I'm thinking about creating some overview for all those RSOCP images
posted to p.b.i over the years and publishing it on my website. Now of
course I'd like to include a thumbnail of each image in the list. My
question: Am I allowed to do this without asking each artist for
permission? I could of course ask everyone, but as many of those posts
are older, I imagine contacting the authors could be troublesome.
Additionally, I'm afraid it would not be worth the hassle.

Full author information and copyright notices would of course be
included in the list, and each thumbnail would only link to the
corresponding article in the news-web-interface. The thumbnails itself
would also be pretty small, if that makes any difference.

As an alternative, I could leave out the thumbnails, and post only the
links, but that somehow destroys the idea of the whole thing.

I'd really like to hear your opinions on this issue...

Greetings,
Florian
-- 
camera{look_at-y*10location<8,-3,-8>*10}#local a=0;#while(a<999)sphere{
#local _=.01*a-4.99;#local p=a*.01-5;#local c=.01*a-4.995;<sin(p*pi)*5p
*10pow(p,5)*.01>sin(c*c*c*.1)+1pigment{rgb 3}}#local a=a+1;#end
/******** http://www.torfbold.com ******** http://www.imp.org ********/

Post a reply to this message

Florian Brucker wrote:
> 
> Full author information and copyright notices would of course be
> included in the list,

This is not the question - you are either allowed to do so or not (and i 
think you are not).

Copyright law allows you to cite from others' copyrighted material but i 
doubt any interpretation of this says you are allowed to cite images.

> As an alternative, I could leave out the thumbnails, and post only the
> links, but that somehow destroys the idea of the whole thing.

This would be undoubtly OK from the legal standpoint.

A solution would be a feature add-on for the newsserver web interface 
with the possibility to pass a list of posting references and it returns 
a page with those like

http://news.povray.org/digest/images/

;-)

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/

Post a reply to this message

> Copyright law allows you to cite from others' copyrighted material but i 
> doubt any interpretation of this says you are allowed to cite images.

I'm afraid you're right. I thought so, too, but I hoped to be wrong...


>> As an alternative, I could leave out the thumbnails, and post only the
>> links, but that somehow destroys the idea of the whole thing.
> 
> This would be undoubtly OK from the legal standpoint.

Yeah, but this solution is much less attractive than the one with
thumbnails.


> A solution would be a feature add-on for the newsserver web interface 
> with the possibility to pass a list of posting references and it returns 
> a page with those like
> 
> http://news.povray.org/digest/images/

Yeah, that would be an idea. I thought about sth like that, but figured
the POV-team probably rather wants to spend its time on 3.7 instead ;)


Thanks for your input,
Florian
-- 
camera{look_at-y*10location<8,-3,-8>*10}#local a=0;#while(a<999)sphere{
#local _=.01*a-4.99;#local p=a*.01-5;#local c=.01*a-4.995;<sin(p*pi)*5p
*10pow(p,5)*.01>sin(c*c*c*.1)+1pigment{rgb 3}}#local a=a+1;#end
/******** http://www.torfbold.com ******** http://www.imp.org ********/

Post a reply to this message

I looked for something about "fair use" to see if you might be in that realm 
by doing what you plan. Seems to be a grey area of copyrighted material. I 
wasn't sure of any definite line between fair and unfair use even after 
reading about it at:

http://www.coastal.edu/education/ti/copyright.html

This is just one place a google search found for me.

It is said (through a 'fair use' link there) that "published" works might be 
more readily considered usable by others (derivative works, etc.) because 
they give the copyright holder a firm footing of who has claim to the 
original work. I just don't know if the p.b.i. group is considered as such 
or not.

Besides that, they cite real-life examples which had actually been judged in 
court and they fall to either side of the issue, meaning no ultimate rule 
able to be followed, only a general guestimation I suppose.

Part of what I read makes your idea plausible, I believe, since it says if 
some sort of academic purpose is being sought (in this case, an overview of 
RSOCP's only for collecting and redirecting) then it might be 'fair use'. I 
think you'd be in violation moreso if you expanded on the subject with new 
material in this case, becoming more of a derivative work.

I hate trying to figure out copyrights, myself, so I try to stay away from 
it.
;^)  Hmmmm. I never posted one of those RSOCP images, I doubt so anyhow!

Bob Hughes

Post a reply to this message

"Bob Hughes" <bob### [at] charternet> wrote in message
news:429b65e1$1@news.povray.org...
>> ...
>> I'd like to include a thumbnail of each image in the list. My
>> question: Am I allowed to do this without asking each artist for
>> permission?
>> ...
> I looked for something about "fair use" to see if you might be in that
realm
> by doing what you plan. Seems to be a grey area of copyrighted material. I
> wasn't sure of any definite line between fair and unfair use even after
> reading about it at:
>
> http://www.coastal.edu/education/ti/copyright.html
>
> This is just one place a google search found for me.
>
...
> Bob Hughes
>

Florian,

This certainly does look like a very grey area.
Google uses thumbnails on its 'image search' pages and it seems they've
'explored' some of the legal implications.
According to http://www.linksandlaw.com/news-update16.htm they had a case
that said it was OK with their automatically generated thumbnails under US
law, but in a similar German case the same use was apparently found not to
comply with German copyright laws.

Chris B.

Post a reply to this message

> This certainly does look like a very grey area.

It really looks like that, yeah. I guess I won't be doing it, then, not
because I think someone would sue me for posting a thumbnail of his
work, but because I don't wanna step on anyone's toes. If I got the
time, I'll think about text-only links, but... Ah, text-only links are
not the same :(


Thanks a lot for your input, guys!
Florian
-- 
camera{look_at-y*10location<8,-3,-8>*10}#local a=0;#while(a<999)sphere{
#local _=.01*a-4.99;#local p=a*.01-5;#local c=.01*a-4.995;<sin(p*pi)*5p
*10pow(p,5)*.01>sin(c*c*c*.1)+1pigment{rgb 3}}#local a=a+1;#end
/******** http://www.torfbold.com ******** http://www.imp.org ********/

Post a reply to this message