately and apologize.

    If you think nobody does this, you're nuts.

  • The trashcan icon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @07:03PM (#6052411)
    What do you mean nobody knows the original source? That's the trashcan icon from Mac OS 8+.

    Ripping off icons from major OS' is a bad idea. Pleading ignorance to an obvious source doesn't help in the slightest.

  • Ten Percent (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mcdrewski42 ( 623680 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @07:12PM (#6052498)
    <IANAL>
    In Australia, it's normally not a copyright violation if you take some 'artwork' and modify it by at least 10%. HOWEVER, that does not ever apply to trademarked images.
    </IANAL>

    Quite frankly, though, most artists will still consider that it's still theft of a kind. If you're making money from your application, then you should invest some of it and employ some talented kid who needs money for rent or food or something. You don't really need that new P4 rig yet anyway, do you?

    So, for now:

    1) If you're building the application, build it so that the artwork can be EASILY slotted in later. (seems obvious, but really design to support a complete facelift. You know about MVC, right?)

    2) Maybe browse the web for portfolios, and resumes of people with cool websites and no jobs. Exploit them for low wages and the ability to but real work on their resumes. :)

    3) Or, release the app with crappy graphics and a HOWTO and wait for your users to build you a nice pretty interface. :)

  • My experience (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Clockwork Troll ( 655321 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:10PM (#6052918) Journal
    I am of the school, "if it's out there and it's generic enough, it's OK to use it."

    Actually I used to be worse than that, I used to link to the actual image I wanted to use rather than do the considerably more decent thing which would be to download it and host it on my own server.

    I got my comeuppance one day when someone pointed out that a prominent image on my home page had been replaced with an image of somebody's middle finger which superimposed text reading:

    That's what you get for stealing my bandwidth
    Suffice to say I host all my own images now.
    • But you'd think not copying, and simply linking, would be the nicer thing to do, since you're not actually copying something that may potentially be copyrighted :)
      • lol. For anyone thinking of how to stop some absolute B*stard stealing your bandwidth, first of all use apache, then use a htaccess file with something like this in: RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?website.com*$ [NC] RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|mpg|bmp)$ - [F]

        • Re:My experience (Score:3, Interesting)

          by orangesquid ( 79734 )
          The only problem with antihotlink stuff is generally it goes too far, and stops things like bookmarks, wget, or reload from working (because then there is no Referer). Instead of requiring that Referer matches the proper site, antihotlink stuff should just ensure that Referer does not match any site besides the proper one (because it may not match a site at all!)

          (On a side note, things like frames and shockwave are evil for similar reasons... navigation and bookmarking difficulties. what ever happened to
          • I'm not sure that you're correct there. I can see where you're coming from but I have the htaccess file set up as I decribed above.

            i.e. it checks for specific sites to be in the referer.

            If what you were saying were correct, if I opened a up a new blank window in IE or Opera none of my images would work? Well, that simply isn't true. Not only that but when I refresh my page the image still apears.

            I'm now quite confused - I clearly don't understand and that's quite worrying. Just to check:

            http://www.eagl

            • For the images, the referer is the page itself.

              Browser loads html, parses html, html references images, browser loads images. Therefore the referer is set correctly.
            • I think your solution does work properly for blocking hotlinking from a certain known list of sites. The antihotlink general solutions I have seen sometimes don't.

  • If you rip off my graphics... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jayrtfm ( 148260 ) <jslash AT sophont DOT com> on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:24PM (#6053028) Homepage Journal
    If you rip off my graphics.... then can I rip off your code? after all, it's the same thing, they're both just bits...

    Why not hook up with an art student who would design the graphics in exchange for a screen credit? or contact schools, as a teacher could use your app as a class project.

  • Icons (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you're after icons then you can find them from any number of themes for Gnome [ximian.com] and KDE [kde-look.org], with clear and standard licences.

  • Not fair use, originality (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mbstone ( 457308 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @10:15PM (#6053559)
    Before you get to the question of what constitutes "fair use," the first step in the copyright law analysis is whether the work that was copied is sufficiently original, in other words a work of authorship, otherwise there is no copyright protection. While copying artwork willy-nilly from the Internet is usually an invitation to be sued, copying a drawing of a mere wastebasket might not be. The trivial case would be copying a drawing of a square or a circle. Neither is copyrightable subject matter. But elaborate on the circle by adding two more circles for ears and a couple of three-fingered hands, and you have Mickey Mouse (or Chuck E. Cheese, I forget which).

  • I browse /usr/share/icons... (Score:4, Informative)

    by cliveholloway ( 132299 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @10:46PM (#6053702) Homepage Journal
    I've used the crystal theme KDE icons all over the web app we're working on (and apparently we employed the icon designer to do other stuff for us, but I don't know what he did).

    Many Open Source apps have large image libraries that you can freely use. Just use Kuickshow to find the relevant directory. .02

    cLive ;-)

    ps - apologies if you're not using Linux - I'm not sorry that you can't access these, I'm just sorry you don't use Linux (to paraphrase Bill Hicks :)

    --
    Trinity in high heels carrying a whip:
    The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
  • It's touchy when you're poking around in the area of using other people's stuff. Even if you do qualify for "fair use," someone can still accuse you and wreak major havoc on whatever you're trying to create. My suggestion (that is, if hiring a graphic artist is out of the question): Get the Gimp (<a href="http://www.gimp.org">OSS OS's</a> or <a href="http://www.gimp.org/win32">Windows</a> ), learn to use the Bezier select tool (try TigerT's tutorial on how to make a 3D box), and whi

  • Take for instance speeding. People break the speed limit all the time, because they're not likely to get caught, and the penalties are low if they do get caught.

    Likewise with most copyright infringement. Your chances of getting caught are very small. Even if you do get caught, you have fair use defenses, and even if you lose, you don't lose all that much. If you can show the judge that you were not aware that you were committing copyright infringement, the court can lower damages to only $200.

    Now once

  • AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS
    By William Henry Gates III

    February 3, 1976

    An Open Letter to Hobbyists

    To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?

    Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the

  • Get your images from someone giving them away (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @03:29AM (#6054949) Journal
    I'm writing a web application and since I can't create good graphics, I'll be ripping them from other places on the web. The decent thing to do would be to ask permission, and at least specify where you got the graphic
    ...But the easy thing to do would be to seek out some clip-art or graphic sites who are intentionally making their work available for free use. Google for "free clip art," "free icons," etc. and you'll come up with a treasure trove of usable art.
  • There are a few sites out there that have a library of free to use images. Check them out.

    Also, as others have said, some GPL software has images (KDE/Gnome) which you could use freely by virtue of the license.

  • Your confusion is exactly what Lessig speaks about in almost every interview he does. Does a copyright holder actually care if you copy his work?

    Check out his blog and you'll probably learn something interesting:
    http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig / blog/

    My Advice:

    In theory fair use does not apply to works which are a public performance which are not for satire or review. Your website certainly counts as a public performance, and thus it would a civil copyright viloation for you to use other people's wo

  • What i do when i see... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SolemnDragon ( 593956 ) <solemndragon AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @10:20AM (#6056629) Homepage Journal
    I'm the person who, when i see copyrighted material on similar websites- as happens a LOT in the research that i do- and it obviously was placed on the one much prior to the other, I send an email to both or all parties. I list all of the sites. I describe what is identical, including the location of the uncommon artwork or the word-for-word page info that one of them painstakingly put together and even copyrighted. And i explain that this is up to them to sort out, but that if it's a legitimate use of someone's artwork, maybe they should be cited, and if it's a legitimate use of someone's work, they should probably inlcude a link. I've gotten a lot of thank you notes from people who put their own artwork up on the web only to find it under someone else's name, and from people who put their theories uup for discussion only to see them posted as someone else's, omitting the author and the class in which it was developed, for example an MIT student who was able to get the rival site to shut down... or the woman whose long work on pharmacological components of chamomile had been posted word for word on two other sites.

    I aslo have gotten hate mail back from the people who really did steal other people's work, and have seen cases where they simply forgot to cite the source once they had permission- easily fixed, that last one. The hate mail generally consists of, "who made it your business?" or extremely juvenile insults etc. Someone once threatened to sue me for harassment- that would be the one who stole the MIT paper. It's discouraged me from putting my own work on the web, to be honest, both my artwork AND my own research. I suppose i'll get over that. But in the meantime, i think that the appropriate thing for me to do is to always point out where i feel that there's serious copyright issues, as when what's obviously someone's signed artwork has been cropped to delete the sig and posted as a website element on another site.

    Incidentally, i started doing this because an artist friend had exactly that happen to her artwork- the images of oil and acrylic paintings up for SALE on her site were copied and used. Cease and desist letters work, especially if you have evidence of copyright and cc the ISP, etc.

  • What of private pictures posted to photo galleries that individuals have taken. I recently put up on my webserver my photo collection for friends and family to view. I didn't password protect it due to the computer illiterate nature of my family. But I sure don't want this to be an open door for photo infringement. I mean if a photo I took ended up in National Geographic or something, I'd be mighty pissed if I wasn't consulted or didn't get my share. With the advent of digital photography, what prevent

    • How do you claim that the picture is yours, especially when the person who ripped you off could have ripped off all your pictures? There remains no authenticity or ownership especially if you have a generic tourist picture (postcard worthy).

      Don't post the highest resolution version of an image to your website. Then, if someone rips you off, you can produce a higher resolution version, but they won't be able to, that should pretty much prove you took the original (IANAL though).

      There generally isn't a

    • I believe that National Geographic is printed at 133 linescreen (or thereabouts). To put your image in their magazine, they would need at least a 266 dpi image at the size they wish to print it (say, 4 x 5 ins.). If you had some 4 x 5 ins. photos on your site at a screen viewable 72 dpi, National Geographic would be SOL unless they print your image at a smaller size (1.083 x 1.353 ins. to be exact) to get the desired resolution. So that's one way to protect your photos.

      Another way is to use Photoshop to ad

  • Do yourself a favor. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nycroft ( 653728 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @02:43PM (#6059491) Homepage
    Please, for your own sake, if you cannot create the art yourself, find somebody. Taking art from other site is not only against the law (in most cases), but it's just plain lazy. What happens when someone recognizes the images? Will you be proud of the fact that someone else's stuff is on your site? Will you give the original artist credit?

    This isn't like having an illegally obtained MP3 on your hard drive. Your web site will be out there for everyone to see! Take it from somebody who knows what it's like to be ridiculed for being lazy with his web site. Make your own stuff. You will be happier in the long run that your site is 100% yours. You can show it off with pride.

    Wish I could, all I got is my stupid golf blog [bladesdesign.com]. I just used a standard template. You think I'm proud of it? No. I am not. But once I get my art made and my site totally re-done, then it'll be something I can use to pick up chicks!

  • Royalty Free/PD (Score:2, Interesting)

    by weeeeed ( 675324 )

    Instead of using images.google.com, why do you not go to websites specialized on this topic?

    Go to dmoz.org [dmoz.org] and browse through the categories a little bit, you will come up with following categories:

    All you have to do now is to browse through the sites and have a peek at the license. Mostly you will have to give them some credit somewhere. If it is not clear from the license if you can use th

  • This is kind of in the same vein, but what if you were to do something akin to what rappers/hip-hop artists do when they sample?

    I see it ALL over the web were someone has changed another site's image -- or altered it and incorporated it into another image -- where does one stand in this regard? Is this legal? (Or, as Ali G would ask, "What is legal?")

    Looking at this strictly from a legal standpoint, is permission still required here regardless of what is done to said image(s)?

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