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

alistairshepherd.uk

1–10 of 78 posts

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

#2
I 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 server. Am I thinking about this the right way?

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

#4
Sucks that companies do this but seems like it's inline with the law

basically they're not going to get anything from Twitter with their army of lawyers but once you hosted it on your own website you became personally liable to hold a license for any images your site displayed.

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

#5
#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

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

#8
The problem with paying ransoms is that even if it actually is the most cost effective solution in any one case, it just creates the incentive for more rapacious behavior.

I think I'd be willing to pay $800 of my time to disincentivize that behavior.

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

#9
post #6

Title is a bit misleading. They did use the image on twitter, but the company asked for a license fee for re-publishing it on their personal website in the form of a twitter archive.

True. Open graph images imply the expectation of it being used by third parties, and as others have said - they chose a little guy to bully but would never do this to X.

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

#10
post #2

I 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.

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