NY Times Advocates Theft

<p>Printing the content of web pages for personal use is fair use. <em><br /> </em></p>

<p><em>A reasonable person can interpret your putting the photo on a public site as intent to put copies on the computers of various members of the public.<br /><br /></em>A reasonable person can also come to terms with the fact that the technological requirement to have a bitmap file as a temporary cache resource in a web browsing application - in order to actually see the image - doesn't change the terms of use expressed by the copyright holder when the visitor makes use of the web site that's displaying the image.<br /><br />Sure, a web browsing app needs to, from a house-keeping point of view, make a short-lived copy of an image file in order to display it. Likewise, a book store needs a front door you can walk through in order to browse through the store's wares. That there are logistical necessities in making the browsing of the wares or display visible to a web visitor or a walk-up audience <em>doesn't change the ethics of using that access to reproduce the artist's work for other use.</em> So a book store needs to put the books out where you can see them. There they are, right in front of you! Does the your-browser-cache-means-you're-off-the-hook theory mean that you're also OK photographing every page of a book in a book store, and then walking out? After all, it was on display in a store open to the public, right?<br /><br />I find the moral relativism that people are willing to exhibit, just because one facet of a communications technology gives them some latitude, to be really astounding. My personal theory is that people trot out the "well, it's already in my browser cache, so obviously the photographer <em>wanted</em> me to be able to reproduce her work as I see fit, and hang it on the wall" are being completely disengenuous, and are just looking for some cover so that they don't feel so bad, later, when personally ripping off music and movies online.<br /><br />As for the notion that it's the photographer's <em>responsibility</em> to save people from their own ethical failings and make it too difficult to rip off their images? That's like saying it's a shopkeeper's responsibility to prevent shoplifting - not the shopper's moral responsibility not to steal stuff, lest they waive any claim to their own possessions. <br /><br />I do not care about the legal or semantic hair splitting over theft vs. copyright infringement. People who are ripping somebody else off know who they are. There's no need to make it any more complicated than that.</p>

<p>As for secure image pro, it wouldn't load the demos even though I have Java installed. I have yet to see anything on my monitor that couldn't be screen captured.</p>

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<p>...people trot out the "well, it's already in my browser cache, so obviously the photographer <em >wanted</em> me to be able to reproduce her work as I see fit, and hang it on the wall" are being completely disengenuous...</p>

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<p>Not disingenuous at all. The discussion was whether printing is analogous to CD copying. The statement was that the situations are different because the CD owner owns the CD but the image viewer doesn't own a copy of the image. But it' exactly the same, because both the image owner and the record company will tell you that what you have is a license for limited use of the copyrighted work, and the CD or image file is just a medium for conveying the content and does not come with the license.</p>

<p>It's exactly the same thing:</p>

<p>The record company provides me a CD and says I'm allowed to listen to the music, but instead I transfer it to my MP3 player to listen in a different way.</p>

<p>The photographer provides me an image file and says I'm allowed to look at the photo, but instead I print it to paper to view in a different way.</p>

<p>It's not stealing. The photographer gave it to me. He even put it on a web site that advertises it's for sharing photos. <em>Sharing</em>. And you want to use the site for <em>advertising</em> your business and then tell me to look at it on the monitor and not on paper? I call BS.</p>

<p>You obviously disagree with my interpretation but it's not disingenuous, it's based on what I consider a reasonable reading of the situation.</p>

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<p>"Such as" is a term that implies a non-comprehensive list. The fact that something is not in the written list may not be used as evidence that it is not part of the category.</p>

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<p>But "Such as" does imply a category that things would fall into would it not? Tell me where "personal use" falls into one of those categories, or even comes close.</p>

<p>'My personal theory is that people trot out the "well, it's already in my browser cache, so obviously the photographer <em>wanted</em> me to be able to reproduce her work as I see fit, and hang it on the wall" are being completely disengenuous, and are just looking for some cover so that they don't feel so bad, later, when personally ripping off music and movies online.'</p>

<p>Andrew has already covered this very well, but I'll just add that I'm not looking for cover for anything (non copyright holders making other people's work available for public sharing is a different issue). Nor am I suggesting that many Flickr photographer actively want me to print out their images for personal use, any more than the makers of a random CD I just grabbed from the shelf (which explicitly prohibits 'copying or recording in any manner whatsoever') actively want me to rip it to mp3, again for personal use (I'm sure they'd rather I bought a second copy for my iPod!). But I do think the distinction we tend to make between these activities (would YOU ignore the copying prohibition on the CD?) is essentially artificial (perhaps because we're photographers, and not necessarily musicians).</p>

<p>I also think there's also a pretty widespread misconception about the way the web works. When you set up an image website, you're not offering a window on to a private gallery, but rather a set of files to be downloaded by any software that can communicate with your server. Back in the early days of the web (and sometimes more recently, when logged into a remote system) I used the Lynx browser, which only displays text unless you explicitly choose to download an image and view it with an external application. Is it wrong for a Lynx user to select the 'download' link? Or for that matter, is it wrong for the user of a graphical browser to ever use the built-in 'print' and 'save image' commands, since most of the material on the web is copyrighted? And if printing is allowed for personal use, is it wrong to pin the output to your wall?</p>

<p>I personally wouldn't do what the author of the NYT piece suggested (which if nothing else, is pretty tacky), but exactly why is this shifting of the medium to enjoy the art elsewhere not 'fair use', if we accept that ripping CDs is fine? Until very recently, the music industry was 'copy protecting' many of its discs in a vain attempt to prevent exactly this (and the movie industry is still doing so). But these non-standard CDs were widely disliked, partly because some of them attempted to install harmful software on the user's computer, but mainly because all of them aimed to prevent what most people regarded as legitimate media shifting.</p>

<p>Thanks Bob, for the tip on Secure Image Pro. I will definatly be having a look at it. I would love to display my images on the internet but the issues at play here are why I don't.<br>

In the meantime: I've run across websites (not photo ones) where the right click save as option is disabled. It's a mystery to me why sites like Flickr (and Photo.net) don't offer this.<br>

Furthermore, it would be great if someone would come up with a feature where, if the Print Screen button is pressed the screen goes blank (or a message is displayed: Ex. "You don't have the right to download this image")</p>

<p>Disabling right-click or print-screen is usually just a javascript trick, easily circumvented by disabling Javascript. It's also irritating to legitimate users who (e.g.) use right-click to open a link in another window or tab. I didn't even get as far as viewing the Secure Image Pro demo, as it required a Java update I couldn't be bothered with (real users used to web pages 'just working' may have a similar reaction). I guess Flash would be another option, though many Flash sites are slow and irritating enough to be offputting, and again may require a software update that could discourage a proportion of the potential viewers.</p>

<p>Any browser-side script that can disable your right-click (a generally obnoxious thing to do anyway, as pointed out above - people use the right-click for many other navigational tasks) can <em>itself</em> be disabled through a simple browser plug-in or behavior setting. That accomplishes nothing. <br /><br />Blocking print-screen functionality? You do <em>not</em> want the person running some web site you're visiting to be able to have that sort of influence over the behvior of your computer's operating system.<br /><br />There is <em>nothing</em> you can do to prevent an image on your screen from being saved/copied by an even barely motivated visitor to a web site. This isn't a technical or practical issue, it's an ethical one. And since ethics shouldn't be situational, decorating your house with prints made from images that were put up to be shown on screen as promotional/portfolio examples (a la many people's use of Flickr et al) isn't any different than decorating your house with prints made from photographs you've taken with your camera of someone else's fine art photography hanging in a gallery for exhibit/sale. The technical differences are meaningless because the there are no ethical differences whatsoever.</p>

<p>I'm going to go full devil's advocate here, because somebody's got to do it.</p>

 

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<p>The technical differences are meaningless because the there are no ethical differences whatsoever.</p>

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<p>Of course there are differences. The gallery is private property, and it's there for selling artworks. You have an agreement with the owner to sell works there. Flickr is a public space and it's explicitly stated that it's there for sharing photos. It's not your advertising site. Flickr is walking around on the sidewalk holding up a large print of your photo and yelling "Hey, look at this!" Using Flickr to advertise and promote your business while expecting people to follow your ideas of what an appropriate use of the photos you've left out in public is, isn't just impractical, it's using a free public venue for commercial purposes, which is bad netiquette.</p>

<p>If you want to retain control over your images, don't put the good copies in such public places, and don't expect the public to have the same interpretation of your rights as you do, because they don't. In the absence of a mutually agreed upon definition of the ethics there are no grounds to accuse the copiers of an ethical violation. All there is is a technical violation of copyright law that may or may not apply, because as stated above, it's a gray area.</p>

<p>I like the idea that once you have the image in your hands you can do whatever you want w/ it. It isn't anybodys business what goes on inside your own home. I agree w/ Matt. There are no ethics involved in this what so ever. If I wish to plaster my walls w/ images of the Mona Lisa, photos from books, text from novels, so what? They're my walls and my private property. In the words of Huey Long, it's my castle, no matter how humble. It all sounds too Big Brotherish to me.</p>

<p>Besides, we're talking about photos on the web. I want someone to explain to me the difference between viewing them on my monitor, which is the POINT of putting them on the web, and printing them out. The image is there in both instances. In one it's glowing pixels, in another it's in ink. So?</p>

<p>So, Andrew, you're saying that it's the average Flickr visitor's ignorance of copyright law, and likely unwillingness to note whether or not someone has posted an example of their work under the Creative Commons, or with All Rights Reserved, etc., that makes for the gray area? A fine art print hanging in the front window of a gallery, facing the sidewalk, is also unlikely to be accompanied by a large sign with lay language explaining that it's being hung there to garner interest in the artist's work, not to be reproduced by passers-by with good enough lenses in order to decorate their walls, no matter how hip the New York Times says it is to do so.<br /><br />We may not expect the average Joe to actually understand copyrights, but we can expect someone writing for the NYT to perhaps stop short of deliberately worsening that situation. It's not about Flickr, per se. It's about the larger problem of death by a thousand cuts. And that sense of entitlement <em>does</em>, in the absence of an informed perspective and routine reminders from artists and the venues showing their works, turn into a tacit enforsement for the ripping off any entertainment that one might want.<br /><br />Most young people don't get how destructive that is to the very artists they pretend to respect. But if you don't fight the little battles on the fringes, you'll never keep the barbarians from the gates. I'm simply proposing that people like the twit writing for the NYT get an appropriate thrashing for contributing to the wider "everything is free if you're cool and know how to get it" atmosphere.</p>

<p>Flickr isn't "public space", it is a website maintained by a private company. Selling your work through flickr is forbidden in the terms of service, but that doesn't mean that the images are in the public domain. The artists keep their copyright (unless they specifically give up on it). There is no difference in this respect between images on flickr or another site which you maintain yourself - either way it's copyrighted material which may be viewed with a web browser temporarily by anyone with access. Making a permanent physical copy of the work is completely different from temporary computer viewing.</p>

<p>Statement from <em>NY Times' </em> Michele McNally:</p>

<p><em>A. I have received a number of queries about Ms. Zjawinski's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/flickr-as-an-interior-decorator-tool/">recent post</a> on Gadgetwise, a New York Times blog about personal technology, in which she discussed downloading and printing Flickr images for use as home décor. Here is where The Times stands on the issues that have been raised about the post: </em><br>

<br /> <em>We are strong proponents of copyright protection. The New York Times does not endorse, nor is it our policy to engage in, the infringement of copyrighted work. We apologize for any suggestion to the contrary.</em></p>

<p>The above is the full text of the answer found on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/business/media/22askthetimes.html?pagewanted=11">McNally's blog</a> . I certainly welcome her comments.</p>

<p>Matt, I'm offering an argument that goes something like this: The average viewer's ignorance of the finer points of copyright law makes the issue legal, not ethical; to do something you don't know is wrong may be illegal, but is not unethical because it caries no ill intent. To argue the position that the home printer has done something wrong requires that what they have done be wrong; legally, it's a gray area, and we don't know if it's legally wrong or not, but it's apparently easier to make the argument that it's legal than the argument that it's illegal. I've made the argument that the photographer gave a copy of the image to the user, and provided precedent in the form of other cases that are similar in nature, and no reasoned refutations have been offered.</p>

<p>You are saying it is an ethical issue, so it doesn't matter if the legal issues are a gray area. But it is not, because ethics are relative in ways that laws are not, and the ethics of a photographer are as different from the ethics of an average web viewer, as much as the ethics of an architect are different from the ethics of a doctor. Unless you can construct the ethical argument without falling back on copyright law, as you have done here, your argument is flawed. The critical piece you are missing is: in the absence of a governing law, and in the absence of material harm to the artist, <em>why</em> must an average web user not print a copy of a work he's been <em>given</em>? Not how the slippery slope eventually causes you injury, but why that person must not do that. Maybe there's a link, but you haven't constructed it.</p>

<p>Because from the perspective of the average person who is not a content creator, between the copyright law extension to help Disney keep Mickey Mouse, the easily abused DMCA, the RIAA and the woman who's forced to pay more money than she'll make in her lifetime because she downloaded 20 songs on the internet, the Sony lawyer who wants to sue people for copying their paid-for CDs to their iPods, the publishers who suggested outlawing public libraries, etc., etc., the slippery slope is tilted in favor of the copyright owners who have been abusing the government at the expense of the average citizen. The general public feels wronged by the copyright enforcers who people feel have overstepped their authority. To them, your slippery slope argument carries no weight at all, so what do you say to them?</p>

<p>What I'm trying to get here is the argument that makes the printing wrong, ethically or legally. If we have that argument, it gives us, as content creators, more power. But what we currently have is a logically flawed, unsupported argument using emotion, a weak induction, a very well known fallacy and some name calling. Which is to say, nothing.</p>

<p>By the way, for personal and non-commercial use I'm allowed to take whatever photograph I want to from my position on the public sidewalk and there's a board full of street photographers here who can back that up.</p>

<p>Also, since "theft" is a crime, "advocating" crime is often itself a crime and nobody here has presented any well reasoned and unrefuted argument that this Flickr printing is a crime, isn't it time to stop bashing the NYT writer and instead apologize? She's done her due diligence and got two legal opinions on the matter, and you've called her a "twit" simply for disagreeing with your (incorrect) legal opinion, while Les has accused her of "advocat[ing] theft".</p>

<p><em>By the way, for personal and non-commercial use I'm allowed to take whatever photograph I want to from my position on the public sidewalk</em></p>

<p>Of course. But if you take a photograph of artwork (say a painting which is being sold on the street) and reproduce it to a print of the painting at home, you're involved with copyright violation. The question you should ask yourself: since you can just take a picture with a digital camera, why should anyone buy a painting? Why should anyone attempt to do art for a living if it is free game for copying and there is no chance to make enough money at it? Why should a society encourage this kind of a practice?</p>

<p>'...the slippery slope is tilted in favor of the copyright owners who have been abusing the government at the expense of the average citizen.'</p>

<p>'In the words of Huey Long, it's my castle, no matter how humble. It all sounds too Big Brotherish to me.'</p>

<p>Indeed. Big Media, of course, loves the ability that digital technology apparently gives them to dictate how legitimately obtained 'content' is used in the privacy of your own home. Yes, we're happy to let you watch that DVD you bought from us. As long as you don't mind sitting through our compulsory 10 minute trailer reel and anti-piracy infomercial. But don't try copying it to your iPod, as that would be a DMCA violation. And don't even think about watching it in Europe, where our valued customers have the privilege of buying the price-hiked Region 2 version. Is it too unreasonable to suggest that control and policing of legally obtained copyrighted material should stop at the front door, and only start again when it goes back out the door to a 3rd party? This is already the effective situation for audio, whatever local laws may say.</p>

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<p>The question you should ask yourself: since you can just take a picture with a digital camera, why should anyone buy a painting?</p>

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<p>I cite Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction".</p>

<p>It's trivial to obtain a DVD player that is region free but that won't give you subtitles in your own language. Europe has dozens of languages to which the regional DVDs have either dubbed or subtitled versions in. Of course the price is higher as there is higher taxes and extra work involved.</p>

<p><em>Is it too unreasonable to suggest that control and policing of legally obtained copyrighted material should stop at the front door, and only start again when it goes back out the door to a 3rd party?</em><br>

<em></em><br>

Of course this is how it is in practice for photographs also - nowhere is the police going to come in and arrest people for the possession of a print that is in violation. That doesn't mean that a newspaper in leading position should advocate copyright violation on the grounds that since it happens within four walls no one will know. People will do what they will, but at the very least they should be aware of whether they're doing something the artist intended or not. Some people will use software for which they do not have a license - since it happens within four walls, should the NY Times encourage this activity? What's the difference? For either artwork or e.g. software in digital format, you cannot allow unlimited copying or you're not going to be able to live from making it. The fact that illicit copies are made "behind the front door" shows that people have no respect for the work because it can be so easily copied. They think that because they're in possession of the bits they can do what they want with it. They are happy to use it, as long as they don't have to pay for it. Advocating that this practice is ok just means that those people who do obtain legitimate rights to use it have to pay for it much more than those who couldn't care less about the originator of the work. If this is not theft then I don't know what is.</p>

<p>'It's trivial to obtain a DVD player that is region free but that won't give you subtitles in your own language. Europe has dozens of languages to which the regional DVDs have either dubbed or subtitled versions in. Of course the price is higher as there is higher taxes and extra work involved.'</p>

<p>Obviously region-free DVD players are readily available (though unfortunately region-free BD players are still rare and expensive), but I assume you'd have to condemn them as they allow the content to be used in a way the artists did not intend (if they did, they wouldn't bother with region coding). And isn't it curious how Spanish and French subtitles in US and Canadian DVDs don't seem to make them more expensive than DVDs intended for the UK market, where no subtitles are required? (we'd generally be perfectly happy with the US version). I assume you'd also condemn ripping CDs to mp3, or not erasing a time-shifted TV recording after a single viewing? If not, why not?</p>

<p>'Some people will use software for which they do not have a license - since it happens within four walls, should the NY Times encourage this activity? What's the difference?'</p>

<p>I think the difference is that the copyright holder did not make the software available to everyone as a free download. The subject of this thread is more analogous to someone making multiple copies of a legitimately obtained program for (e.g.) use on their desktop and laptop (some licences explicitly allow this, of course).</p>

<p>'For either artwork or e.g. software in digital format, you cannot allow unlimited copying or you're not going to be able to live from making it.'</p>

<p>Well, the web is pretty much designed to serve (more or less) unlimited copies of any stored file to anyone who asks. Once the file is downloaded, of course, there's little point in making a large number of further copies for your own personal use (though as in my ripped CD example, more than one copy may be desirable). Or do you mean copies for distribution to 3rd parties? Nobody in this thread is advocating that. I'd be happy to condemn anyone who is selling your images as their own, or publishing them in a book without permission, or putting them on their own public website.</p>

<p>I don't think the artists have anything to do with region coding; it is Sony et al. who maintain it. I use a region free (actually a Sony) player myself as I have lived on two continents it was necessary to program it that way, to be able to play the DVDs I own. It's a system easy to go around if you have a good reason to. I doubt that the artists get more money for DVDs sold in Europe than they do for the disc sold in the US.</p>

<p>Pretty much all photographers have images on the web; in many cases they show their best work. They do not put it online so that people can do what they want with it. They put them out either to showcase their work to a larger audience or to communicate with their friends and family. If the image is of such nature that an outsider would want to hang it on their wall, it's most likely that the artist wants to be notified and may want compensation. In the case of a web viewing, no compensation is given, and the originator isn't even notified of the view in the case of flickr. It is inappropriate to use the image outside of the web browser unless the originator of the image specifically gives permission to do so. When you view an image on flickr, it says clearly "All rights reserved." on most images. How hard this is to understand? By contrast, when you download "free" software, what you can do with it is clearly indicated in the license agreement.</p>

 

<p>Ilkka, in the space of one post you just said you use a region free DVD player to get around the viewing restrictions studios (the copyright owners) put on DVDs, and then said it's inappropriate for people to print images they see on Flickr.</p>

<p>Seriously? That's what you're going to go with?</p>

<p>Ilkka PAID for his DVDs. The downloaders do NOT pay for the images.</p>

<p>Right. They didn't have to pay. They were given the images for free. It's the same thing. The rights owner sells or gives permission to use the content in some particular way, then the person who received the content used it in some other way - transferred to iPod, ripped the video to play on portable device, evaded region coding, printed the image to view hardcopy.</p>

<p>You guys are saying all these misappropriations of content are fine except printing the photo. This is clearly ridiculous.</p>

<p>I agree with les- Ilka is right. Ifwe pay for our Cd's or LP's then although we are not allowed to copy them to another medium many people do not have any qualms in doing so. In the case of LP's I didn't agree in buying one that at some time in the future I would be no longer able to play it as the technology has moved on. In fact I have LP's that cannot be replaced by existing CD's. The cost of a CD is distributed not only to the artist but also to the retailer as well as the publisher. It may be illegal to copy a CD to another medium but ethically I don't see why I should have to pay anything more than a token amount to do so.<br>

How on Earth people think that printing high resolution images for their own use is Fair is beyond me, it's not as if they have paid some license fee; unless of course the photographer does not mind. If the photographer does mind then as mentioned before, some people will print the image for use in their home regardless. If the photographer doesn't want this then all he or she has to do is refrain from publishing high res images. Or only publish a section of a photo. For my own work, most of my images do not communicate my intentions or the magic of what I captured unless they are viewed at a certain size -as the image is not really revealed.<br>

But apart from these arguments there is a move afoot to deny our copyright in our images unless we can prove that we own those images. And as I understand it we would need to register all our images with the US Patents office at 45 USD an image to protect our work! This is applicable even if we are not US citizens. <a href="http://www.lettertothepm.co.uk/violation_berne_copyright_convention.htm">http://www.lettertothepm.co.uk/violation_berne_copyright_convention.htm</a><br>

Some pepople might believe that good photos can easily be taken just by buying a decent digital camera. And so for those who have an eye for a good picture this may be so, but the vast majority of good photos are only produced by professional or artisitic photographers and they should not be deprived of the remuneration that they are entitled to for their experience when they are promoting their work.</p>