Edited by author 04-17-2003 07:01 PM
I've been zinged again by my Poser using friend. Here's what he said this time:
"Linking directly to an image on someone else's site with no text at as to where the image came from or who made it is not promoting the work. It is stealing the work and the owner's bandwidth."Actually, I'm making the assumption that the person who follows the link can find out more about the artist by simply clicking on. You might notice that I almost always give Micah Wright a link and mention him by name, both at my site and at Warblogger Watch. I also wasn't using your bandwidth to host the picture.
"So, since there is no notification to the artist that the work is being used, apparently it is up to the person whose art is being ripped-off to discover the theft (as I did by looking at my site logs) and then request that the thief request that the thief cease the use. This is absurd since info on the site from which the art was clearly taken clearly states: The art is copyrighted, no further distribution without written permission. The address to write to via e-mail to seek permission. Taking and using an image without permission from the Web is art theft. This is international law...see http://lcweb.loc.gov./copyright/. Art theft on the web is a crime punishable by fines in the 6 figure range."The link itself is a kind of notification. Tell me Sherlock: how would you have found me if I hadn't used the link? And quite frankly: I didn't see the copyright notice because I didn't see the entirety of the page. Perhaps you were using a Creative Commons license like I am. You never know. Keep in mind that I'm using the Fair Use Doctrine and I get no money from my website. Now, in the future if my hundred and 50 or so readers turn into Drudge or Atrios like numbers I may have to rethink my position, but now I'm really not worried about it. I get a modest amount of hits. If I hadn't bothered to link to your site, then in all likelihood you wouldn't have known about it. I was using your picture as a "comment" on the SARs virus and sort of a pictorial complement to the pic of The Coming Plague. I think the tipping point of whether it's a copyright violation is whether I get financial gain from the pic. The answer to that is no...yet another reason I don't mind taking down your work! It's no skin off my nose.
I might point out that other people have taken my work without permission, for example there was a guy who was mirroring my site for some odd reason and some of my reviews have appeared in odd places. I wouldn't want anybody thrown in jail or fined for that of course. That would be idiotic. I can live with it, although I was curious about the mirroring...
Anyway, your art has been taken down. My policy stands.
