New terms of use feedback

KarmaGarda

Darragh wrote: »

Say for example you take a photo of me holding a copyrighted piece of art - who does the copyright on the original piece of art belong to there?

Just to answer that question for you, and I'll make it even more confusing. Let's say I take a photo of a photo that Covey owns. Covey still owns his photo. I own my photo of his photo. Even if you can barely tell the difference between the 2 side by side I can sell my photo of his photo and it's perfectly legal. As well as I don't try to claim the original art as mine everything is super duper. The only real life example of this I can think of is unfortunately quite a controversial story. You can read about it if you research the controverial nude photos taken of Brooke Shields when she was young (thought I best tell you what they are in case you google them and then end up frantically trying to close your browser in shock ). The Photos of the photos were open for viewing in the Tate Modern (if I recall correctly). No copyright was broken.

Anyway, I'm fine with what you are suggesting in the TOU. As well as it states that permission will be sought before using a photo/graphic/piece of art then it's all cool with me.

CabanSail

KarmaGarda wrote: »

Just to answer that question for you, and I'll make it even more confusing. Let's say I take a photo of a photo that Covey owns. Covey still owns his photo. I own my photo of his photo. Even if you can barely tell the difference between the 2 side by side I can sell my photo of his photo and it's perfectly legal.

Just to confuse things further. This situation was brought up last year when we had a talk from a Barrister who specialises in Media Law. According to her the law is not that simple. If it's a direct copy then you will have breached the original artist's copyright. If their work is incidental to your own then it's fine.

The other thing that I found out that night is that there are exclusions to the copyright laws that operate here in Ireland at least. One of those is that you can copy works for educational puposes.

DaireQuinlan

CabanSail wrote: »

Just to confuse things further. This situation was brought up last year when we had a talk from a Barrister who specialises in Media Law. According to her the law is not that simple. If it's a direct copy then you will have breached the original artist's copyright. If their work is incidental to your own then it's fine.

Well, I could namecheck Richard Prince here, he's made a career of just photographing other peoples photographs, thus re-contextualising them. The most recent example was that Brooke Shields photograph in the Tate that occupied quite a few pages of a thread here

The other thing that I found out that night is that there are exclusions to the copyright laws that operate here in Ireland at least. One of those is that you can copy works for educational puposes.

Most countries have some form of this in a 'fair use' clause . Interestingly enough though, despite what many people think, it's actually illegal here to rip a CD to your MP3 player. The UK has a quite reasonable provision in its copyright law that allows you to do just that, but it's missing here. I think the only fair use here is excerpts for educational or review purposes. Media industry representatives here have accordingly and jocularly promised not to sue people for doing it though. Assuming you trust them :rolleyes:

masteroftherealm

Yes but he has gotten permission if he did it wouthout permission is would be copyright breach. If you take an exact photo of a photo no you do not own the copyright to it and cannot sell it, thats not the real legal situation.

DaireQuinlan

masteroftherealm wrote: »

Yes but he has gotten permission if he did it wouthout permission is would be copyright breach. If you take an exact photo of a photo no you do not own the copyright to it and cannot sell it, thats not the real legal situation.

If you're talking about prince then no, he never got permission. Various law suits have in general found in his favour, so it's not quite as clear cut as the above

masteroftherealm

I looked at some of his work and he is stealing fair and square, courts have been quite ambigiuos in their rulings on him, hes backed by a good team of lawyers.

But in general the principal stands, isn particular to this discussion, under current copyright law in Ireland and the UNited states, taking a photo of a photo and reproducing it without modification is illegal. The only reason Price is getting away with the plagarism is because of a small fair use clause that he is exploiting.

DaireQuinlan

masteroftherealm wrote: »

But in general the principal stands, isn particular to this discussion, under current copyright law in Ireland and the UNited states, taking a photo of a photo and reproducing it without modification is illegal. The only reason Price is getting away with the plagarism is because of a small fair use clause that he is exploiting.

well that's my point, it's not black and white. It's not simply 'illegal', Price isn't taking advantage fair use, he's maintaining that his photographs are entirely new works. By re-contextualising them as he does he creates a new work of art. That's why the courts generally find in his favour, and something isn't 'illegal' in this regard until the courts find it to be illegal, indeed each case has to be decided on its own individual merits so you can't merely dismiss his activities as 'illegal' and leave it at that.

Darragh

Okay folks, I'll tell you what I have to do now.

I have to go and redraft the TOU sections applicable here and send them on to our legal advisors for feedback. I have to think about how we'll handle this in future. My initial feeling is that we'll include a seperate section for photographs and other creative works where we outline exactly what your rights to your work are and what we need you to grant us to allow us to continue the service.

This is going to take at least a couple of days.

When I have that done, I'll come back to you with it for your feedback. As above, the law is a tricky beast with so many intricacies that I'm sure there's just no real "one size fits all" solution - those that don't fit will have to be handled, if possible (and, pretty much as before) on a case by case basis.

We'll get there. Eventually.

Promac

If we use the img tags to link to an image that's not hosted on boards.ie is that still counted as a submission here?

Misa-san

I read through this thread, initially thinking it would be resolved quickly; but I feel there's a vital point that has been missed.

Once you post on the internet, anything, you've lost some of your ownership. Facebook have rights over your photos you post, Youtube have right over any videos you post. If you post something on boards it's on their site, even if it belongs to you - you chose to post it on their site, hosted on their machines; and you chose to do this under the assumption you agreed to the TOU.

I assume this every time; that the site have ownership of any content there, user-generated or not. They mod it obviously because they are responsible for it and they are answerable. It is always my understanding that I surrender some of my rights of ownership if I upload or post content. For this reason, I tend not to post my images - in many cases it counts as publishing - you can't submit a film to a competition if you already had it on youtube, or if you make a script publicly available it can't always be entered into a competition that states it must be previously unpublished.

If you want to retain full ownership of your images, post them on your own site. This links to other sites part I am unsure of. If you don't want anyone to use your image - don't put it on the internet. The TOU are in place, as I see it, not to tread on toes - but they are not obliged to inform you every step of the way either. They are there however there so that you can't say you weren't told if the site uses your image - if you have accepted the T+Cs and/or TOU of the site, you have surrendered your right, as far as I am concerned at least, to control what the site does with the site. They can delete it, repost it or do with it what they wish as it's their site and you chose to contribute.

I don't know how this will get resolved, the TOU are clear and no different to any other sites I have come across. Simply put, if you don't anyone to use it - don't put it on the internet, especially on a public forum. If you really want C+C on images or to host online - get your own webspace, you'll have full ownership then and only then.

I may have annoyed some people now, but I just couldn't sit back and stay quiet after reading 13pages...

DK32

My limited understanding of this is that linking or embedding a link to an image here or on any other public forum does not mean they own the image. In the same way if I were to link to a story from the BBC website on this forum. That does not mean boards own it.
If I upload an image to boards directly, then I basically relinquish ownership / rights in some part. Same applies to facebook or other public forums, myspace etc..

AFAIK this does not apply to Flickr Pro accounts. Otherwise you can be sure that pro photogs would not bother using their services.

Darragh

Promac wrote: »

If we use the img tags to link to an image that's not hosted on boards.ie is that still counted as a submission here?

Hey, I had attempted to answer that either - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=63806213&postcount=163

I think people should think of "submission" as "submission to Boards.ie about Boards.ie" - i.e. a suggestion in Help Desk, Feedback, Site Dev etc but again, I'll come back during the week and confirm this for you.

Covey

This seems to have been conveniently forgotten. In case anyone hasn't fully understood this, these terms are now fully effective from December 23rd last.

It seems Boards is no different from anywhere else on the net, quick to insert unfavourable terms and very slow to remove/amend them.

CabanSail

It has not been "convieniently forgotten" but there has been a hell of a lot going on with the Admins since the site was hacked. There were al lot of people putting in very long hours to keep the site going & sorting out the mess.

Coincidencely I raised the TOU with the Admin earlier today. I am sure that there will be some resolution to this fairly soon & if it wasn't for the major problems of late then it would have happened already.

Darragh

Covey wrote: »

This seems to have been conveniently forgotten. In case anyone hasn't fully understood this, these terms are now fully effective from December 23rd last.

It seems Boards is no different from anywhere else on the net, quick to insert unfavourable terms and very slow to remove/amend them.

Sorry Covey, as CabanSail has said above, we've been up the walls trying to reunite people with their accounts.

I'll do my best to be back to you before the end of tomorrow with the new TOU revisions.

These have not been forgotten.

Darragh

Just for the sake of completion, I have published a revision for review today and invite people to give their feedback on the new revisions over there:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055825295