Yes, that’s right. However, I am not writing a book on movies. I’m making a small personal website. To use the print analogy, if I am making up my own personal scrapbook to show my friends, saying “here is my list of favourite movies”, I would illustrate it with pictures cut out from magazines. I’m not going to call the magazine or the movie studio and ask them if I can cut out the picture and use it.
Right?
Right.
But posting it online is NOT like showing it to a few friends.
You can tape a movie off TV and replay it for your private use. You can’t take it into an auditorium and show to a crowd.
Well, this is turning into debate territory here. From what I read in this thread, the answer to my OP is that it is not a violation of copyright law for me to post screenshots of DVDs at a website. Morally, since I’m not making a profit, and since this is a small website that very few people visit, I don’t see a problem with it either.
Thanks everyone for the responses.
Also, keep in mind the relative level of copying vs. original material / work /effort.
IANAL, but here’s some examples:
You might set up a fansite with a few photos, and some gushing about how you love Harry Potter (or think Hermoine is hot…) but if you create an encyclopedic reference of Harry Potter Everything, and basically it’s hundreds of pages of copying, rearranging and cross-referencing nothing but J.K. Rowling’s works - well that’s outright copying not fair use. What proportion of the content is yours vs. hers?
Similarly, on your blog post a picture or two from a movie and a critique every so often - or even just gushing or kvetching about the stars… fine. Become the go-to reference site of pictures for any significant movie ever shown in theatres or any script, even though it’s a novel concept at the time, you better have permission from everyone.
So where’s the line between "yours’ and “mine”? Like most of the real world, so difficult to nail down exactly that it’s always up to the judge (or jury).
IIRC if an ISP ignores takedown DMCA notices, they then can be also liable for copyright infringement. So usually, they will happily keep the material down until you and your lawyers settle the issues with the (alleged) copyright owners.
Wasn’t there a recent decison about the “Let’s Go Crazy” dancing baby vs. Prince?
Like all pre-Internet laws, to establish that a crime is being committed, you first have to establish where the crime occurred, and in older legislation, the Internet is not a place. That is why soliciting minors for sex through chatrooms is not a crime. They actually catch these criminals when they show up at a particular house and enter the door with the intention of having sex with a minor. Until they physically cross the threshold, there’s no laws that cover what they did so far.