In today’s podcast, we discuss copyright issues, specifically the distinctions – practical and legal – between “inline” or “hot” or “embedded” links and downloaded images. This comes up usually in the context of using video, but the principles should apply to any uses of images on websites, blogs, twitter, Facebook and other social media.
I am joined today by my colleague Thomas Yarnell.
In a series of cases starting around 2002 (a case called Kelly v. ArribaSoft) and accelerating in 2007 (a series of cases involving Google and Amazon and a photography database called “Perfect 10”), web hosting companies, search engines and sites like Amazon were accused of copyright infringement when they used thumbnail images of copyrighted works for their search or catalog results. So for example, Google Images routinely shows images from copyrighted works in search results. Google (based on the Kelly case and subsequent caselaw) argued that the use of the images was a “fair use”, in that the search engine’s cataloguing of images was a “transformative” type of use that should be protected under copyright’s fair use doctrine.
In the more recent cases involving Perfect 10, Google (and Amazon) were initially successful in arguing that their use of copyrighted images wasn’t copyright infringement at all – making a fair use defense unnecessary. Those cases were appealed and reversed, but only partially. The big point that was upheld was that a search web user’s (Google, Amazon, or anybody else for that matter) embedding of inline links would not constitute direct copyright infringement.
Please click the audio player below for the podcast.
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Did the court or the plaintiff ever introduce the idea of suing for copyright infringement based on Google/Amazon’s public display of the images? Public display is one of the exclusive rights held by the copyright owner. Public display (as well as public performance) is a form of copyright infringement that does not require making a copy.
Good question Joy. But why wouldn’t that also fall under the same protection (or dismissal/defense) as an argument that the use was either fair use or not infringement at all? Part of the non-infringement argument was non-copying and “transformative” use, right?
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