Using content of other websites

[Mchen25]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Illinois

I want to add information from a website (like WHO) into my website as evidence for what I write. Is that okay if I include a link from the source and cite that website?

 

[Zigner]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Illinois

I want to add information from a website (like WHO) into my website as evidence for what I write. Is that okay if I include a link from the source and cite that website?

You will want to check with the author/owner of the website for their policy on hot-linking, but yes, a cite for the source of your information is allowed.

 

[quincy]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Illinois

I want to add information from a website (like WHO) into my website as evidence for what I write. Is that okay if I include a link from the source and cite that website?

Limited use of another's copyrighted material and providing links to copyrighted material could be considered a "fair use" of the material, this when the material that is used is properly attributed.

But it is important to note that fair use is an affirmative defense in the US to a claim of infringement and is not permission to use the copyrighted material. In other words, a copyright holder could still sue you over the use and you would look to fair use as a way to defend yourself against the claim.

 

[Mchen25]

Government agencies

What about using information from government agency websites?

 

[Zigner]

What about using information from government agency websites?

Perhaps you missed it:

You will want to check with the author/owner of the website for their policy on hot-linking, but yes, a cite for the source of your information is allowed.

 

[quincy]

What about using information from government agency websites?

Some government-produced material is in the public domain and can be used without permission. If the work was prepared by an officer or employee of the US Government as part of that person's official duties, it would be in the public domain.

 

[Zigner]

Some government-produced material is in the public domain and can be used without permission.

I agree, and that's an excellent reason to check with the web site's author/owner

ETA: I was actually referring to the "hot-linking" - even if the information is in the public domain, that doesn't mean that permission is given for that.

 

[quincy]

I agree, and that's an excellent reason to check with the web site's author/owner

ETA: I was actually referring to the "hot-linking" - even if the information is in the public domain, that doesn't mean that permission is given for that.

I believe only one country (Denmark) has decided that DEEP linking was copyright infringement but I cannot think of a case where HOT linking was considered infringement, in the US or elsewhere - except in the case where the link contributes to the unauthorized copying of a copyrighted work. This has been ruled copyright infringement if the party doing the linking was aware that providing the link would facilitate infringement and encouraged it (see Intellectual Reserve, Inc. v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Inc., 75 F.Supp 2d 1290, D. Utah, 1999).

With DEEP linking, on the other hand, you are by-passing the home page of a website to access content that is contained deep inside the site. NPR in the US is notable for objecting to deep linking of their site (although it has not been judged infringement). Because the home page of a website is where most of the advertising occurs, some websites have now made it impossible to deep link and redirects deep links to the home page of their sites. For example, I often provide deep links to content on the Digital Media Law Project site with no problem. I am unable to provide deep links to content on Knight Citizen News Network, as a deep link redirects to the home page of the site.

As to government-produced material, the concern would be if the author of the work created it independently and retains rights to the written work. Where this could be most common, perhaps, is in speech writing.

 

[single317dad]

You can get a good feel for the prevailing wisdom on fair use of published articles by browsing the policies of major websites. One site I frequent, for example, is Slashdot. Their policy on quoting articles or research papers is a maximum of three paragraphs quoted (reproduced), and generally to quote as little as is necessary to make the point. Extraneous information copied from an original writing is removed by the staff. Direct cites to the source material are required. Other news aggregation and social media sites will have similar policies, while still others (I'm looking at you, Facebook) place no restrictions on blatant plagiarism.

Hotlinking of information or media is simply considered bad policy, as the owner of the linked server can change the information and your website will serve up whatever they publish. I've used that to my advantage before (eBay photo thieves).

 

[quincy]

You can get a good feel for the prevailing wisdom on fair use of published articles by browsing the policies of major websites. One site I frequent, for example, is Slashdot. Their policy on quoting articles or research papers is a maximum of three paragraphs quoted (reproduced), and generally to quote as little as is necessary to make the point. Extraneous information copied from an original writing is removed by the staff. Direct cites to the source material are required. Other news aggregation and social media sites will have similar policies, while still others (I'm looking at you, Facebook) place no restrictions on blatant plagiarism.

Hotlinking of information or media is simply considered bad policy, as the owner of the linked server can change the information and your website will serve up whatever they publish. I've used that to my advantage before (eBay photo thieves).

I am not exactly sure why you think hot linking is bad policy. Deep linking can be, depending on the preferences of the site but my experience with hot linking is that the worst that will happen is a 404 Not Found or a re-direct to the home page.

It can be educational to read the terms of use on various websites as long as you know that, what is permitted on one site may not be permitted on another (or on your own site).

Zigner is right that it is always safest to get authorization from an author/copyright holder rather than risk infringement - even if it is only to discover that permission is not necessary for the material in question or for the proposed use of the material.

 

[single317dad]

I am not exactly sure why you think hot linking is bad policy. Deep linking can be, depending on the preferences of the site but my experience with hot linking is that the worst that will happen is a 404 Not Found or a re-direct to the home page.

Hypothetically, you're an entity of some sort, and you're setting up your website. You've Googled some images, and found their direct URLs, a few of which are hosted on my website. You've copied the direct URLs to several images and decide to use those in Img Src tags instead of copying those images and hosting them on your own server.

To be absolutely clear: you're planning to place Img Src or Iframe or other content tags on your website that will pull content from my website and display it on yours. That's hotlinking.

Now I, being the responsible server owner, regularly check my logs to see where all this new traffic is coming from. I'm not getting a lot of visitors to the homepage, but my hosting bill went up because of massive additional data last month. Aha, someone must be either hosting large files or hotlinking images!

Now I, as the server owner - and he who holds all power over the content you're hotlinking - can take several approaches. I could contact you and ask you to stop; either stop using my content altogether, or stop taking it directly from my server and rehost it on your own. Hotlinking is considered bandwidth theft, but I've never had anyone I've contacted voluntarily change their website to eliminate it. I might be able to assert my IP rights legally, but that could be a long and expensive process, with little to no return. I could simply delete the content, resulting in the 404 errors you mentioned. I could install a system like the major image hosts use, which, instead of the expected image, displays a message that image hotlinking is not allowed by my server. I could also change the content, simply rewriting articles or placing entirely different images in the place of the existing ones.

Now, I won't go into details, but changing the displayed content of someone else's website can be quite a powerful incentive to get them to stop stealing from you. Hence, hotlinking is bad policy.

 

[quincy]

Hypothetically, you're an entity of some sort, and you're setting up your website. You've Googled some images, and found their direct URLs, a few of which are hosted on my website. You've copied the direct URLs to several images and decide to use those in Img Src tags instead of copying those images and hosting them on your own server.

To be absolutely clear: you're planning to place Img Src or Iframe or other content tags on your website that will pull content from my website and display it on yours. That's hotlinking.

Now I, being the responsible server owner, regularly check my logs to see where all this new traffic is coming from. I'm not getting a lot of visitors to the homepage, but my hosting bill went up because of massive additional data last month. Aha, someone must be either hosting large files or hotlinking images!

Now I, as the server owner - and he who holds all power over the content you're hotlinking - can take several approaches. I could contact you and ask you to stop; either stop using my content altogether, or stop taking it directly from my server and rehost it on your own. Hotlinking is considered bandwidth theft, but I've never had anyone I've contacted voluntarily change their website to eliminate it. I might be able to assert my IP rights legally, but that could be a long and expensive process, with little to no return. I could simply delete the content, resulting in the 404 errors you mentioned. I could install a system like the major image hosts use, which, instead of the expected image, displays a message that image hotlinking is not allowed by my server. I could also change the content, simply rewriting articles or placing entirely different images in the place of the existing ones.

Now, I won't go into details, but changing the displayed content of someone else's website can be quite a powerful incentive to get them to stop stealing from you. Hence, hotlinking is bad policy.

Ah. Good reasons.

But I still question your use of the word "stealing" when referring to hot linking. The courts in the US have not seen it as infringement.

 

[single317dad]

Ah. Good reasons.

But I still question your use of the word "stealing" when referring to hot linking. The courts in the US have not seen it as infringement.

In my specific case, I take photographs of items I sell on eBay. I edit and upload those photographs to my privately owned server and add them to my listings to give my buyers a detailed view of the item they are buying.

Another seller sees my photos, and either copies them to some other place (which I will probably never be aware of) or simply uses my photos on my server in their own auction/listing. Each time a potential buyer views their listing, the buyer's client (browser) downloads the photos from my server. I have a few problems with this:

- this seller is piggybacking on my work, paid server hosting, and bandwidth to provide a descriptive photo to his potential buyers (theft of my resources, no matter how a court sees it)
- this seller is using my photos that I took for his own commercial purpose (a bit shaky, I know, but it's my opinion)
- these photos do not properly describe the seller's item (I deal mostly in one-off vintage/antique stuff, where the condition will include cracks, dents, scuffs, etc. unique to my item)

I've tried watermarks and found them ineffective (people don't care if my username is emblazoned across a photo; they'll still use it).

I start by asking the seller nicely to stop using my photos. This has rarely been effective, maybe 3-4 times out of a few hundred in twenty years. Next I usually report the user to eBay, as the behavior I described violates the eBay ToS. This has been effective about half the time, as they're too busy the other half to take action.

Many times the listing simply ends before any other steps need to be taken, and the item disappears for good. This resolves the situation on my end.

I have, for a few real jerks I've run into, changed the hosted photos on my server to some extremely unfriendly images. Those unfriendly images are now a part of their auction/listing. Those sellers are banned from eBay in short order.

I can't say I feel bad about doing that.

 

[quincy]

In my specific case, I take photographs of items I sell on eBay. I edit and upload those photographs to my privately owned server and add them to my listings to give my buyers a detailed view of the item they are buying.

Another seller sees my photos, and either copies them to some other place (which I will probably never be aware of) or simply uses my photos on my server in their own auction/listing. Each time a potential buyer views their listing, the buyer's client (browser) downloads the photos from my server. I have a few problems with this:

- this seller is piggybacking on my work, paid server hosting, and bandwidth to provide a descriptive photo to his potential buyers (theft of my resources, no matter how a court sees it)
- this seller is using my photos that I took for his own commercial purpose (a bit shaky, I know, but it's my opinion)
- these photos do not properly describe the seller's item (I deal mostly in one-off vintage/antique stuff, where the condition will include cracks, dents, scuffs, etc. unique to my item)

I've tried watermarks and found them ineffective (people don't care if my username is emblazoned across a photo; they'll still use it).

I start by asking the seller nicely to stop using my photos. This has rarely been effective, maybe 3-4 times out of a few hundred in twenty years. Next I usually report the user to eBay, as the behavior I described violates the eBay ToS. This has been effective about half the time, as they're too busy the other half to take action.

Many times the listing simply ends before any other steps need to be taken, and the item disappears for good. This resolves the situation on my end.

I have, for a few real jerks I've run into, changed the hosted photos on my server to some extremely unfriendly images. Those unfriendly images are now a part of their auction/listing. Those sellers are banned from eBay in short order.

I can't say I feel bad about doing that.

I understand now a bit more why you object to hot linking and I admire your ingenuity when trying to combat it.

Hot linking is still not viewed as copyright infringement by the courts, though.

Have you thought of posting your photos with a trademark?

 

[single317dad]

I understand now a bit more why you object to hot linking and I admire your ingenuity when trying to combat it.

Hot linking is still not viewed as copyright infringement by the courts, though.

Have you thought of posting your photos with a trademark?

I do have a distinctive mark that I use in commerce (my eBay username is unique, notable, and known in small circles). I have not registered the name. I could include the mark and a TM, but I'm certain any trademark would be ignored. The sheer volume of "stock photo/not actual item" used in eBay listings which are actually just lifted from some website or another is staggering.

Whether including the mark and trademark (or photo copyright) notice would give me a stronger legal footing would most likely prove moot, as I haven't and likely never would pursue damages against any of these sellers due to a greatly diminished cost/reward ratio. Perhaps if I had the business model and funding of a ShutterStock I could follow their lead in litigation.

I feel like I should apologize at this point for hijacking Mchen25's thread and leading it so far astray, in my effort to give advice which was only loosely related to the question