Copyright: A Quick Guide to Playing Nice With Others

Death, taxes, and copyright: It seems that if you publish--whether in print or on the web--sooner or later you're bound to run into concerns related to copyright and the legal rights of creative content and intellectual property. If you maintain a blog, you might well find yourself having to negotiate these issues from both sides; bloggers that provide information from other sources have the legal and ethical responsibility to respect the rights of their sources, while those who publish original content often find themselves in the unfortunate position of having to defend their work from unauthorized use.

As a teacher with a professional background in communications--one who also happens to spend a great deal of time and resources on creative pursuits--I've been over this road a LOT. Plagiarism is reaching epidemic levels on college campuses, and a troubling consequence of this behavior is that students often carry their sloppy habits into the workplace where they can result in liability exposure for their employers. As a photographer, I've had to confront infringing uses of my work ranging from relatively innocent appropriations by individuals, to un-compensated commercial use and blatant attempts at copyright grabs by media companies. These concerns resurfaced recently, when I discovered that material on this very blog had been used without my knowledge or permission. Not surprisingly, this leaves me more than just a little sensitive to the whole issue, and to the ongoing need for simple, plain-English do's and don'ts on avoiding copyright infringement.

So... what follows here are my own brief guidelines. I generally address things I've got experience with, so this should NOT be assumed to be comprehensive, and I urge you to investigate the additional resources at the end of this post for more information. Finally, this blog post does not constitute legal advice; if you have specific concerns, consult an attorney.

Q. I just found a really cool picture/article on the web! Can I use it on my own blog/website/newsletter?
A. Not without permission. Doing so constitutes copyright infringement.

Q. But when someone posts a picture they made on the web, doesn't that put it into the public domain?
A. No--it's really no different from the owner publishing their picture in a book or magazine. Unless the copyright expires, or unless the owner explicitly puts the work into the public domain, the work should be assumed to be copyrighted, and that the owner holds the exclusive rights for publication and republication. (1)

Q. Don't you have to register a copyright for it to be valid?
A. No. Registration provides for the award of statutory damages in infringement lawsuits, but it is NOT necessary to claim ownership. According to the Berne Convention (which the United States adhered to in 1989), a copyright is automatically granted as soon as a work is "fixed" in some medium. (2)

Q. Okay, but what if there's no copyright notice on the website?
A. The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under U.S. law. (3)

Q. Can't I just go ahead and use the item as long as I credit the author/photographer?
A. No. Acknowledging the source of copyrighted material is not a substitute for permission.

Q. What if I can't find the owner, or the owner doesn't respond and I'm on a deadline? Can I use the item anyway?
A. You still cannot use the item without the owner's permission. Be prepared for the process of securing permission to take time, and plan alternative material if you can't locate the owner. A lack of response to your inquiry does NOT entitle you to unauthorized use.

Q. If I represent a non-profit organization, or my intended use is non-commercial, do I still have to secure permission, even if the owner insists on payment?
A. If the copyright owner requires compensation, you must comply or you can't use the item. Non-profit and non-commercial use of a copyrighted work are not exempt.

Q. What if I found the item on a personal blog, or on a personal profile such as on Facebook?
A. It doesn't matter whether the item was found on a commercial or personal site. If you don't own the copyright, you can't use it without permission.

Q. What if I hot-link to the item instead of copying it?
A. The law is still unclear as to the legality of hot-linking copyrighted material. However, in addition to potential legal liability, hot-links consume bandwidth on the hosting server and should be avoided without permission.

Q. But isn't what I'm doing considered to be fair use?
A. Not necessarily. "Fair use" doctrine allows only limited use of copyrighted works without the owner's permission. Acording to the 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law, certain uses are allowed:

...quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported. (4)

Q. I created the photo/article. Might I still have to seek permission to use or republish it?
A. Possibly, if you transferred or licensed the copyright in the same work to someone else.

Q. I didn't know any of this when I "borrowed" the work. Am I still held responsible for infringement?
A. Absolutely. In the United States, ignorance of the law is NEVER considered a defense for violating it.

Q. Honestly, I don't see what all the fuss is about--the writer/photographer should be flattered that I want to use this item. And besides, how will they know?
A. Creators of original works, whether professional or amateur, are entitled by law to control the use and distribution of those works. In some cases, the unauthorized use of a person's work can have a detrimental impact on the potential market value of other work they create. Furthermore, doing so is a violation of the ethics of professional journalism, and can expose the infringer and his/her organization to civil (and in some cases, criminal) liability. Finally, one should NEVER anticipate that an infringement will escape detection, as tools are widely available for locating and identifying potentially infringing uses of copyrighted material.

In a nutshell, be aware of your responsibilities under copyright law. Know how to legally and appropriately use material created by others. And if you choose to infringe on others' rights, don't assume you won't get caught.


Additional resources:

U.S. Copyright Office

Stanford University Libraries: Copyright and Fair Use

Associated Press Stylebook (subscription may be required)



(1) Michelle L Devon, 2009. Copyright Infringement and Web Content. suite101.com Online Web Resources. Retrieved October 21, 2009 from http://onlinepublishingresources.suite101.com/article.cfm/copyright_infringement_and_web_content .

(2) Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. World Intellectual Property Organization. Retrieved October 21, 2009 from http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html .

(3) Copyright Basics. U.S. Copyright Office. Retrieved October 21, 2009 from http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf .

(4) Fair use. U.S. Copyright Office. Retrieved October 21, 2009 from http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html .

Words fail me

This was the scene at the musicians' union (Local 47) in Hollywood at about 6:45 tonight. Of course when I went in to the rehearsal room and told my bandmates about it, I got a chorus of blank stares. Sheesh.

Gotcha!

An unusual noise got me to look up toward my next-door neighbor's tree, and fortunately I was able to grab a camera and my long lens quickly enough to get *ONE* shot off before this guy split. No time to adjust exposure, unfortunately, so I did some rough editing using the curves tool in Photoshop to bring him out of the shadows. A more careful pass is probably warranted.

A study in contrasts

Just.... wow.

Pic of the week: Spring comes to Cal Poly

Gotta love California. 'Nuff said.

Pic of the day: Lunch with a view

My Pic of the Day project will probably be more of an occasional series now, but I'm going to try to keep them frequent. Today's is a no-brainer; I'm having lunch at the In-n-Out on Sepulveda right by LAX. It's right under the 24L approach (maybe 1/4 mile from the piano keys), so the view is awesome, especially in the afternoon when the heavies begin to arrive from Europe. :)

Pic of the day: Evil lurks in the back row

Trumpet players. You gotta love 'em... especially since it's illegal to kill them.

Pictured here are a couple of the rare, tolerable ones. Taken tonight at rehearsal; that's Ron Sewer on the left, and Kendall Wallace on the right.

And yes, I know I missed a couple days' pictures. I'm make 'em up, I guess. Sorry mom.

Pic of the day: My axes

Two of them, anyway--these are the alto and the tenor. I was kinda hunting around for something to shoot, and since these are usually close by and since I really like the way saxophones look, here they are. The shot is underexposed, but my strobe aren't working and I haven't had time to get them fixed, dangit.

If you're a sax geek, here's what you're looking at: The one on the right is my Yamaha Custom 875 tenor, which I'm just back to playing more of lately. The horn on the left is my Yamaha 82 Custom "Z" alto, and yes, it's in silver plate. I use a copper Phil Barone neck on that horn, which makes it look a little odd but boy--it sure does play.

Pics of the Day: Campus residents

What do you do for your loyal blog readers when you're posting two days' worth of pictures late? Give them baby animals. Can't miss.

So Thursday after class, I took a stroll down to "Ag Valley" and said hello to some of our newest residents. This little guy was absolutely charming.

Anyone who knows goats knows they like to climb stuff. This tyke was getting his practice by climbing... his mom. He was pretty good at balancing there, too.



The other thing goats like to do is play. These youngsters were jousting at the back of the pen.


It was close to dinnertime when I was out there, and although the goats were curious and friendly, it wasn't surprising that the guy with the chow wagon was WAY more popular with them than I was.


Finally, here's a species I didn't know we had on campus. This pair of llamas had a baby in the stall, and boy... they look just like teddy bears with long necks. Funny and irresistible.

Pic of the day: Eclipse

For those who didn't get to see the lunar eclipse, now you can... sort of. I think what was really eclipsed was my ability to take a decent shot of this, at least with no advance preparation. With a an SLR, a tripod and a long lens, it might have worked. With the PowerShot, you get... um... the general idea, anyway.

And yes, I'm posting this late. One of several...

Pic of the Day: Splash

I'm a little late posting this, but what the heck. The engineering student clubs were having a noon fair yesterday, and I snapped this picture of the "Dunk Your Professor" booth on my way to my office. It's probably a good thing the business students haven't caught on to this yet, because it was NOT a warm day and I'm not sure I could be as good a sport as this professor obviously was.

Pic of the day: Data

So it looks like I'm switching over the the "to Hell with lame notions of artistic purity--I'll use whatever camera I want" mode on my Pics of the Day. That doesn't keep me from wondering what the heck I'm going to shoot come 11pm, but it does give me the option of trying something weird, hence the attached photo. I often catch myself staring into the prisms on CDs, and when I saw an old one in the trash can (can't we recycle these things yet?) I wondered what the camera would do with that kind of surface. Well, it won't take a super-sharp pic, but it did strike me as moderately interesting, so here it is. EXIF data, for those who care about such things, are 1/8 sec @ f/4.5, ISO 200, no flash.

Pic of the day: Frustration

Well, my little project (or resolution, or whatever it is) has turned out to be at least a little frustrating. To recap, my original intention was to take and post a photo each day from my cell phone. The idea was to make this sort of a photo-autobiography in the sense that these would be images from my environment. The problem, unfortunately, has been that my cellphone camera seems to be very limited in what sort of conditions it can get a decent (by my standards) photo.

Take, for example, yesterday's F-104 photo. I've discovered that the cellphone handles photos best when there's plenty of light. But it seems like too much of it (in this case, the highlight off the plane's canopy) tends to blow out the white point and lead to the really weird color balance you can see in the photo. For purposes of comparison, here's a unedited shot I took at the same time using a Canon Powershot SD750 (click the photo for a larger version):

While this photo isn't perfect, it does reveal the limitations in my original cellphone photo. The hues are more accurate, and whites appear to be rendered a little more nicely. I get the opposite problem with low-light photos: I don't know if any cellphones include a flash, since (I would think, anyway) that would be a HUGE drain on the battery, so the camera's software has to compensate by increasing the exposure time (leading to blurs), or the ISO (which gives you graininess). Argh.

So... I suppose I have to decide whether to continue doing this according to my original plan regardless of the usually crappy photo quality, or to free myself to use whatever camera I happen to feel like using. Time will tell, I guess, but I'm going to violate my own rules today for this image, which I simply could not have gotten with the phone:

Eeek! Bones! A little backyard paleontology here... we've been taking out a deck that's falling apart in places and needs to be replaced with a small garage-type building. While pulling up some supports, I spotted these bones and thought I'd share them. My guess is they're rat bones (and yes, mom... I washed my hands afterwards), but I'm surprised I found them before the dogs did. This image was also useful, since it helped me discover that you can actually take something approaching a macro photo using a little point-and-shoot. Just zoom way out, back up a foot or two (like you would if you're doing this with an SLR and a long lens), and take several shots so that you've got a decent chance of getting the focus right. Cool.

Pic of the day: Rotate!

The weather was pretty nice today, so I took the scooter down the Olive Recreation Center to get this pic. Burbank was home to Lockheed for many years, and the community still exhibits strong emotional ties to that part of its history. This F-104 Starfighter is one of the many artifacts of this relationship, and makes a terrific sentinel at the building entrance.

Pic of the day: Zzzzzzz....

For those who haven't met her, this is Punky, my evil little Monsterdog. Punky has no eyes, so it's sometimes difficult to tell if she's sleeping. In general, though, I know that if she's standing, she's probably awake. If she's snoring, she's either asleep or ignoring me.

Pic of the day: Bzzzzzz!

I haz beez!

Growing up, we always had a hive on the yard, since my dad was a beekeeper as sort of a hobby/obsession. He'd harvest the honey and put it in jars, and we'd sell it in a little stand at the curb after school. Decades later, I ended up with a bunch of bees living under a deck in the backyard, but there was no way to save the colony at the time. But dad had an old box around, so after I'd bugged him enough, he brought over this colony and they've been living here ever since. The plants LOVE these guys, and they've been busy, so I'm gonna have to get in there soon to add another level to the hive.

Their front door, by the way, is the slot you see toward the bottom. There's a Morning Glory behind them that's gone absolutely nuts since they arrived--to the point where we have to be careful about trimming it or it tries to attack the house...

Pic of the day: Love for sale

It's the day before V-Day, which means that a few women and most men are at the mall right this minute, procuring an expression of their love... or whatever. This particular shop was packed.

Me? Just getting some Mongolian food... I'd rather be nice ALL year than just on one day. :-)

Pic of the day: Radiation

Dungeon? Haunted house? Nope, this is just the hallway in the auditorium building of our local community college. I don't know why this grizzled old radiator remains, or why it was located inches from an exterior door in the first place, but I do like the creepiness of the scene. Boo!

Pic of the day: Anatomy of a garage band

Buddies who like to play. Or musicians you like to hang with... whichever. Regardless, if you play in a cover band, you HAVE to like the guys you're playing with, cause you're not gonna get rich at it. Just like jazz, in fact.

Pic of the day: The woodshed

I didn't realize that a normal person might not realize what I'm referring to when I use this term, so here's a shot of my "woodshed," which is the place where a musician goes to practice. In the foreground is a music stand with the exercise book I'm working on. The computer gives me something to do when my chops need a break. Behind the chair are alto, tenor, and bari saxes, as well as flute and clarinet. The only thing missing is me, so better get back to it!