Linking to other sites

[John]

Guys - just a reminder

If you are going to refer to an image on another site, I prefer that you link to the URL and not post the actual image in the message.  There are copyright sensitivities to consider. If you load a picture from another site, it uses their resources each time the thread gets loaded. A URL only uses resources when you got to the site .. its only fair .. 

Thanks for the support ..

[victor miranda]

I am not sure I follow.

lets say I have a photo in photobucket

you want that I use the url.jpg and not the {img}picture.jpg{/img}?

I hope that made sense...

[John]

I am not sure I follow.

lets say I have a photo in photobucket

you want that I use the url.jpg and not the {img}picture.jpg{/img}?

I hope that made sense...

Sorry if I was unclear

If you have a photo in photo bucket - and you own the copyright, you can do {img}http://picture.jpg{/img}

If you link to a photo on another site, and there is a copyright that you don't own, then you should use {url} link {/url}

The second case usually happens when we link to a retailer or manufacturer website .. some don't mind, others do .. it's best to avoid the issues .. thanks

[chuck geiger]

Thanks John - will do, I was a bad man posting pics.

[kiwi_bnsf]

My Bad - apologies for inserting pics directly.

They were hosted on my own server in case the original went away, but I totally respect the concern about potential copyright issues.

I've amended my recent posts.

Cheers

Tim

[John]

My Bad - apologies for inserting pics directly.

They were hosted on my own server in case the original went away, but I totally respect the concern about potential copyright issues.

I've amended my recent posts.

Cheers

Tim

Tim .. if they are your photos then you can post directly .. otherwise, we ask you only post the link .. thanks

[Virginia Atlantic]

I have to admit, I find the obsession with this forum policy in the overall Model RR'ing community to be very very odd and illogical.  And rather (in my wide travels online) unique to boot.

There is no copyright infringement, you are not "copying" the image or in any other way re-publishing it by hotlinking it on a forum.  There is zero legal or ethical liabillity involved beyond the feined outrage of old people who don't understand how the "tubes" of the internet work.  There is in effect no meaningful difference between a browser viewing a linked image on this forum vs. it's original publishing site.  It's the same URL getting to the end viewer the same way, the only difference is where they went to get that URL.

Over the years, I've been an active member and Moderator at a wide variety of forums, most with member-counts and activity that make this site (much as I love it) look like a tiny little ant, and all of them allowed and encouraged hotlinking of images from elsewhere.  Without a single exception.  And I'm talking sites with views in the hundred of thousands/day range.  Not once was their a problem or legal complaint.

The only issue involved is if you hotlink from a site that has stringent limits of banwidth use (more and more rare these days) and you hotlink it to a forum with tens of thousands of views/day, and you chew up their bandwidth.  But frankly, thats their problem, when you put something on the internet for viewership, you inherantly lose some control over how the image gets linked.  If hotlinking were in fact copyright infringement, one could site a few hundred thousand legal cases and shut-down forums supporting such a claim.....but there hasn't been a single case of such.

What such a policy does is waste the users time, and little else.  Instead of browsing a thread, enjoying the images, etc. one has to play whack-a-linky for every image they wish to check out, a terrably inefficient old-school waste of time, to placate a few old folks who complain without any understanding of the legal rights they think they have. 

I'm guessing the Model RR ing community has a larger percentage of older participants who think the internet works like magazines or newspapers do, and hence the much more common complaints/restructions on hotlinking and "Copyright infringement" in the community.  It's a shame tbh, it takes away from the community and the experience to see such archaic and outdated thinking, and to suffer the pointlessly wasted time such thinking engenders in this day and age.

[Zox]

...The only issue involved is if you hotlink from a site that has stringent limits of banwidth use (more and more rare these days) and you hotlink it to a forum with tens of thousands of views/day, and you chew up their bandwidth.

That being said, it's simple politeness not to chew up someone's bandwidth, just in case. And if a site depends upon advertising income for its financial model, then linking directly to pictures on that site deprives the site of its income.

But frankly, thats their problem, when you put something on the internet for viewership, you inherantly lose some control over how the image gets linked.

But again, just because the Internet allows you to use someone's work in ways they don't intend, that doesn't necessarily mean that you should.

If model railroad forums are, as you say, "unique" in their respect for other people's work and property, then I can only weep for the other forums.

[John]

It may or may not be legal, ethical, or whatever ..

 But I don't have time to deal with every site owner who thinks his picture, link, or whatever is so valuable that they must protect it from linking to other sites .. I spend way too much time maintaining this site, and provide all the funds to keep it going, and my time is better spent modeling than worrying about this.

[DKS]

...The only issue involved is if you hotlink from a site that has stringent limits of banwidth use (more and more rare these days) and you hotlink it to a forum with tens of thousands of views/day, and you chew up their bandwidth.

That being said, it's simple politeness not to chew up someone's bandwidth, just in case. And if a site depends upon advertising income for its financial model, then linking directly to pictures on that site deprives the site of its income.

But frankly, thats their problem, when you put something on the internet for viewership, you inherantly lose some control over how the image gets linked.

But again, just because the Internet allows you to use someone's work in ways they don't intend, that doesn't necessarily mean that you should.

If model railroad forums are, as you say, "unique" in their respect for other people's work and property, then I can only weep for the other forums.

I agree 100% with Zox. Doing what everyone else does doesn't make it right (many people shoplift, for instance), and couching it as an "age thing" highlights the fact that us older folk are perhaps just more considerate, as much if not more so than being "ignorant" of the workings of copyright law and the Internet. As for disturbing the "browsing experience" by not hotlinking, that's a bunch of Internet crap-speak. One could make the counter-argument that not hotlinking improves the experience by reducing page load times; the user then gets to choose to view only those images important to him or her.

It bears mentioning that, with ownership of intellectual property also comes control of its distribution. Granted, it's a given that one loses a substantial degree of control by publishing it online, but that loss of control does not alter the core issues of IP ownership; as it is, much of that loss is almost exclusively at the hands of people who do not understand IP ownership (and/or are just plain inconsiderate). That a "hotlinking case" has never been successfully prosecuted should not imply that it's legal; quite a number of such cases have been brought to the courts, and so far they've all been settled. Bear in mind that hotlinking creates the illusion of ownership, particularly since proper attribution is very rarely given; cases of implied ownership have been prosecuted in other classes of IP, and should serve as precedent when in doubt.

And finally, if nothing else, please heed John's request; he's the man in the hot seat, the one that does all the work and puts up with all the crap, whether or not that crap may be legal or just.

[wcfn100]

Allow me to put this all into context.

This came about because I linked to a scanned copy of the MTL newsletter on an online shop (to remain nameless and never purchased from).  The online shop registered here to complain about my linking to their image.  I fully understand any concerns over using their bandwidth so I put a copy of the scanned newletter onto my Picasaweb site.  Well this wasn't good enough. They wanted John to remove the image (no longer linked to their site) claiming copyright, so John did, which I have no problem with (John's part).

Copyright is for the author of the work.  So the real issue with this is whether someone can claim some sort of copyright just because they scanned in someone else's work?

Many people here, including John (or did you take that medal of honor winner photo?), post images they have don't have rights to.  It's just that in this case it created a big commotion so John wrote this thead.



Jason

[SebastianLee]

There is no copyright infringement, you are not "copying" the image or in any other way re-publishing it by hotlinking it on a forum.  There is zero legal or ethical liabillity involved beyond the feined outrage of old people who don't understand how the "tubes" of the internet work.  There is in effect no meaningful difference between a browser viewing a linked image on this forum vs. it's original publishing site.  It's the same URL getting to the end viewer the same way, the only difference is where they went to get that URL.

Paraphrased from U.S. Copyright Act (found in Title 17 of the United States Code) (17 U.S.C. § 106(5)). The owner of the copyright of the photograph owns the exclusive right to display the photograph. An infringement does not require that a copy be made, but to even reach criminal misdemeanor standings the bar is set pretty high ($1,000 in revenue from display, I think)*

The water got muddied in Kelly vs Arriba where they said thumbnails are ok by fair use,' but the issue hotlinking was not resolved.

Either way the owner of this site has asked for it not to be done, whether its legal is a moot point.

*I am not a lawyer, or even stayed at holiday inn express

[Virginia Atlantic]

Either way the owner of this site has asked for it not to be done, whether its legal is a moot point.

Absolutely.

My post was an opinion/observation, not a request for policy change per se.

"My house, my rules" always apply, as it should.

[pnolan48]

I used to think I knew all about this stuff--man, was I foolish. I think I'll just pay for a hosting site and link to it without so much worry. If I could ever learn that nothing's free, I'd cope better with this new world.

[SleeperN06]

I’m not a layer and don’t understand all this copy right stuff, so I’m just going to ask. Can I post an image captured from Google Maps of say a real turntable?

Oh I probably should have added that I have the photo in photobucket.