8 ms·
Federal Judge Says Embedding a Tweet Can Be Copyright Infringement
- k_sh 9y agoYikes - this is bad. Criminalizing embeds (and hyperlinks, it sounds like?) is a swing at the jugular for the Internet.
- manfredo 9y agoPerhaps there's a difference in that embeds can display the content without directing the viewer to page. Consider: * Embedding a copyrighted image. * Linking to the original page that hosts said image. In the latter case the copyright holder would still monetize of of, say, ads hosted on their website. Whereas in the former the copyrighted work would likely be displayed without the chance for the copyright holder to monitize. I'm more surprised that Twitter doesn't have a clause where all users waive copyright to any posted on their website. Otherwise essentially all social media platforms would constantly be infringing. I upload my profile pic to Facebook, I can't turn around and sue them for the fact that it's displaying this image to all other Facebook users viewing my profile.
- quickthrower2 9y agoThePirateBay is an example that muddies the distinction.
- kd0amg 9y agoIn the latter case the copyright holder would still monetize of of, say, ads hosted on their website. I'd have an easier time with this reasoning if I saw more legal argument directly addressing why "exclusive right to their respective writings" includes the right to require readers to also see something else at the same time as they view the writings.
- Joeri 9y agoThe social media terms of service typically include granting a global sublicensable royalty-free license to all copyrighted content you upload.
- ruytlm 9y agoWhich is why it's surprising to see the photographer going after the publications; it makes more sense to go after the 'someone else' who tweeted the picture. I suspect that it's a case of targeting those who are more likely to be able to pay out in case of a win in the courts.
- zipwitch 9y agoWorse, it is teaching a generation (or more) that our justice system is stupid and broken. That in turn erodes ideas like rule of law that a essential to modern civilization.
- craftyguy 9y ago> Worse, it is teaching a generation (or more) that our justice system is stupid and broken Well, you wouldn't be wrong for coming to this conclusion (source: this ruling, and more!) > That in turn erodes ideas like rule of law that a essential to modern civilization. Not necessarily. Our implementation of this is essentially flawed, but that doesn't mean all possible implementations of rule of law are flawed as badly. I would hope that this would inspire change, but people are inherently against change so at the end of the day you are probably correct.
- helthanatos 9y agoThe only direction people really want to change in is socially. They focus all their attention on social issues and poverty and taxes. The actual laws don't want to be touched by anyone. We have very poor and contradictory laws and decisions with regards to new technology. The people in charge don't seem to understand the internet and internet-related rights.
- craftyguy 9y agoYep, which is why our implementation is flawed. It allows folks who have no knowledge of certain topics to make and enforce laws that pertain to those topics.
- ravenstine 9y agoI know the solution: Just remove government officials who use the word "cyber".
- thatcat 9y agoThere are unfortunately plenty of other ways to learn that lesson. On the up side it may encourage people to participate in distributed systems that are more resilient against arbitrary censorship.
- ryan-c 9y agoMy read of this is that embedding a tweet is not copyright infringement, rather the issue is that the tweet in question, was itself, infringing a work. This is still a bad ruling, of course.
- dbuder 9y agoHow is tweeting not considered putting it into the public domain, it's open broadcast.
- delecti 9y agoTwitter isn't quite an open broadcast, and even if it were it wouldn't necessarily mean it was entered into the public domain. A recording of a musician's public performance of their song is still under copyright; MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech is under copyright; literal broadcasts (TV/Radio) are still under copyright.
- dbuder 9y agoimo social media is all about spreading your thoughts/opinions, if you have a public fb profile or tweet something you ostensibly want it spread and just because the medium it spreads further on is different to the one you started on it is ridiculous for the creator or twitter to bring legal action over that.
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- ruytlm 9y agoBecause being on the receiving end of a public broadcast does not give you the right to re-use the content. The content owner, for better or worse, typically retains the exclusive right to use or broadcast the content, regardless of how many times it is broadcast. Consider older mediums; does broadcasting a TV show put it into the public domain? Or playing a song on the radio?
- alphaalpha101 9y ago>Consider older mediums; does broadcasting a TV show put it into the public domain? Or playing a song on the radio? It certainly should do.
- ISL 9y agoAs I read the article, it sounds like a more-accurate headline would be "Federal Judge Says Embedding an Infringing Tweet Can Be Copyright Infringement".
- djsumdog 9y agoBut if you were commenting on or critiquing the photo or the narrative around it ... wouldn't that be fair use?
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- RyanShook 9y agoMore accurate title would be, “Federal judge doesn’t understand how the internet works”
- mar77i 9y agoThanks for clearing that up. If the FSF interpretation is inaccurate in this concern, that means embedding infringing content is also infringing, but that doesn't pose a threat for embedding non-infringing tweets? The problem is, as usual, embedders cannot differenciate one from the other - how should you tell the person who made the picture and the person posting it apart? Of course, US being the US, nobody wants to step up to protect anything remotely a consumer...
- aresant 9y agoYoutube, soundcloud, and other huge sharing platforms have all dealt with copyright & infringement through a combination of: 1) Easy takedown process DMCA 2) Algorithmic content identification & blocking Is there a start-up that provides similar content moderation / blocking as a SAAS?
- sfifs 9y agoThe ruling actually seems very reasonable. Someone took a photo and posted it on his social media account. The platform license on those accounts presumably allows others to share as fair use Some for profit media companies then used the photo in their content without licensing hiding behind a technicality of it being served from a third party server and got stomped by the court. Presumably if the story was an artistic criticism of the photo or described the photo, they would have been safe under fair use.
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- koboll 9y ago17 U.S.C. § 107 Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
- alphaalpha101 9y agoThere's a difference between 'this image has just sold for the most an image has ever been sold for!' and embedding a low resolution photo, which is the news reporting exception, and embedding the original as part of another, unrelated-to-the-image news story.
- dragonwriter 9y agoReporting isn't automatically fair use, it's an example of a purpose which can be fair use depending on the fair use factors. And fair use is a defense, which only applies if a use is otherwise infringing.
- Deregibus 9y agoThe photographer didn’t post the image on Twitter, someone else who presumably didn’t have a license to do so did. The sites then embedded that other person’s tweet. If it had be the photographer that posted the tweet then the media companies would have been in the clear AFAIK since part of Twitter’s TOS allows for embeds. This ruling doesn’t make a ton of sense assuming the media companies were acting in good faith. If they knew that the image was copyrighted and the Twitter user didn’t have the rights to post the image but embedded it anyway in an attempt To get around the copyright on a technicality then this seems more reasonable.
- iakh 9y agoSomebody help me out. Neither the article nor the quoted decision provides any rational as to how they jumped to linking would also be considered infringement. From my reading, the argument is that the sites made a conscience effort to display a copywritten image, tweet or not. Help me understand why displaying the tweet that included the image should not be infringement when displaying the image directly is.
- bobwaycott 9y ago> ... the sites made a conscience effort ... I believe you mean the sites made a conscious effort here.
- iakh 9y agoThank you. Autocorrected
- aij 9y ago> Help me understand why displaying the tweet that included the image should not be infringement when displaying the image directly is. I don't think anyone is saying that. I think the main point of disagreement is over whether linking to a work infringes it's copyright. Some of us think linking never infringes, whereas others think it depends on how much (explicit?) user action is needed to follow said link. Personally, I think that is opening a huge can of worms, because it means that when I write something, whether or not I am infringing someone's copyright depends not (only?) on what I have written, but on how others end up using what I have written. I think the decision ultimately rests on conflating writing instructions to do something with actually doing it. It probably doesn't help that programmers are often somewhat sloppy when talking about their code. Eg: "When we receive request X we will respond by Y." vs. "I have written/modified program Z, so that when it is run and it receives request X it will respond by Y." Generally no one will assume that you're actually sitting inside the server, personally receiving requests and responding to them, so there's little need to be explicit in saying that you have written a program. When you write instructions on how to bake a cake, and someone else decides to follow said instructions, resulting in a cake, there is little debate over who has baked said cake. When you write instructions on how to display an image, and someone else decides to execute said instructions on their computer, resulting in an image being displayed, then who actually displayed said image?
- rebuilder 9y agoWhat's the difference between a news org embedding a tweet containing a photo vs. embedding just a photo hosted by a third party?
- crooked-v 9y agoThe latter hides the context of the photo's owner.
- Buge 9y agoFrom a practical (not legal standpoint), the second one is has the possibility of going down due to too much traffic, or being replaced by obscene images. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/28/cartoonist-the-oatmeal-trolls-huffpo-over-images-published-sans-permission https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/28/cartoonist-the...
- bo1024 9y ago(Armchair copyrighting ahead.) This case, which is apparently about "embedding", raises some questions about the line between linking to infringing content and hosting it. I feel it is clear (apparently unlike the judges) that linking cannot possibly violate copyright while hosting content without permission does. I'm not clear technically what this article means by "embedding". I think the interesting blurry lines are when page A contains code from page B (say as a frame), and the code loads infringing content. I wonder if this situation should be subject to DMCA "safe harbor" provisions, which are what protect Twitter, YouTube, etc. from liability for user-uploaded infringements as long as they take them down upon request. But in general, I tend to think the responsibility should fall on page A for content that it serves to users, even if indirectly by loading third-party code....
- rayiner 9y agoThe EFF write-up is quite misleading. The district court does a perfectly reasonable job of explaining the difference between a hyperlink and an embed tag, namely that the latter results in the content integrated into the webpage instead of taking you to a separate site. Contrary to the EFF write up, focusing on the “coder” is not misleading. The choice to embed a tweet versus linking to a tweet is in fact what someone writing HTML code would make.
- mar77i 9y ago> The choice to embed a tweet versus linking to a tweet is in fact what someone writing HTML code would make. Duh, HTML is code now? Tell twitter to remove the feature, then. http://socialmarketingwriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Embed-Tweet-Code-With-Preview.jpg http://socialmarketingwriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09...
- alsadi 9y agoI was told that one can't copyright less than 3 lines.
- Pica_soO 9y agoDefinitely good for the lawyer business to turn more of society into a warzone.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]