You’re correct that pirating someone’s material and then claiming that you’re doing them a favor by giving them exposure is wrong and silly. But, given that you’ve conceded that no-one has pirated anything here, and that all the OP did was link to the site, the fact is that the OP did give the site some free publicity. He provided a link to the site on a board read by thousands of people a day.
It might not have been very much publicity, in the big scheme of things, but Spark240 was not wrong.
Direct links are fine. It is just important to say where they came from or link to the entire article where they were used. Especially in the case of original photos when the site is under copyright. Thanks.
Why do you keep talking about copyright? Copyright is irrelevant here, because no-one is copying your images. Linking to them without attribution might, in some people’s opinion, be discourteous, but it’s not a copyright issue.
It’s polite to attribute, I agree. But there are billions of photos out there in internet world, and billions of links to them, so I would argue that it isn’t important at all, except to the person up on their high horse.
The photo you linked to is under copyright of the Burton Holmes Historical Collection. It is so labeled and digimarc protected. Thanks for showing how you can push the envelope. Others who have reproduced it have been kind enough not to.
I’m sorry. Like others have said, this happens billions of times per day on the internet and that’s just the way it is. Discourteous, yes. Illegal, no.
My initial thought was similar to yours, except in the US i would go even further: a photograph taken in 1917 is not in copyright, period.
Presumably, though, the original picture was not in color. The colorization of the image probably constitutes creative work, which would allow the person who did the colorizing to claim copyright over it. But they still can’t claim copyright over the original image.
Our new friend claims to be a lawyer, and to understand these issues, but in this thread he’s coming across like any one of thousands of other internet who actually have no clue about what copyright is, or what constitutes a violation.
In his most recent post to you, he notes:
This, of course, completely misses the point that physical ownership and copyright are not the same thing.
My wife collects old tintype photographs. Most of them were taken in the second half of the nineteenth century, and some in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century. We own the physical tintypes, and if anyone wants a copy of those pictures they would need to come to us and request access to them.
But these images are well out of copyright, and even owning the physical objects does not allow us to claim copyright over them. In fact, claiming copyright over them would, in itself, actually be a violation of Title 17, punishable by a fine of up to $500 per instance:
Of course, the word “knowing” is important here, allowing people who falsely claim copyright over non-protected works to avoid penalties by claiming that, rather than being dishonest, they were simply clueless.
Back to the tintypes:
Furthermore, if we decided to scan these old tintypes and put the images up on the web for anyone to see, we would have no legal right to prohibit people from using copies of the images. The act of scanning and posting out-of-copyright images, even if it was done in 2010, does not give us new copyright over them. While there is no controlling case in this matter, the most relevant decision was Bridgeman Art Library, LTD. v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), in which the court found that copyright is not available for slavish copies of two-dimensional artworks.
Actually, upon further investigation, it appears that even the color portion of the slides is most likely out of copyright.
According to this bio, Burton Holmes had his glass slides hand-colored for use in his lectures. So the coloring on those old images was also most likely done before 1923, meaning that the whole image is out of copyright.
Not only is envirocr whining about copyright over simple linking, but he’s also claiming copyright on out-of-copyright works.
Basically, envirocr seems to be unhappy with the deep-linking of the images from his site (assuming that it is, in fact his site). As that article mentions, some companies (Ticketmaster for one) object to the practice.
The problem is that he keeps using the word “copyright” as if it actually has some relevance.
I do agree that, in some cases, deep linking might be a minor breach of etiquette. On the other hand, anything that Ticketmaster objects to strongly enough to file a lawsuit has to have some redeeming value.
