Very interesting. There is that school that says if you don’t want someone to use, copy or distibute your picture, don’t put it up there. The one arguer could have made his Flikr (I never know how to spell it when I don’t see it) account private if he didn’t want his work distributed. I did that with my Facebook, so only my friends can see certain things. I didn’t want potential employers in my network checking me out there, even though I have nothing to hide. You never know what goes through their heads when they see something and hardly know you.

And my apologizes, but I was thinking of how Facebook would work on a 2400 baud modem, with that introduction. Hopefully, I didn’t miss the point of the rest of the post.

When this meme went around the real internet last year, I don’t seem to remember any protests on your part about it being poor netiquette.

Of course, my personal opinion is that I don’t fucking care.  I will happily and freely use anything that I find on the Internet for any non-commercial purpose that I choose.  If it’s merely for a trivial use, a court’s not going to give a shit about copyright infringement.

Can’t we all just get along?

Ayyyyy, Matey!
That’s all I got.

I’m going to latch on to THIS particular point:

fucking memes on Facebook from people who don’t know how to use the damn Internet.  ARGHHH!

And they are so DAMN excited to be tagging me with their fucking 25 things.

Oh.  Right.  But BLOGGING is weird.

Lynda - as I stated in my argument, I get a lot out of Flickr. You can view my photostream (http://flickr.com/photos/ptchfork/) to see that I participate in many of the groups there & have many contacts. For me, it’s a way to share my work with fellow artists & get vital feedback to what I’m doing wrong & how to improve my skills. In order to do this, I can’t make my photos private.

I did the same with my facebook, but my photos are my (profession) hobby, and I don’t have anything I’d be embarrassed to show a employer or co-worker.

If you do look at my photostream, you’ll see a lack of “snapshots” and thats because those photos - including the ones of me & the gang drunk - are some where else.

I as stated in my argument I think the position that “if it’s out there, it can be taken” is absurd.  If the man in front of you dropped $20.00 does that make it ok to take?

Thanks Dawg for being on my side of this one.

If the man in front of you dropped $20.00 does that make it ok to take?

Yes.

Very interesting!  I suspect that the use of Flickr photos for the meme is covered by fair use, even for images with full copyright.  The use is not commercial and the art is being transformed into a fake album cover. If one was to right click on the new image in Facebook, they would not acquire the original image as posted to Flickr, but a transformed image.

This is one of those areas that copyright law has yet to catch up with. I’m not entirely sure that Fair Use includes entertainment, which is what I percieve this meme to be.

There is currently a lawsuit out there by an AP photographer whose photo of Barack Obama was the basis of an artist’s rendering for posters that were seen all over the place during the campaign (I don’t believe they were “official” campaign posters). To my knowledge those were not sold for profit either and the the actual photo was not even used. And the picture was used by the AP so it was out there. But it still could be a copyright violation.

Brian, I actually can’t see what groups you are apart of. As for the $20 analogy, if a man in front of me dropped $20, some may be of the mentality of finders keepers, he’s being careless with his money. If it’s sticking out of his pocket, and someone took it, that someone would be pickpocketing.

What I think you are trying to say is that the $20 is sticking out of your pocket.

I think a better analogy would be movie duplication. Is there a little FBI warning that flashes across the screen when you watch a movie? Usually, yes, something that says don’t copy this disk. Do people do it anyway? Yes, they do. Is there really any sort of recourse? I have never heard of anyone going to jail because they made a personal copy of a DVD they rented or (in the past) a VHS tape they copied.

So then it comes down to personal values. Some people may have the mentality that “everyone is doing this so I am too” and another might have the mentality of “well I’m going to buy it because it’s wrong not to”. There may even be people in between on the argument.

For myself, if I have a way of contacting the artist, I will contact them. I have done so in the past for my lung cancer blog and I have even had someone tell me “make sure I get credit” which I would have done anyway - credit where it’s due. That’s not to say I haven’t gone to Google images and taken a picture to use for personal reasons as well. Like Avitable said, it’s on the internet. But if someone, such as yourself, came along and said, “Hey, that’s my picture and I don’t want you using it” I sure as hell would remove it and find some alternative.

As a side note, I really like your album and I have been trying to take pictures in that way myself a little bit to explore my more creative side. And as far as photos on my blog goes, if I want a photo for my post, I have just been trying to take a photo rather than use something from the internet.

Look!  A long and thought out post that received a lot of comments!  Woot.

I will not comment on the two parties who are in disagreement since I know them both and actually have absolutely no opinion on the matter.  I see both sides having valid arguments.  I also understand the Eternal September philosophy, having experienced it for over 21 years of my own life.  I do not begrudge others the experience.

I will say this: Life is too short.

I think this debates often hinge on the fact that the two sides aren’t really talking about he same thing. One side is usually talking about the current law while the other side is talking about how they think things should work.

Of course, given how poorly current law applies to current situations, perhaps these aren’t really so different after all....

Oh, and regarding the 25% use—I have heard the argument that a low resolution version of a photo is using much less than 25% of the original, though I believe that is a flawed argument that completely misses the spirit of the law.

I have had people take my entire posts about my sister, post them to a “medical blog” that wasn’t really one, and then make some kind of statement about my memories of my sister with “Look at this great information!” I only find out because of the pingback. If I bothered to ask them to, I would expect the human decent thing to do is to remove it per my wishes. After visiting the site, I worried instead that I would get a inbox full of spam so I just left it. And honestly, if it bugged me that much, I could also make my blog private or invite only. I’m not going to say it didn’t bug me at all, but not enough to take those measures.

And I agree with you more than it probably sounds like, I was just trying to point out that there were ways of protecting yourself. I guess I missed the not making photos private because of professional feedback (damn using 2400 baud modem with Facebook thinking!). I am just trying to say that people should have a little more common decency and respect the author/photograph/artist.

I don’t think my 4:30 a.m. wake up call is allowing a night owl like me to express herself properly though, so I’m just gonna leave it at that. :D

Oh, and Ren makes a good point, too.

Lynda - you hit the nail right on the head when you said “You contact the artist”. To me that’s the biggest part of it.

I was staff photographer at a festival last summer and part of the agreement was that the band would purchase the photos and the rest were mine, but I couldn’t sell the ones of the band. Since then I’ve given away a few of the shots (digitally, yes, so I know they could be passed around without my knowledge) to fans who ASKED.

IMHO it’s a matter of respect.

OH - and thank you for your kind words.

Ah fair use. The more you read about it, the more everybody says something different.

“Actually fair use is only when used in a review or education setting.” If that were true, how would Shepard have a case at all?

Also, “It also limits the amount of the copyrighted item you can use, generally below 25% and the courts will usually hold you accountable if you did not provide any attribution back to the copyright holder.” Actually, I think all standards are applied as part of the judgement, with various things weighing against other things. Here’s a really interesting checklist from the Copyright Management Center:  http://copyright.iupui.edu/checklist.htm

As for the album meme on Facebook, you can only see mine if you’re my friend, so I imagine that that weighs into fair use.  I do agree that a photo attribution is a nice thing to do.  I kinda hate that because I pulled the image randomly and renamed it, I can’t find it again to give the attribute.