Forum for Copyright And License Issues
Removal of deep-linked image for copyright reasons? (moved from Liao Xingwen) [#766]
I noticed in the recent changes page that the inlined image of this player has been removed. The reason stated is copyright.
I was under the impression that the legal status of inline images included in this way was undecided. There are several pages on SL which use images in this way. It was my impression that the best way to deal with this was to use the image unless specifically asked not to by the page owner.
I'm concerned that we might slip into the realm of overzealous copyright protection and remove images that are of use and interest to the community here.
I've looked around and not found an "official" SL policy on this. If I'm wrong could someone point me either to SL policy, or a legal ruling that shows that this is illegal behaviour. If not, I would like to suggest that the inline image on this page be reinstated.
John F. As the copyright holder of most of the MSO go material, I do not wish to see it on SL. I have explained before that the problem is that usage on SL is deemed as putting material into the public domain, which I do not want. I regard links with in-line images as a kind of cheating and, while I do not know the legal position, I do not approve of it for my material. Actually I find it rather tiresome to have to keep firefighting on SL. I think two things would help SL enormously. One is for people to try to do more original work instead of copying from elsewhere. The other, where repeating information is inevitable, is to clearly mark the source.
John, an unknown IP address (158.152.128.93) removed material from the Liao Xingwen page. I dont know 158.152.128.93 from Adam's off ox. I doubt that anyone at SL knows who might be using the IP address: 158.152.128.93.
However, were you to sign in and remove the material, the change would indicate that John F removed it. Then I would ask myself why and have a chance understand why you removed it. As it stands now, someone that may or may not be John F is removing material from SL. I could do the same from an anonymous IP address. No one can tell the difference between selected vandalism and your activity if you wont login.
Please do us all a kindness and login, rather than use an anonymous IP address to make changes.
John F. I removed Xingwen's pic. I normally identify myself as John F. (as you will know) but I presumably overlooked this as there was no text added. Mea culpa. I don't know anything about logging in, I'm afraid. In the matter of courtesy, I think the correct procedure is not to use anything until you have sought permission. A major problem with inline images is that you have no way of knowing whether the site you are linking to has proper permission.
John, you do understand the problem, dont you? Without creating an account for yourself and logging in no one knows if its you or not. On this matter there is a famous cartoon that appeared in The New Yorker Magazine: a dog is using a computer and says "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog!".
Without logging in, we don't know if its John F, T Mark Hall, or Willy Wonka making statements in your name! Please learn to login. Its not hard, and based upon T Mark's statements about your facility with languages, you will not have a problem that you can not overcome with minor effort ;)
No, I think you don't understand the problem: somebody on SL is using my material without my permission. It is incumbent on them to seek permission first. I rarely post on SL now and am just a lurker, really, so I see no reason to delve into the intricate stuff. Don't you think I spend enough time on internet go giving people free things like New in Go and Coffee-break Go? It may be true that anyone can post in my name, but even if they did, that doesn't alter the fact that the *original* problem is still that someone posted on SL without permission. I don't feel churlish about this. Even without contributing directly myself, I have given (limited) permission to use much of my material on SL in the past (for example most of the names data came from my Names Dictionary, and the Shin Fuseki notes), so that in effect I have contributed to SL more than most people. The point is I wish to control what of mine is used and I resent having to spend time sorting out abuses.
Dieter: Velobici, you cannot ask people to login on all sites they do not want to have their material published. It is not because we see SL as one of the most interesting sites about Go and tehrefor worth logging in, that John does. I understand John couldn't care less about the procedures that are used on sites that do not respect his work (whether through the intent of the administrators or the effect of the freedom of editing they allow for).
John F. First, to take up a point made by tealeaf lower down, copyright infringement IS theft. The argument that stealing a bike deprives a person of a bike but copying an image does not deprive them of the image is entirely specious, because what you are depriving a copyright holder of is not his text/image but his RIGHTS, which can translate into cash, although money is not the sole benefit - there may be benefits in acquiring recognition for artistic work, for example, and use of an image without proper captioning can destroy that. But another important right is control - the ability to remove an image. This may be important, for example, in the case of pictures of minors, as here.
Second, I actually want all my MSO material removed, and would much prefer SL to delete ALL links to it. Although there is much bleating about the power of the big corporations, there is just as much abuse of power among the companies who trawl and archive the internet. They say they will remove material on request, but in practice make it incredibly difficult to identify and remove it, which is why I haven't got round to it yet.
The issue with the MS0 material was that they published but went bankrupt and didn't make pay final payments. In compensation, all rights were assigned back to the writers.
Whether or not the use of inline referencing is illegal (I have no idea), I have made my own wishes and reasons clear. Current attitudes in the go community have already soured me and several other long-standing contributors I know, so one impact has been to decimate our own contributions. It is up to you to decide how much respect you have for authors' wishes. They are the ones who actually do the work, after all.
This thread is eight years old. I moved it to this place for easier access (the small edit in the subject line changed the date of the initial post), so don't expect an answer by the original posters.
As to your request, you consider certain internet archives to infringe your copyright (by keeping your MSO articles online) and would like to see links to it removed, is this correct? This refers to articles not inlined images as the original discussion, is this correct? I will look into it during the next days and remove those links.
Accepted that my offer below is off the point (copyright etc. about which I know nothing). Would SL like a picture of Liao Xingwen playing Go at age 5? I have a nice such picture that I took when I played him in Guilin back then (will get exact date - it was before 2000 MSO). Questions: Would this offer/action offend John F even in the slightest? I know and respect John F and wouldn't wish such. Could this offend LX or breach his privacy etc.?
Agreed. Unless there is a SL policy against linking or a request from the copyright owner of the image, the link should remain.
Perhaps it is time to start hosting images at SL.
I do not know if such linking infringes copyright, but certainly the courteous thing is not to do it if there is any question of an objection.
That's just it...objection from whom? John F? If he logged in. As it stands it could be Marilyn Mason objecting. ;(
Agreed. My question was that the objection hadn't been stated. I just saw a removal for "copyright reasons". If it had read "removed link at the request of the owner", I would have been less worried.
As far as I'm concerned, if the owner prefers not to have the link made from Sensei's Library then I'll respect that. It would be good to have that policy regarding these particular images clearly stated somewhere, though, to prevent this situation from recurring endlessly.
Of course, ideally, if someone puts something on the web and doesn't want it linked to like this then they should implement referrer filtering that stops deep linking. Regardless of personal opinions, deep linking to images is commonly used, commonly accepted and has not been ruled illegal as far as I'm aware.
I wouldn't say that deep linking is "commonly accepted." Most people who are concerned with the effects of present-day Internet practices on intellectual property would say that deep linking is wrong, regardless of its legality. It's not better than downloading someone's image and using it without permission: it's worse, since you're stealing their bandwidth as well as their intellectual property.
Yes, you can use referrer filtering to try to protect your intellectual property a little, but saying that it's okay to use John F.'s images without his permission if he doesn't use a filter is like saying it's okay to steal someone's bike if they don't lock it up.
I also agree that it would be nice if everyone logged in before making changes, but this is a Wiki after all... the whole point is you don't have to log in.
In general, I think the rule should be to seek permission before using something, rather than using it until someone complains. If artists, writers, etc. need to patrol the Internet constantly to protect their intellectual property, they're ALREADY being stolen from, in the sense that it's valuable time they're wasting hunting down and confronting violators.
Just because something is common practice doesn't make it okay.
We are not simply talking about deep linking, here. If somebody makes a link to a page at a web site that is not to the main page, that is deep linking. What we have here is that links to pictures are treated differently from other links. The pictures, not the links, show up on the page being viewed. Here is a ![[ext]](images/extlink.gif)
regular link to my home page. Here is a 
to a picture on that page.
Would we have the same problem if the picture link showed up as a link, instead of as the picture itself?
Here is the HTML source of those links:
<p>
Here is a <a href=" http://hometown.aol.com/billspight/myhomepage/index.htm"><img src="images/extlink.gif" alt="ext" border=0> regular link to my home page</a>. Here is a <img src=" http://hometown.aol.com/billspight/myhomepage/molasseszz.JPG" ALT="picture link"> to the picture on that page.
</p>
Note that the regular link is an href, and the picture link is an img src. The SL software could treat them the same, couldn't it?
While there are still questions about deep linking, I think that treating picture links as hrefs would avoid copyright issues. Treating them as img srcs tells browsers to copy the pictures when loading the current page. Treating them as hrefs does not tell browsers to copy them.
Technical difference
i) To my knowledge, the href-link doesn't take bandwith
from the server with the copyrighted image or any other material.
(this in contrast to the inlined image, whose's (grammar??) bandwith costs resources and thus money -> bandwith theft)
ii) Downloading all SL to a PDA or so (I wouldn't know how to do that)
would not comprise the copyrighted material on again another medium.
There seems no difference in effect for the copyright holder,
whether you are only(?) deeplinking or actually copying (forbidden) an image (any material) to your server + then representing it.
Legal difference
Although href-linking itself is certainly not infringing copyright (I am 99.9% sure about this),
it certainly enables numerous people to do so and
eventually John F.'s problem only increases.
Inlining linking of images is copyright infringement
is the statement of numerous copyright holders.
Solution?
I think we have to respect John F.'s wishes and
- that's narrower - obey the law.
Respecting John F.'s wishes means not enabling easy promulgation (proliferation) of copyrighted material.
Technical part
A kind of stamp/disclaimer/notice/information in the sense of
copyrighted material is available there: (fill in)
could be added to those pages where one would be intended to do deeplinking.
This information should comprise a carefully formulated wording (see wikipedias for many examples) and be easily available in clickable form (insert stamp xyz) from Senseis.
Obeying the law is very easy in this case:
John F. is in 1st instance the assumed copyright holder (or his/her representative) of all material available from his site GoGod.
He speaks English - the used language on SL - and tells & told us not not to use material without explicit permission.
That's clear enough.
(This situation is far more complicated for the numerous Asian sites where one can deeplink to diagrams or pictures.
due to language barriers we are usually not able to find ways of communication and ask for copyright.)
I have realize a couple of things since yesterday. First, there are times when user inlining of images on SL is appropriate. For instance, someone might want to inline their own pictures. And you do not have to enclose the image link in square brackets. E. g.,
http://hometown.aol.com/billspight/myhomepage/molasseszz.JPG links to my picture without showing it. I think that's the practical solution for SL.
Without getting into the whole copyright debate, I have to point out that using someone's image doesn't deprive them of that image but stealing their bike does deprive them of the bike. On top of that, copyright infringement isn't theft and in this situation it's not been upheld as copyright infringement anyway. With images published on the web I'd say the comparison was more like "If you don't want me to read your diary, don't publish it in a national newspaper."
By commonly accepted I mean that it is used all over the web. You can understand that if someone has made an image available on their website without any explicit protection then people might believe they were allowed to view it, even by linking from another page.
As I've said, I'll personally respect the wishes of JohnF here. The main worry I had was the over-rigorous self-policing of "copyright" that I see all over the place. If JohnF doesn't want this image used then that's fine (for me) but I just wanted to point out that:
- Copyright infringement isn't theft, despite the fact that it's often claimed to be by the big copyright holders.
- Inlining images from another website hasn't been upheld as copyright infringement, at least as far as I'm aware.
- Inlining images is common practice on the web, and so appears to be morally accepted by the majority of users. Therefore unless you make it clear that you would prefer people not to use your images in such a way, it is to be expected that people will. It's the nature of the web as it exists. If you hold a minority view, you need to make it known before you can expect people to respect it.
The use of a referrer filter to stop the inlining isn't about whether it's morally right to use images like that (which is an open debate in the absence of the hosting site's opinion), it's a response to the fact that people will do it because most people don't realise that there's any problem with it. Referrer filtering is just a way to solve the problem and so avoid becoming annoyed every time someone does the thing that you don't want them to do. To use the bike analogy, it would be like going on a bike tour in a country where bike stealing wasn't illegal or morally frowned on -- if you didn't lock up your bike then in that country it would be okay to for someone to steal it.
I'd rather not take part in a general copyright debate, so I'll bow out here. Simply put: courtesy is good, but you need to make your wishes known to all; and copyright is more or less irrelevant to this debate as it's not a copyright issue.
point out that using someone's image doesn't deprive them of that image but stealing their bike does deprive them of the bike.
Yes, but speaking as someone who hosts images on my blog which has limited bandwidth, it *does* deprive them of that bandwidth. As far as I know, this (hotlinking) is frowned upon except by the teaming masses at myspace and livejournal, etc., and I thought they just didn't know any better. The only exception would be if you ask permission or host the image yourself.
Without getting into the whole copyright debate, I have to point out that using someone's image doesn't deprive them of that image but stealing their bike does deprive them of the bike. On top of that, copyright infringement isn't theft and in this situation it's not been upheld as copyright infringement anyway. With images published on the web I'd say the comparison was more like "If you don't want me to read your diary, don't publish it in a national newspaper."
Intellectual property owners have the right to ask for monetary compensation for the use of that property. Depriving them of that right by using their property without permission is theft.
So you don't like the bike analogy. Let's liken intellectual property use to a service, then. I see an ad for a housekeeper in the paper, call him or her up, get him or her to clean my house, then refuse to pay. Is that not theft? I'm not depriving the person of the ability to clean other houses, after all...
As I'm not arguing against JohnF's right to control whether or not these images are used, I really don't want to get into this debate. The only point I'm trying to make here is to overcome this urban myth that copyright infringement is theft, or indeed piracy. See here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/07/28/copying_is_theft_and_other/
The bike analogy and the house cleaning analogy are both incorrect. It's clear that during the time that the cleaner is cleaning your house they are incapable of cleaning anyone else's house. Also, once they have cleaned your house they never charge you again unless they clean the house again. There isn't even a comparison I can draw here, because they can only perform that one action. They can't clean your house and have it magically clean several other people's houses without any extra work on their part. You can't "copy" a cleaned room.
Correctness of analogy aside, the short answer is this: No, it's not theft. It's breach of contract, assuming that you agreed to pay them beforehand.
I won't reply to this topic again, because I'm only repeating tired arguments that are made all over the web. I seriously doubt that I'm going to convince anyone who isn't already convinced.
It's breach of contract, assuming that you agreed to pay them beforehand.
Okay, regarding semantics, it depends whether we're speaking legally or ethically. Legally, no, copyright infringement is copyright infringement, not theft, because they're separate laws. I was speaking ethically.
Regarding "assuming that you agreed to pay them beforehand," that's a load of nonsense. Say John F. wanted money in return for use of his photo - how is he supposed to negotiate that deal if you don't inform him that you're planning to use the image before you put it on your website? Do we have to slap price tags on all images we put online so that people don't just assume that they're free?
tderz: Alex, may I reformulate your position, turn it around and then state: Innocence doesn't deprive s.o. of being guilty (freely acc. to German proverb: 'Unwissenheit schuetzt nicht vor Strafe').
It has been crystallized in several discussions before (here on SL) that i doesn't matter if one knows or knew that one is infringing -> if you're in breach, you simply are!
Innocence doesn't deprive s.o. of being guilty
Or, as it's more commonly stated in English, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." It's a good point, though it's not exactly the one I was trying to make.
What I was actually trying to say is that the point of the having a legal system in the first place is to protect people and their property. Thus, attempting to reinterpret intellectual property laws to say that people have to protect their own intellectual property or lose their right to be protected kind of deceives the point. "Your honor, it wasn't murder. If he didn't want to be killed, he should have fought back!"
Well, until the recent revisions in copyright law, you had to defend your copyright, at least in the U. S. You could lose it by not defending it. (The same held for brand names. The words thermos and coke have become generic terms.) Now the laws are rigged in favor of large corporations.
When I was buying a house in New Mexico, there was a path at the edge of my prospective property that people occasionally used. I was not particularly concerned, but having strangers wandering around my property did give me pause. I noticed this before the sale was finalized, and asked my lawyer about it. He said that people had the right to use the path, and I could not legally prevent them from doing so. However, if I could somehow keep people from using it for seven years, I could regain the right to the use or non-use of the path. Losing rights through not defending them is not unique to intellectual property rights.
This is true, and makes a certain amount of sense - if ten other people are infringing on someone's copyright and he's not doing anything about it, you might assume that it's public domain and use it... it would then be a a bit unfair if he then sued you for it.
However, going after people infringing on your work was not what I meant by "defending." I'm talking about stuff you do to make it hard for people to infringe in the first place - watermarks, copy protection for DVDs, referrer filters, not putting it on the Internet at all, etc. While putting your intellectual property on the web without any of these forms of protection might not be the SMARTEST thing to do, I disagree with the notion that you're implicitly giving people permission to use it by not taking preventive measures.
I see what you mean.
I am not a lawyer, but it would not surprise me if the courts held differently. Given the widespread online ethos of freely copying publicly available material, which goes back at least 20 years, to the advent of Compuserve and other online services, it could be that not protecting such material could be considered as assent to copying. (A copyright notice may be sufficient to preserve the right, however.)
In this case, there is...
"Copyright © 1999-2000 by Mind Sports Organisation Worldwide Ltd."
Ah, reminds me how often I found websites plagiarizing my How To Play Go tutorial even before I put up my first "license" that explicitly allows others to copy. Actually, most of the culprits I found via Copyscape were forum postings of people trying to pass off entire lessons as their own work. Obviously I was not too happy about that, but I decided not to create a big ruckus... just let it pass. (Given my choice of license right now, one can tell that my present position is to allow people to copy for non-commercial use without asking, but acknowledgment is requested.)
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