This feels a lot like reading a technical description of someone choosing to pay an african prince. This is just extortion.
A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used
11–20 of 78 posts
Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used
#12#include In the US usage like this may be considered "Fair Use", however UK copyright law is less generous in its "Fair Dealing" and associated exceptions to copyright[1]. This is a problem when standards are pushed by US tech companies but don't consider the rest of the world. [1]: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright
> This is a problem when standards are pushed by US tech companies but don't consider the rest of the world.
What would have changed? This isn’t a problem that can be solved in a protocol. Even if a field was added for license information, it wouldn’t actually constitute a license if someone put the wrong info into the field (claiming to license content they didn’t own). It also wouldn’t have solved anything if there was an implied license for use on, e.g., social media sites as the author re-hosted it on their own domain.
I don’t think it’s fair to blame the tech companies for making a protocol. It’s up to the users to confirm their country allows the usage.
Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used
#13My initial reaction to this is that the licensor is a scammer and the author just got fleeced. I don’t know much about the law in the UK, but this tactic is almost identical to the one media licensing companies in the US used to go after old ladies whose grandkids had torrented movies on their internet connections. At least in the US there are many jurisdictions now where those types of cases are just immediately thrown out.
The main difference I see here is the author got bit by an automated tool. It really should be more or less considered a clerical error. I don’t see how paying $1000 is easier or cheaper than just showing up to court if asked and arguing your use was both easy to occur by mistake and didn’t represent anywhere near that value. This strategy has several advantages, among them being not having to pay until the court has ruled, which is a huge deterrent to shops like this. Just being willing to go to court automatically lowers the price you’ll end up paying. But if you don’t show that willingness you’re paying full price, even with the fakery about the 10% discount.
Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used
#14Just a caution: Many "Free" images are likely actually scraped. I've learned to be careful. I usually use images from only a couple of places (including paid sources), because I really don't trust many "royalty-free" image sources. I have also taken to providing source links in the image captions.
One of the good things (maybe) about AI-generated images, is that you could generate an image that only exists for your article. The rub is that the generator may be giving you an image that is close enough to a copyrighted one, that you could still be sued.
I think that fonts could have the same problem.
Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used
#15I am still not clear on what Open Graph is or how the image was used here. Some visual aids would have helped tremendously. I assume it is how a specific thumbnail is included alongside an embedded tweet or article snippet? From what I can gather, it sounds like his copyright exposure came up when he exported his Twitter archive, including the image in question, and hosted (and, crucially, published) it on his own se…
Open graph essentially provides thumbnails and title data for a news article or publication as links, so the news article returned a header image that displays in the tweet "preview" In this case the Tweet would have been > TWEET > linked article with open graph image When exported the author then returned that same open graph info on their personal site, thus rendering a copyrighted image without a license.
Notably, Twitter also re-hosts opengraph thumbnail images via their image CDN (as would just about any other site or app that processes opengraph embeds)
Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used
#16This sounds a lot like a copyright troll or someone doing a similar grift
Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used
#17“This undermines the entire point of the open graph protocol (at least for images). If you have to manually review every image that you include then what's the point in it being a machine protocol?”
Bingo.
Ianal but it feels like if you provide an image via an open graph link, you’re implicitly licensing that image to consumers of the Open Graph protocol to be displayed alongside a link/link metadata.
If the media company didn’t have the rights to relicense that image for consumption via Open Graph and/or the original licensor didn’t want their images appearing via Open Graph, that media company shouldn’t be using Open Graph.
That is such a frustrating situation. I hope the courts would have ruled in your favor but I understand why you chose not to test it.
Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used
#18Wouldn't the problem lie entirely within some publication serving an image that they didn't have the right to sublicense, through a protocol explicitly meant to be shared on other people's websites?
Like the "media company" said, I think you should make a claim against the site you linked to. Their redistribution of the image through a protocol meant to show up embedded on other people's sites is an implicit claim that they have the right to sublicense the image.
edit: the claim would be a favor. Just ask them for what you paid, and charge them for your time. They'll pay you with petty cash and get their lawyer to come up with an image policy to avoid difficulties in future.
Anyway, websites don't like hearing that people can get sued for linking to them.
Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used
#19The newspaper distributed the image. They said, "Here, use this image on the link to our story". They effectively sub-licensed it. If the 'owner' had a problem with that, they needed to take it up with the newspaper.
As such, the OP was under the impression the image was free to use in that context. Only once they were informed that was not the case did they become libel. They could have then licensed the photo for the 20 pounds and been done with it. Or just deleted the link off of their website (and also been done with it.)
Even in English law there's 'intent'. The OP had no intent to offend and shouldn't have paid; by feeding the troll they've unfortunately done the world a disservice, although I do empathize with their decision-making.
I don't think the troll would have gone to court, a negative precedent would have been bad for their 'business'.
Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used
#20Displaying a thumbnail is considered fair use. You got fleeced.