Copyrights, What are YOUR Rights?
(Note from author: This is my interpretation and understanding of the current copyright laws of United States of America, not to be substituted with actual legal advice. If you are seeking legal counsel regarding these subject, my advice to you is to seek an attorney. As for international laws and foreign laws, my advice is to do research in these respective countries and seek attorneys within the borders of your research and laws.)
This entry is an extension to Candy’s blog entry on copyright issues and her information is accurate in terms of understanding her aspects on the copyright issues (hyperlinking and pointing to other websites/blogs/etc). This entry is more of general understanding and categorization of copyright laws.
First an foremost, copyright laws are there to protect creative rights of organizations and individuals. Basically, what copyrights mean is this: other people cannot use your work for their profit without your permission, other people cannot use your work and claim it as their own. Nothing more and nothing less.
Now that the basic foundations of copyrights have been understood, it is necessary for one to realize that there are two forms of copyright laws: creative copyrights and editorial copyrights. Most of you would be surprised to learn that under editorial copyright laws, the copyright holders have less rights than the person(s) using the copyrighted material(s).
Creative copyright laws protects the copyright holders from having their works be used for profit without permission. This means nobody can use your photos and/or creative works for advertising, television shows, movies, and so forth. This law ends when an agreement between the copyright holder and the person(s) using copyright material is drafted and agreed upon. This means someone cannot steal your photograph and sell it on cafepress, stock sites, and so forth.
Editorial works, on the other hand, lies more in the area of reporting. For example, a newspaper might have an article about google.com and uses Google’s front page as a photograph accommodating the article is called editorial use and they are not bound by the same laws for creative use. Google cannot sue the newspaper for copyright infringement because the article is about Google and the newspaper is not making profit from Google.com’s copyright directly. This is true in court because Scientology cannot stop its materials from being used in the editorial sense. They continue to sue and they continue to lose.
Now, editorial use covers bloggers. In the eyes of the law, bloggers are considered commentators, journalists, and diarists. If the blogger can claim “Fair use” of the copyrighted items (a definition that varies from court to court), then they have a “fair use” of copyrighted materials whether they have permission or not. Until the blogger uses it on cafepress, zazzle, or any print-on-demand, or whatnot that would constitute a commercial use of the photograph/words.
In short, if your copyright is infringed upon, get a lawyer and prosecute if you have a case. Also, this should be known–most cases in which copyrights were found to be infringed upon usually results in monetary damages and so forth; Removal from publication are usually not on that list. In most cases, the damage has been done; so, revocation of publications or being published at that point is rather useless. However, a lawsuit protects the copyright holder from future publications of the copyrighted materials.
More information on copyright laws and “Fair Use:”
Picture Archives Council of America’s Copyright Commandments.
Wikipedia’s Definition of “Fair Use.”
Photo Attorney’s Blog: Commercial vs. Editorial uses.
Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Official US Copyrights Website
Shutterbug’s Guide to Privacy Rights.
Last but not least, “How to Copyright your Works.”
Disclaimer
(Note from author: This is my interpretation and understanding of the current copyright laws of United States of America, not to be substituted with actual legal advice. If you are seeking legal counsel regarding these subject, my advice to you is to seek an attorney. As for international laws and foreign laws, my advice is to do research in these respective countries and seek attorneys within the borders of your research and laws.)
Tags: , commercial, copyright, copyrights, editorial, Law, legal, photography, understanding, works
May 27th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Great coverage! I believe a few people also covered copyright issues a while back when there was a controversy regarding a movie that Betts and Aidan made. I’m not sure where it is now, but, one probably could find it by doing a search on DeafRead. Copyright is so vast and covers every imaginable property.
You’re smart to add the disclaimer. I probably should have, but, I’m taking my chances and have many links to point out the sources of information I got to write my blog.
Great piece!
May 27th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Candy!
I tried my best to cover what I knew, especially things that aren’t related to photography lol. The only reason I put up the disclaimer was because I’m too poor to end up being “expert witness” in some case someone decided to say that I said it was okay. LOL. Disclaimer = no weird legal trips to courts out of state or whatnot.
Ha, right. Who knows?
I think you’re safe…They’d ask you if you are a lawyer, if you said no…
Then they’d be like “well, get a lawyer idiot!” to the person infringing copyright “And not a blogger!”
-Der Sankt
May 27th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Awesome article… great for teaching bloggers/vloggers about copyrights. Thanks!
May 27th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Ahhh….
I am scuffled! I’ll have to ask millions of questions to the copyright/disclaimer lawyer.
Bah humbag.
I remembered there was a controversy between Betts and Aidan Mack about the in-copyright projects from school when they were students. Ridor made Betts to make an announcement unexpectedly how he felt about his school project that Aidan kind of made the duplicated film w/o his permission. In my opinion, it was unnecessary.
*Rolls my eyes*
Move on and get some new topics.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Karen,
With pleasure, always. If you have a topic of interest you’d like to know more about, feel free to bring them up…I’m sure I’ll get motivated enough to do some research here and there.
WG–
This entry is not about Aidan and Wayne’s incident. This is general understanding of copyright laws, that’s all. If you already knew about this stuff, feel free to ignore it all!
You telling me to move on and get new topics? I invite you to a challenge: come up with some brand new topic, something nobody really discussed before and I’ll give you Bucket of Crabs as your platform.
No editing from other writers here, no check-ups, just you and your topic on BOC. Leave it open to opinions, criticism, praise, discussion and more!
-ben
May 27th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Ben,
This topic is a new one for me, so I have to read up on it.
Your information covers the USA bloggers, et al. What about international issues i.e. copyright infringement of , say, Canadians by Americans (this is for the sake of discussion, rather than anti-American sentiments
)?
Does anyone know?
Yeah, yeah, I should go see a lawyer… Canadian or American or International? LOL
Shelley
May 27th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Shelley–
In most cases, international laws respect the authority of the country and its laws. So, if a Canadian infringes on the copyright of an American work, the American can sue in American courts. Candian courts, if they deem the lawsuit appropriate and so forth, will respond to American Laws and act accordingly to Canadian laws of extradition and stuff.
This is interesting! I should do more research on that, really. I have agencies representing me abroad, especially in Asia and Europe. I’ve always been under the impression that the agencies will take care of these issues abroad but that’s wrong kind of thinking on my behalf. More research on international copyright laws will be on top of my list of information to google about later tonight!
-Ben (Der Sankt)
May 27th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Everything on my aggregator constitutes ‘fair use’. The HFL foundation gets nothing at all from the advertising on the website.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Nesmuth961,
Then as an aggregator, you are bound to different set of regulations. You cannot modify or adjust anything that you are aggregating. This includes adding subtitles, inserting pictures, removing parts or whole videos, and so forth. Secondly, you cannot advertise yourself on another aggregator as a blog and delegate visitors to your aggregator (which is competition to deafread and other aggregators). This in itself is fraudulent and prosecutable in a court of law.
My recommendation to you, Mr. Nesmuth, is to pick what you are (blogger, aggregator, and so forth) and abide to the regulations that has been established. When you go breaking rules of one label you cannot switch and say you’re something else. That will not hold in the courts. It seems to me you want to get away with murder by claiming yourself a “solider” when caught in the act…
Instead of being tried in a Military tribunal, you want to be tried in a civilian court with a jury. So, you are either a civilian committing murder or a solider doing an act of duty. You cannot claim to be a solider and be tried in a civilian court. Same rules applies here. If something doesn’t fit, you cannot relabel yourself in order to make it fit.
Either you follow the rules or you don’t.
-Der Sankt (Ben)
May 27th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Thanks for the follow up, Ben. I would like to share you some information from the attorney that you may find it interesting.
After reading the link,
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/copyright-sample-forms-and-strategies-for-registering-your-online-content-3962
it stated that you are not automatically protected by copyright infringement unless you are registered. This is what Candy was trying to say in her blog that there are specific guidelines that needed to be taken in order to be protected.
“If you haven’t registered your online content, then you cannot take advantage of special statutory provisions of U.S. copyright law. You will not get your attorneys’ fees paid and you cannot get statutory (i.e., presumptive monetary) damages.”
Now, I am not sure if we are able to categorize a blog as a publishing material according to this lawyer, “At first glance, it might be tempting to try and fit your blog into the rules for publishing serials (magazines, newspapers, journals). However, most blogs fail to meet these standards.”
So in order to protect your rear end, you can simply protect your blog by registering and paying 45 bucks but gotta register every three months to update it.
Yeah, I know, I know… if we were to do that, heck, our pockets would be so empty!! However, you can register the entire blog that covers from day one to now not necessarily for every entry you write but don’t forget that updating is still necessary to protect future blog entries.
This is something that I never knew before thanks to Candy and you for giving me the inspiration to dig further
Shovel, anyone?
May 27th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Nesmuth–
On an additional note, since you have mentioned that the foundation is not making any money off the advertising on their website can mean only one thing…Someone is making money and it’s not the foundation. You have a legal problem here: if you are the owner of the foundation, you cannot claim that you are acting on your own self using the foundation’s website/blog without the unanimous consent of the foundation and its members.
-Der Sankt
May 27th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Huh, interesting article.
I’m a member of an online art forum, where artists post photos of their artwork. A few artists are now embroiled in copyright infringement lawsuits based on online photo piracy of artwork copyrighted by the artists. In other words, someone in China pirates an online photo of artwork posted in an American art forum and proceeds to use this to either make prints of it or copy the art to sell. How to enforce copyright infringement internationally, and how to interpret actual infringement, on the basis of the photo or the artwork?
One can see how murky the internet has made of copyright laws.
May 27th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
So in other words, the internet is just like WILD, WILD WEST nowadays!
Bottom line, what? It is always good to have a record of the file of your copyrights in the Congress in order to be deeply protected especially to prevent from someone making money off of you!
May 27th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Indeed, Barb, at this time Viacom inc. is suing Google’s YouTube for $1 billion in a copyright infringement suit. Viacom claims it is owed damages for unauthorized viewing of its programming like MTV, Comedy Central and other networks on YouTube.
I wonder what making a hosting provider liable for Internet communications would do to the average blogger?
May 27th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Ann_C,
Companies like that will tend to go after host rather than blogger. But, I’m sure we’ll see more of that topic in the future.
May 27th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Barb–
Actually, that’s not true. The second the photograph becomes a tangible medium (whether it be digital or film) it is automatically copyrighted. The problem with this concept is that it is difficult to prove that you were the one who took the picture. Registration is necessary when it comes to lawsuits, indeed, related to money; but, the copyright still stands.
Most photographers don’t really register their works largely due to the fact the process itself can take up to three years and is quite expensive. During the “three years” process, the copyright laws are finicky. There’s another bill in congress called “Orphan Works Bill” which will redefine copyright laws as we know it. But that’s another long entry, LOL.
You’re right about the internet being the Wild, Wild West in terms of copyrights and all. One of the best ways, and the cheapest ways to ensure your copyright is to mail yourself the materials and do not open the envelope. The postmark on the envelope will stand in court as proof of date of your copyright…
warmest,
Der Sankt
May 27th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
In case you dont go to the bottom of the pages of my aggregator, youll notice there’s no copyright claim on it. HFL Foundation isnt claiming copyright. Anyone can copy stuff off it and use it on their site.
Go ahead and register your copyrights through that page.
There’s a shortcut and its a protection statement that can be filed for less than 2o bucks thats good a s a full blow copyright for 24 months and you’ll have to go to the nolo press to find that info.
May 27th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Ah, and if such a company is successful in going after the host, then it would mean more censorship of v/bloggers’ material as the host wouldn’t want another successful lawsuit to drive it out of business.
A Catch-22, because censorship in turn cuts to the core of freedom of information on the Internet. Will be interesting to see how this lawsuit turns out.
May 27th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Nesmuth961,
Perhaps your material isn’t copyrighted and you allowed it to become “public domain.” That is your right for as long as YOU are the SOLE copyright holder of ALL the materials you made public. Since that is not the case, there are copyrighted material you are using that YOU don’t have the rights to turn it into a public domain. You can get sued.
It doesn’t matter whether or not the material is registered. You have made that admission that you were NOT the one who wrote or created these materials; therefore, you are bound to copyright laws. Fair Use can only take you so far…It appears that you are changing the copyright information on materials you do not own…That in itself is illegal. You MUST have the consent of the copyright holder to make anything “public domain.”
So in this situation, I stand with Candy and Barb. Barb is the copyright holder of the photographs in question–you are under no rights to inform your audience that they can redistribute the photo. That right is reserved for Barb only. Candy is right regarding links and so forth, Nesmuth, you have the right to link things but you don’t have the right to tell anyone that the links you are pointing to is public domain. You cannot modify photos, videos or written works (this includes adding subtitles, drawing on photos, adding and removing time from a clip…).
That’s all.
-Der Sankt
May 27th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Ann_C,
The problem with youtube is financial. Viacom makes money off the shows they air. They only have the license to redistribute the materials. YOUtube is in violation of that. The redistribution of shows in YOUtube prevents Viacom from making money off their products. On the plus side, YOUtube does NOT have the license to redistribute the show (on the web or through email or whatever) without written permission from Viacom.
YouTube is interfering with the business of Viacom and its products; thus, it is a copyright infringement.
-Der Sankt
May 27th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Based on the attorney’s explanation, once you register for copyright, you will be much more protected and that the fees may be covered and get statutory damages. I used to think that everything you publish in your blog is automatically copyrighted but it is not true.
May 27th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Gotcha, Ben. I understand the financial losses that Viacom suffers as a result of YouTube’s copyright infringement of their shows.
However, imagine the scenario of a v/blogger who unknowingly uses a clip or even a still taken from say, a Comedy Central show, to illustrate a point in his article which is uploaded to YouTube. If Viacom wins this suit, it would mean that YouTube may censor this v/blogsite’s article because the v/blogger is using copyrighted material that cannot be allowed on YouTube. And you can bet other host providers will follow suit if YouTube loses the case.
Then imagine this same v/blogger sues YouTube for censorship that curbs freedom of information on what is an “open” communication venue. The Internet is not owned by any one individual or company in this country. Can you visualize the ramifications of such a lawsuit that Viacom is pursuing against YouTube? Exchange of information on the Internet may dry up for fear of being sued or censored/ banned. Where does that leave the Internet?
May 27th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Well, one thing tho, der Sankt, adding subtitles are ok I would think as long as it reflects true translation. Yet, I think this is an uncharted area.
And if it doesn’t, then it has to be stated that way. For example, check out MM’s latest blog/video on her site. She added subtitles to a video of George Bush and it is all parody. At the end of the video, you’ll see she protected herself by stating such.
Cool video actually. I didn’t want to add links here without your permission. Ya’ll know MM and her “At The Rim” blog.
May 27th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Candy,
Add links to heart’s content.
I would suggest the best thing to do is to ask permission to subtitle their vlogs. I recall there were copyright issues with captioning some music’s lyrics on movies. If you ask me, the whole copyright stuff is just silly. LOL
-Ben
May 27th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Wow a lotta people twisting the meaning of copyright laws.
I’ll sleep at night. I have nothing to be guilty of.
Ive accomplished restoring the confidence of a handful of people traditionally excluded by the deaf community since I started the site. Thats the thing I yearn for. Helping people that are left out of the deaf communities gain confidence again is one of the great things I do to society and my blog aggregator helps me accomplish that.
So you’re just blowing the bad horns on what I do and I’ve learned to ignore them. And Ill keep on doing it whether you like it or not.
Richard
May 27th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
*This comment has been deleted by Der Sankt on the grounds that it is not relevant to the blog entry.*
Richard,
Bucket of Crabs will not act as your platform for your anger, please use your own blogs/website for that.
Sincerely,
Bucket of Crabs Team.
May 27th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Wow!
I am impressed!
Well, we’ll find out about the legalities of all this stuff sooner or later and one way or another.
In the meantime, I saw this kid trip at the mall earlier today. I mean, at first, he stumbled a little .. and then he continued stumbling .. and then he really began to stumble along in the mall. And after what seemed like an eternity, he finally fell down!
Geesh!
Is there some kind of Guinness World Record for longest trip ever recorded?!
HaHa!
:o)
Paotie
May 28th, 2008 at 12:53 am
That’s the legal system in this country for ya– copyright infringement laws forever tripping down the halls of justice.
May 28th, 2008 at 4:44 am
Lampooning and using photos and vids to highlight politicians and causes etc, have been here since day one, so long as it doesn’t attribute abuse or opposite views from those stated, then it will carry on, we won’t be silenced by copyright clauses’ so far as I am concerned, if something appears on the internet it is then public domain, it doesn’t GET any more public ! if they don’t want people to use what they put up, then don’t put it up. There is ample software available to prevent copying…..We see medias (Newspapers and TV), doing this every day, why pick on it because the deaf use it too ? Libel and defamation is different, but if we are going to split hairs, then deaf read won’t be reporting anything ! Aggregates of deaf news will fold because let’s face it it near ALL comes from other medias and we reproduce them… they are trying to shut us up, textural oralism is here ! I suspect that most illagal and immoral of professions (The lawyer !), is looking for easy pickings….
May 28th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Bucket of Crabs?
Wanna me to stand up on the platform to discuss the Crab Theory?
Ha, ha, ha!
May 28th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Well, White Ghost… you have good, sane opinions and I’d LOVE to read your blogs instead of your comments ;o)
May 28th, 2008 at 8:34 am
AND… I am sure Paotie would agree with me.
Go for it, WG.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:37 am
WG–
Seems like you already have a fan base! I’ve already signed up..
Crab Theory, funnily enough, I never brought that idea up here and it’s the very reason why I bought the website. LOL. The platform’s all yours.
All yours.
Der Sankt
May 28th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Yup!
White Ghost should be a blogger! Count me signed up, too.
Well, White Ghost? Whatcha waiting for?
Chop chop!
HaHa!
:o)
Paotie
May 28th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Well, thanks for the compliments.
Me….blogger? I’m *not* that great in creative writing.
I’m going to the yoga session to make some green peace of mind.
*Green Peace*
May 28th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
WG,
Why don’t you give it a try as a “guest” blogger on Bucket of Crabs? Surely you have a unique angle on Crab Theory.
If you are not sure of your creative writing, maybe Der Sankt or someone you trust can help you with that part? You do have that sense of humor (that’s your strength), so why not implement that into your writing as well?
So what? There are always gonna be detractors, but you’ll have readers who will agree with and support you. And I’m not talking about just the pinky crowd, girl. Your writing may very well impact someone’s life towards a positive goal. It’s just that you may never know how many people will read and be affected by your story. That’s the beauty of little pearls. That may give you some real peace of mind. Ask yourself what keeps Candy or Paotie writing article after article?
May 28th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
WG–
The last I checked, creative writing was for, mostly, works of fiction. Ha ha, no, seriously…I read every comment written in my blogs (although, I don’t always acknowledge them all) at least twice. There are some styles I really despise and there are others I simply adore and I read them all. There’s an entry for my readers sitting in my blog as a draft, I never knew when would be the “right” time to publish it…Perhaps, WG, you’ve convinced me that it’s time.
You guys are kind enough to read what I write (or skimming through, whichever works) in spite of the fact that sometimes I truly do believe that someone else would have written it better than I. Every now and then I cringe at what I say/write. There are moments when I’m flabbergasted with the stupid grammatical errors that could have easily been fixed if I took the time to proofread…
And yet, you still read what I write. You’re not required to, but you want to. As for you, WG, you take the time to comment on my entries with kind and sincere words. All the typos you might have made, the errors in grammar, and occasional brain-farts magically disappears–I don’t see them–and you inspire me to write again.
Ann_C is right in her comment when she says you never know how many people will read and be affected by your story. I met Paotie because he disagreed with Deafhood and I was the only one who decided not to bash him but rather have a dialogue and understand why he thought that way. There are many times when I write something and I’m thinking, maybe I’m the only one who thinks this…only to discover that there are others like me…
Bucket of Crabs is all yours–I’ve made that clear for everyone who reads BOC. If you’re deaf (regardless of your status in the community) and you have an idea but do not want a blog–Bucket of Crabs is your platform. There are no taboos here. All you have to say is “Post this on BOC,” and it will be up within hours, if not minutes. (Ann, you should write a guest entry as well!)
If all you want to write about is that beautiful pink feathered boa you refuse to let go of, then BOC is more than glad to be your spokesperson–who knows, someone might send you tons and tons of beautiful pink feathered boas!
I’m rambling–this is more fitting for an entry, not a comment…All the same, thank you for listening. I couldn’t have asked for anything more, really.
-Ben
May 28th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Ben, you said it so well, nobody’s perfect, but some are able to see past the imperfection and see the pearl for what it is. What are you waiting for, WG? Then it’ll be my turn, lol. *knocking knees*
May 28th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Ann!
Der Sankt is going to hold you to that!
WG–now you have a reason to post a little something…Because when you do, Ann’s next!
-Ben
May 29th, 2008 at 12:00 am
AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGH!
May 29th, 2008 at 1:23 am
So, this would work well for both of you if WG never writes an entry then you wouldn’t have to…
Bad for me.
uhm. I just might be able to come up with something clever….
just not at 2:30am LOL
-Ben
May 29th, 2008 at 2:10 am
Nope, not at 2:30 am. One of us may come down the road later, ok? Whew! at least I’m off the hook for awhile…