Internet material in PTE

[MUR]

Hi all.

I made a presentation in PTE, to my friends in Canada, with images and videos from the Internet, basically Google images, to show them, how is the Venezuelan Guayana (rivers, mountains, flora, fauna, but not people or cities), but can not mount it on Slideshowclub by the warning “Don’t upload anything that is not yours. This includes pictures, music, videos and/or other material that you have copied or collected from the Internet, but not shown their ownership or copyright. ”

They are about 150 images, how can I “show their ownership or copyright”, or simply, I can not do that. In that case, to place it in Dropbox and share the URL in the Forum, is unethical?

MUR

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi all.

I made a presentation in PTE, to my friends in Canada, with images and videos from the Internet, basically Google images, to show them, how is the Venezuelan Guayana (rivers, mountains, flora, fauna, but not people or cities), but can not mount it on Slideshowclub by the warning “Don’t upload anything that is not yours. This includes pictures, music, videos and/or other material that you have copied or collected from the Internet, but not shown their ownership or copyright. ”

They are about 150 images, how can I “show their ownership or copyright”, or simply, I can not do that. In that case, to place it in Dropbox and share the URL in the Forum, is unethical?

MUR

I had a similar situation when the SSC was under different management. I think if you make a note in your credits at the end or start of your show, that would suffice.

Eric

Yachtsman1.

[Barry Beckham]

Mur

You said I made a presentation in PTE, to my friends in Canada

Under the circumstances shouldn't a show like that remain Just for your friends?

[MUR]

Hi Barry.

I'm leaving to Canada and I intend to show some friends, images of the forest of the Venezuelan Guayana, but that may be of interest to others.

It is a project of geographical disclosure.

MUR

[Barry Beckham]

We all view things differently and whose to say whose right or wrong if indeed anyone is.

I have difficulty shaking the thought that we share our slide shows because we are proud of what we have created and want to share them to see if others concur. If none of the slide show is our work, all my reasons for making it vanish.

[MUR]

Hi Barry, I agree in part.

In this case the project is my job (it's something like playing in the piano, a Chopin's piece, is not mine but my ability to interpret it)

MUR

[Urmas]

Mur,

Google is not a photographer. All photos do have authors (orphan photos is a controversial issue). If the authors of the photos are as long dead as Chopin, you are free to use these images provided authors are noted. Depending on the country, copyright length is usually author's life +70 years or author's life +50 years. After that you are free to use intellectual property but still you have to note the author's name.

For your own home use and private viewing, usually you can use in your slideshows you can ever get from the internet. If you go to public domain (and slideshowclub is a public domain) all copyright rules (including author's fees) apply to your "interpretation". In your case, if you do so, you might get away with it but you should not be surprised to receive some serious mails from lawyers.

Urmas

[tom95521]

Have your friends travel to either Alaska or the lower 48 and watch the slideshow. Make sure you describe it as educational. We have something called "fair use" here.

Tom

[Lin Evans]

It indeed is "educational" and a very nice presentation. Nothing that I see in it would not qualify as "fair use" under US copyright laws. Excellent job...

Lin

[tom95521]

Google is not a photographer. All photos do have authors (orphan photos is a controversial issue). If the authors of the photos are as long dead as Chopin, you are free

I could not let this one fly by without a comment. Google Street View has probably produced the largest number of photographs in the world. Is Google the photographer? There is no human involved in the process. I assume Google owns the images/data so I think they could be considered the photographer, although by default they could be considered public domain.

Tom

[Lin Evans]

Yes, Google themselves have trampled over copyright issues time and again by quoting entire books without the author's permission. They try to justify it by claiming it's in the public's best interest. It's not a simple thing but what Manuel has presented in my opinion fits firmly into fair use for educational purposes.

Best regards,

Lin

[Urmas]

I hardly think, that Google Street View is something complain about here in this topic. Street View is pretty useful when you plan to travel somewhere. Don't think about it as photography even the images are produced by cameras. Yes, the place where I live is there and I have no complaints about it. And if I intend to use their images as "fair use" I still note the source. As simple as that.

I think we talk about images we get using Google search. Telling that somebody acts as bad (as we intend to be ourselves) is a lousy excuse. Marcus Aurelius said:"The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury."

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Yes, the place where I live is there and I have no complaints about it.

Well I think you should, Google have had lots of law suits thrown at them & had to remove or blur out images that the public objected to.

Yachtsman1

[Lin Evans]

Hi Urmas,

Being "useful" is not justification for copyright infringement even though Google would like to have it that way. Google is scanning millions of copyrighted books without any permission from the authors. In addition, they are making these books available to the public and charging for this - i.e. profiting from someone else's labor. You say you don't mind Google Street View because you find it useful. What if you spent two years writing a text book to sell and then someone copied your book and used it to sell to people for profit without your permission? Would you still think that was O.K. because perhaps your book had public usefulness? The fruits of your labor being used for profit by a multi-billion dollar business without any remuneration to you whatsoever?

The situation here is not justification for copyright infringement because someone else does it (Google), but rather whether the use of images for non-profit educational purposes falls under "fair use" laws. In the case of what Manuel has done, in the United States it would fall clearly under fair use and not be a violation of copyright. He is not selling or profiting in any way by using the images nor is he claiming they are his images. He clearly indicates in his production (which I can tell by your statement that you have not yet watched) the source of the images and informational videos. It is not possible to track each of the images to determine the exact copyright holder to give credit to because they were not marked as copyrighted. You statement:

"Telling that somebody acts as bad (as we intend to be ourselves) is a lousy excuse"

Is, in my opinion, not a valid description of anything related to this discussion. Nobody is "intending" to "act bad" here.

Best regards,

Lin

[Urmas]

Just Googled the "Google Books" and among the first resultst was this: Google Books Isn't Copyright Infringement.

(To be fair, Binged "Google Books" as well and got this court case solution result on the first page also. Yandex and Yahoo "did not know" about this case yet )

So, for the moment, until the issue would have its outcome in Supreme Court, it seems, that Google has acted according to "Fair use".

Regarding other Google activities we can have a debate elsewhere, if necessary at all. If you don't like Google, you may seek for win-win situation in the Apple World or Microsoft World or Linux World. Even they are somewhat mixed today. Being without computers and internet might also be the option, I know some such persons also.

I know about the fair use of intellectual property and have used this practice myself. Giving always credit to the author! The Fair use is about (not) paying to the author. Fair use is not about disregarding authors at all.

Maybe we here have been too serious about the Mur's problem. I have not seen his presentation and just got interested. So far it seems that he made it for personal use and could not find the right (internet) channel to show it to his friends. But even for the personal use, crediting the photos (videos, music) is always a good practice and habit. If you pay attention, you usually find the author's name. It just needs one extra step to record it.

[Lin Evans]

"So, for the moment, until the issue would have its outcome in Supreme Court, it seems, that Google has acted according to "Fair use"."

Only because they were forced by a lawsuit to not provide paid access to the complete books:

"Although Google intended to make snippets of its books searchable, while charging a fee to access the full versions, a lawsuit brought by the Author's Guild has kept its collection locked behind a digital fence"

Google is operating on shakey legal ground and if not for the Author's Guild would be presently stealing income from the authors of the millions of books they scanned in their entirity. When you have the huge deep pockets of Google it's possible to hire the best legal help and drag this case out for many, many years.

I personally believe that Manuel is well within the legal definition of Fair Use as it is practiced in the United States. His friends are in Canada so I'm not as familiar with their laws on Fair Use.

It's never a simple thing but essentially people like to be either paid or credited for their work and sometimes both. But to preserve these copyrights, photos need to be marked as copyrighted to make it possible to either properly credit the photographer or pay for their use. When photos are posted on public forums without a legible copyright message on the photo itself it makes it very difficult to properly credit the photographer or ask for permission to use the photo or video. There are tools - free ones - to do reverse photo searches to try to find the source of the photo, but when over a hundred photos are being used it is very difficult and in many cases impossible to track down the origin and original copyright holder.

With music, there are numerous opportunistic companies - Warner Music (WMG) comes immediately to mind. They and other companies who hold many copyrights frequently claim music which does not belong to them. YouTube is resplendent with cases where these unscrupulous media moguls attempt to claim ownership of music they do not and in many cases "can not" own. It happened to me on several occasions and I had to fight with YouTube to prove that WMG did not and can not own copyrights to music firmly in the Public Domain. I was victorious but only because I would not back off. These companies don't do this because they want to be paid for the use of the music, they do it because they want to sell advertising which they "attach" to other people's videos. If the author of the video doesn't stand up for their rights, these media giants simply unjustly claim rights and YouTube allows them to attach their client's advertising to the video.

It's too bad that many of the big guys don't play fair....

Best regards,

Lin

[Urmas]

Lin,

I am sorry for you personal problems with WMG. My experience has one somewhat funny case. Some years ago one boy took (stole) my photo and submitted it on his behalf to some photo contest. When the photo reached the final stages, proof of authorship and original was required. Then the boy contacted me and asked if I would be kind to give him my photo so he could get his prize... I rejected his idea, gently.

Tenzin Gyatso has said something like " By helping yourself you help whole mankind". I agree here - it all starts from ourselves. If each of us would act fairly, whole mankind would act fairly. If I want to use someone's photo under fair use, it can well be work of Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Don Gutotski etc. - there is no (money) problem with it until I credit the author. I have yet to witness a situation when there is a "orphaned photo of something" and I can not find even better one of the same/similar thing from credited author. In most cases we can just leave the unknown behind and use the credited one.

By seeking and using uncredited material (photos) we are no better than those we complain about.

Am I too idealistic?

Urmas

[Lin Evans]

Hi Urmas,

Perhaps a little more idealistic than can be achieved in the real world without an unlimited budget. I agree entirely in theory, but when you watch Manuel's show I think you will see why it's unrealistic to expect him to have found the necessary material from alternate and totally known sources. If one were only using a dozen photos or so and of subjects frequently photographed it might be possible. In his case some of the locations simply are not common enough to find alternatives. For example, Lahemaa National Park in your country is visited and photographed by multitudes of people, much like the Grand Canyon National Park in the United States. So it would not be difficult to find photos with known photographers and seek rights to use photos. But in the case of the Tepuis in Venezuela, much of the subject matter is in very remote and inaccessable regions and finding sufficient material with known photographers and available copyright information is much, much more difficult. Some of the images simply have no duplicate views available anywhere that I was able to find.

It's not a simple thing and especially when the purpose of the presentation is decidedly non-commercial and educational, fair use plays an important role.

Of course stealing someone's work then presenting it as one's own is downright dishonest such as the case where your photo was taken and then used in an attempt to gain a prize. Sometimes it's difficult to believe that people could be so blatantly abusive of one's rights. Of course culture sometimes rears its head and some people (commonly done in China) seem to have no conscience when it comes to theft of intellectual property. The last time I was in Beijing I was appalled at the sheer quantity of stolen and copied software, movies, and knock-off copies of major clothing brands, etc., being freely sold and traded on the streets. Want a copy of Photoshop CS6 Extended complete with virtually identical packaging complete with hologram, etc.? If you have five dollars it's yours....Want the latest BluRay copy of any major motion picture? For five dollars you can get five movies. It's crazy....

Best regards,

Lin

[Urmas]

. But in the case of the Tepuis in Venezuela, much of the subject matter is in very remote and inaccessable regions and finding sufficient material with known photographers and available copyright information is much, much more difficult. Some of the images simply have no duplicate views available anywhere that I was able to find.

I understand, that sometimes authors themselves are not aware about (telling) their own authorship when uploading images. We also know, that some social media sites strip all metadata from images and ... no more comments needed. Yes, it is sometimes too crazy world. As usual, it is all about finding the right balance.

Thanks for interesting discussion and perhaps, world got a little bit better place after that.

Sincerely,

Urmas

[MUR]

Hi Urmas.

Please see the project and tell me if you think I should remove it from Dropbox and so I will.

Actually you can see it in this address

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4d23tp1nblwirqq/Tepuy-ing.exe?dl=0

MUR

[Urmas]

Hi Mur,

Looked your presentation. Liked its idea and content. Regarding PTE editing the show was mostly pelasingly compiled.

Now about copyright terms and fair use. Within your home and between your friends, no-one else actually can see, what and how you have used in you show. And still fair use is to make both sides happy - the user and the author. The user can use material freely but author gets free ad in return. Only then both sides are happy.

Contrary to many previous assumptions here, Tepuis area seems being usually visited, photographed and filmed by experienced people, not by random selfiemakers (sorry if I hurt somebody by using such term ). It means, that the author's names are (usually) available. Some images you used already contained author's name. Yellow rectangle on many video clips pointed directly to only one well-known source. Just few Google searches I made, revealed many photos you used and authors were not hiding as well. Some even clearly stated like "Attribution of this image to the author (Paolo Costa Baldi) is also required...". And if really one has to use a really orphaned image, it is good to point the image source (website). And also music needs to be credited.

Another thing is where to place names and links. I think in such educational-orientated show authors usually would like to see their names directly along the photos/videos (We all know what happens in cinema when movie ends and credits start to flow). However, if that makes screen too crowded, one can always give full credits at the end of the show. Just like in movies. It just has to be consistent.

My conclusion is here. I repeat again, within you family and friends - how in the earth authors would even know, what happens with their images, videos and music! Dropbox already has its rules: "Please don't copy, upload, download or share content unless you have the right to do so." Although I do not see Dropbox material being public by default unless uploader decides so. But what if your friend decides to present your show to his/her friends and it goes on and on? It is very likely scenario.

Considering circumstances, even naming your show educational or private does not overrule sound and loud violation of fair use paradigm - making both sides happy. User and author. At the moment You and Your friends are happy users but there are many unhappy authors.

However, after you edit the show and credit the authors, I see no other problems with it and your intended use of it.

Urmas

[MUR]

Hi Urmas.

Thanks for your opinion, I am going to remove the project from Dropbox.

MUR