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Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 3:05 am
by Josh Lewis
A friend of mine started up his own website recently and uses panorama's as part of the logo. He was told by someone that all photos posted here were public domain hence not having to ask permission to use people's pictures as logos for different pages. But at the bottom of SP it says "All Rights Reserved". So are these rights reserved for the owners of the site? Or owners of people's content? Obviously the courteous thing to do is to ask people for permission which I usually do when hosting pictures outside of SummitPost on my SP pages.

I am guilty of doing it with non-logo's as seen here. I do however link directly to the page which still gives the author credit. Plus the page has no direct "author" (or at least it will coming up considering that it's a wiki). But perhaps I'm doing poor form as well? :?

I would like to get to the bottom of this issue. Opinions and advice would go appreciated. 8)

P.S. I do not upload pictures that are not mine without permission for the author(s).

Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 3:22 am
by lcarreau
Josh Lewis wrote:
I would like to get to the bottom of this issue.


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Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 5:21 am
by jfrishmanIII
From the terms of service:

SP claims NO ownership of any Content submitted, posted or displayed by SP members. SP members or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content. [emphasis mine]


In other words, the answer to your question is no. There are a number of us here who sometimes sell our photography, including at least a few serious working pros, and I don't expect those folks would contribute their material if it meant losing copyright. Most serious photographers are realistic about the fact that posting photos anywhere online means that they'll occasionally get swiped, but that doesn't mean it's okay, or legal. People wanting to re-purpose text or photos from SP should get permission from the contributors.

Glad you asked! It's understandable that someone could be confused on the issue.

Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 6:30 am
by Josh Lewis
I was trying to get two main questions addressed. The first one jfrishmanIII answered well. :) But the second one is still not answered. (the one about me using pictures from SP that link directly to the post that has the author name in it)

Now obviously I can use critical thinking on this situation which will state that some folks might not want me to do this. But if that were absolute, then we would have copy right issues here on SummitPost taking place all the time! (posting pictures in the forums, map use, ect.) Typically I respect Topo copy right laws. But in threads like "Dangerous Lol Cats" I'm willing to bet most folks did not ask those authors to use the pictures.

@ Larry. This is not a dumb thread. Even if I was not wondering, there are folks out there that are or simply do not know.

Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 7:31 am
by mrchad9
You are free to use hotlinks to display other's photos. No one can stop you from doing it and it is perfectly legal. As you know people do it all the time. Some will not like it but that's their problem. Their options are to either live with it or stop you by removing the source. You just can not copy their pics onto your own server, which removes their control over it.

Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 7:59 am
by Josh Lewis
When you say hotlinks, does this include things like this? (an image using the img tag as opposed to a link using html)

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Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 8:10 am
by mrchad9
Yes. I have no right to stop you from doing it like that, either here or if you want to display it on any other site. You just can't actually copy it over to your site such that it is no longer a link (regardless of whether or not it is modified to show a logo or something).

You never did like that picture though did you? lol

Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 8:21 am
by Josh Lewis
Thanks Mr. Chad. Case solved. 8)

Regarding Paddles: It's a cute picture. It's good quality, great lighting. I even like the concept of it (Just like Steph posting Thunder Bill). I was a bit jealous that it got 21 Votes. :wink: But it all boils down to not taking voting so seriously. :)

Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 11:55 am
by Bob Sihler
JfrishmanIII and mrchad9 are correct.

Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 12:10 pm
by rgg
Wikipedia has a clear and detailed answer to the second question, with lots of references:

Inline Linking
Copyright aspects of hyperlinking and framing

The short version, as applied to the OP? In the US and most other countries, it's legal to use an image from another place, provided that you don't copy it, but link directly to it, as in <img src="http://image_url"/>.

Personally, I believe that one should ask permission before reusing someone else's images, even in this way, but I can see good reasons for exceptions; for example, if inline linking would be ruled illegal, Google Image Search couldn't exist anymore in its present form.

Cheers, Rob
(edited for clarity)

Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Tue Dec 04, 2012 12:59 am
by lcarreau
WHY do I feel like I'm living in a world where TAKE, TAKE, TAKE is the NORM and completely acceptable in today's Society ???

If SOMEONE has the guts to SHARE, then let's start giving those people some GRATITUDE ..... GEEz ... :roll:

Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Tue Dec 04, 2012 1:12 am
by lcarreau
lcarreau wrote:
Josh Lewis wrote:
I would like to get to the bottom of this issue.


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Sorry --- FORGOT to add Mister Smiley ...

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Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 3:52 am
by AlexRts
What are you upset about?

Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 7:10 pm
by chugach mtn boy
Hey, I resemble that remark! Most of my photos are point & shoot and all are here solely for informational value--if I get lucky and get a genuinely decent image once in a while, that's just the good fortune of a duffer. But even I like to be asked before someone uses my photos in a publication or on another (non-SP) website, and so far as I know, I always have been.

Tahoe, we enjoy and admire your work, and the site would be pretty drab without contributions from the more skilled photographers. I think nearly everyone in this community respects that these photos remain yours, and the site itself doesn't sell them. I'm not sure what protections you can expect beyond that, though--the only complete safety is not to display them anywhere.

Re: Are Photos posted here in Public Domain?

PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 12:24 am
by Josh Lewis
tahoecedar wrote:And you've been taking photos for a while right? How else would you know the size of mine, and be disappointed that I was posting them smaller than you could use now??? ...so it makes a person not want to share with thieves...and yet, why disappoint the other people by not posting?


I do not appreciate you calling me a thief. :? I did not take any of your photos! (unless you count looking at your photos which any time you look at something it saves it into your browser cache and eventually deletes it automatically). I did not realize the context of what you were saying until you started posting more replies. At first I thought you meant taking pictures of mountains like the ones I actually post here on SummitPost (3,381 to be exact. A handful of them are topo's and a few from other folks with permission).

For those who do not know what TahoeCedar is talking about, I sent her a PM wondering about how her pic sizes were very small. Every now and then I look at pictures in full resolution before voting. The reasoning behind this is to ensure that the quality of the photo is good and not blurry. People will vote on a blurry picture not knowing that the bigger one is of lower quality. :wink: When ever I post photos here on SP I resize it to 1200px (at least for the past several months).

The thread was originally started because someone I know was doing this because he was falsely informed. I started this thread to prove to him that he was told wrong as well as get the hot linking issue figured out.

tahoecedar wrote:They weren't of snowy mountain tops anyway, so who will care...


And that is your choice. We will have to respect that. You own your pics so that's perfectly okay. If I decide to remove all my best pics, I have the right to do so. (BTW I don't plan on doing that)

tahoecedar wrote:And so you have one photo???


I have thousands of photos. After all I am a landscape photographer. :wink: 8)

tahoecedar wrote:Why do you ask? Are you taking photos too?


So are you accusing other people in this thread of stealing photos too? What is this the witch hunt? :P

“It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves” -Arthur Miller

Need evidence to suggest that I didn't steal them? Well let's get started. Court is now in session. First off you posted your photos in low resolution. The makes it very unappealing to take such a photo. It couldn't even be used for a website banner! But let's just pretend that I only needed a small picture. Okay. Now days Google has a neat tool that searches up similar images. Take one of my pictures for example. As you can see in the link it provides all the results with that particular picture. This makes it very easy to track pics on the web. If you don't believe Google will find them all, I suppose that argument could work. So lets go to more examples. Where would I likely post my content? On my personal websites. My profile has a list of websites that I own or use. They would be the most likely sources of posting my content. Well I could go on and on but you get the idea.

What if I post in private online? Well how silly would that be? Of all the photos on SP why would I specifically target you? So then you have the argument of off line stealing. What could I do off line with low resolution photos? Sell it as a post card? That would then be a step up to the next level of trouble and likelihood of getting caught doing such a thing. I'm by now means a lawyer, but I am a website detective. And I know how to piece together evidence.

Bottom Line. I did not steal any photos!
Tahoecedar, I was a fan of your work and still am. I'm sad to hear because of a misconception that you will no longer be posting nice photos.

For everyone else, I said I was a detective. But watch out for guys like this:

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