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A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used

alistairshepherd.uk

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Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used

#61

Post by maverwa »

dolmen wrote: post #60
dolmen wrote: post #56

OpenGraph allows to get a preview of the content. Allowing access to that preview is implicit and it looks fair to access the image from the media site. However, republishing that preview elsewhere is still publishing and the author of the post seems to have missed that. Instead he should just publish the link to the media site and let the client that browse his archive access (download) the OpenGraph preview by itse…

A technical solution would be to implement the OpenGraph preview on the client side (JS), instead of having the preview in the archive and hosted/served by it.

I am unsure if this really would work legally, let alone stopping a licensor from demanding money from you in the first place. Does is really matter where the image is served from? If its displayed on your website, does it really matter if its client side JS or static HTML that renders the img tag? I think neither does it matter if you load the image from your own server or from a remote (the original OpenGraph source).

Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used

#62

Post by fc417fc802 »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #55
fc417fc802 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The OP had a responsibility to check Only within reason. The archive was published in bulk. I don't think there's any expectation every single post in an archive is checked prior to publication. But more than that, even had the author explicitly checked the thumbnail had been provided by the original publisher via Open Graph. Effectively the original publisher publicly provided this image and suggested that people…

> Only within reason. The archive was published in bulk. I don't think there's any expectation every single post in an archive is checked prior to publication. Why? Just because it’s onerous doesn’t mean you don’t have a duty to do it. If the guy had copy and pasted the whole news article and republished it himself, I doubt many people would try to argue that he hadn’t infringed the copyright of the newspaper. So tha…

> Just because it’s onerous doesn’t mean you don’t have a duty to do it.

That depends heavily on context. Anyway you're refuting a claim that I never made.

A thought experiment. You are publishing an archive containing billions of items and expect that 0.01% will infringe copyright or be libelous or what have you. Can you legally publish that archive without manually checking every single item?

What if you believe that exactly 1 of a total 1 billion posts will be infringing? Are you required to hunt down the single needle in the haystack prior to publication?

I am quite confident that in the vast majority of jurisdictions the answer in both of those cases is that regardless of what the written law says you will not be found liable in practice so long as you take reasonable precautions prior to publication and respond promptly upon learning of any specific infringing items.

> Normally this would probably not be heavily punished by the courts

Or at all? Does IP law not require intent as a necessary precondition of breaking it?

> If the legal system isn’t given an opportunity to weigh in, it can’t do so.

I never claimed it did, only that the outcome appears obvious to me. This looks like a typical troll case.

Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used

#63

Post by dolmen »

maverwa wrote: post #61
dolmen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A technical solution would be to implement the OpenGraph preview on the client side (JS), instead of having the preview in the archive and hosted/served by it.

I am unsure if this really would work legally, let alone stopping a licensor from demanding money from you in the first place. Does is really matter where the image is served from? If its displayed on your website, does it really matter if its client side JS or static HTML that renders the img tag? I think neither does it matter if you load the image from your own server or from a remote (the original OpenGraph sourc…

You are probably right.

However:

  * it would at least help to go under the radar of some scrappers which don't run JS.
  * not serving the infringing content might give some more weight for defense of a fair use position before a court (but IANAL)

Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used

#65

Post by dolmen »

dolmen wrote: post #60
dolmen wrote: post #56

OpenGraph allows to get a preview of the content. Allowing access to that preview is implicit and it looks fair to access the image from the media site. However, republishing that preview elsewhere is still publishing and the author of the post seems to have missed that. Instead he should just publish the link to the media site and let the client that browse his archive access (download) the OpenGraph preview by itse…

A technical solution would be to implement the OpenGraph preview on the client side (JS), instead of having the preview in the archive and hosted/served by it.

Not easy to implement because of CORS limits. The usual limitation of CORS is bypassed by implementing a proxy, but that's exactly the kind of solution to avoid here as the proxy would be the licensor's target.

Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used

#66

Post by d1sxeyes »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #62
d1sxeyes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only within reason. The archive was published in bulk. I don't think there's any expectation every single post in an archive is checked prior to publication. Why? Just because it’s onerous doesn’t mean you don’t have a duty to do it. If the guy had copy and pasted the whole news article and republished it himself, I doubt many people would try to argue that he hadn’t infringed the copyright of the newspaper. So tha…

> Just because it’s onerous doesn’t mean you don’t have a duty to do it. That depends heavily on context. Anyway you're refuting a claim that I never made. A thought experiment. You are publishing an archive containing billions of items and expect that 0.01% will infringe copyright or be libelous or what have you. Can you legally publish that archive without manually checking every single item? What if you believe th…

> That depends heavily on context. Anyway you're refuting a claim that I never made.

You asserted that you don’t think “there is any expectation every single post […] is checked”. I think my answer was completely responsive to that point.

> [You] expect that 0.01% will infringe copyright

This means you either knowingly or negligently publish material you do not have reason to be non-infringing. The 99.99% of non-infringing posts in the article are a red herring, only that 0.01% matters for this discussion.

The test is pretty simple: did you believe the material was not infringing, or did you have reason to believe it was not infringing. In this case, you expect (your word) some content to be infringing. You might get some leeway from the courts, but you would still likely be found liable for unlawful infringement.

> Or at all? Does IP law not require intent as a necessary precondition of breaking it?

The courts may decide to go easy on you, but intent is not required in civil cases (unless it’s a criminal case). See the law itself: 17 U.S. Code § 501(a), and case law regarding intentionality: Buck v. Jewell-LaSalle Realty Co., 283 U.S. 191 (1931) (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/283/191/#:~:text...).

> This looks like a typical troll case.

Disagreeing with you doesn’t make me a troll.

Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used

#68

Post by hofo »

jim201 wrote: post #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 co…

The use of opengraph doesn’t change the usage rights on the content that the opengraph tag refers to

Re: A media company demanded a license fee for an Open Graph image I used

#69

Post by dartharva »

kirrent wrote: post #43
dartharva wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indian copyright law fair dealing provisions, which are far narrower than the US provisions Are they really? I've been believing the opposite. What fair use does US allow that India doesn't?

Very different in character. The US fair use four factor test ( https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ ) is really flexible. You don't need to fall into an enumerated exception to infringement to argue that your use is transformative, won't substitute in the marketplace, etc. Look at the famous Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc. case. Google scanned every work they could put their hands on and…

If what you say were true, Indian media conglomerates like the Times Group would be clamoring to sue the hell out of Google for every excerpt shown, yet I haven't heard of a single such case. What ANI did with Indian Youtubers was exploiting the Youtube platform's broken copyright reporting mechanism, not actual litigation.
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