A relatively new user ( Royal123) has taken to posting images from other sites. Now that it’s been recognised, they are being attributed. But are there copyright issues?
ISpot has this
.
“ Infringing other people’s rights is against the iSpot Terms of use. If you find that an iSpot user has done this, please let us know -”.
.
Unfortunately the link to Terms of use given is a 404.
https://www.ispotnature.org/terms-of-use
.
I belive miked has emailed Hannah.
She probably is breaching copyright, unless she has permission to post them or unless the photographer has chosen to have a Creative Commons (or similar) agreement. The law is basically that the photographer retains © until 70 years after their death. The absence of a © sign doesn’t convey any rights to reproduce.
Just a correction. If you mean Hannah Esplin Amadan didn’t say Hannah. Amadon said Royal 123.
Hannah isn’t Royal 123 on i spot cause she just goes by the same name as on this forum its Royal 123 sending things from other sites on i spot
Also here is the link to terms and conditions it might be worth trying again cause the link works if this is the link intended to be sent you have to scroll a long way to get to the part relevant to this post it’s only the do my photos stay mine link that the terms of use link doesn’t work on
The workable link can be found on this page
It might be worth finding out if Royal 123 who isn’t Hannah Esplin got permission from the sites to send them then it wouldn’t be a copyright issue but if Royal 123 didn’t get permission from the sites to use them then it would be a copyright issue but it’s hard to know unless we find out from the sites or from Royal 123 weather He or she got permission from those sites
It is a coincidence that they are both called Hannah. Jin’s Weenus’ posts are always original, always fascinating, too.
.
I’ve withdrawn a couple of comments made on the ‘borrowed’ observations, as I am unsure of the motivation for posting them.
No, Zo, I was referring to Royal123 who is also Hannah, confusingly - Hannah Dyer!
Yes I have emailed her and if there is no suitable response then I will remove those observations. The person may be a spammer or similar, if you notice any other issues when I am not around then just block the observations from this person yourself.
Just to say.
I deliberately did not mark them as inappropriate yesterday but added comments for Royal 123.
They are pretty harmless but she just needs to explain, that’s all.
Royal123 may be a student at the Royal School, Wolverhampton; the posts are probably made in good faith. I hope our feedback will help this new ispotter to continue with us.
1 Like
Returning to the topic of copyright,nw that we have the Copyright Notice under our photos and the option of the toggle for CC, I read right to the end of the iSpot where it mentions text.
I often use text from other websites to describe my own and when making what I hope are comments on other posts. BUT I have never checked that the copyright owner has given permission as in 9.1.b. If I were to ask for every text I posted and wait for the copyright owner to reply, I would never post anything.
Is this really what we are meant to do?
-
iSpot Content: licence (excluding photographs and images)
9.1. In legal terms, by providing your content and information (excluding photographs and images) to iSpot for the purposes outlined at 8 above:
a) You are granting us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, irrevocable licence to use the content and information at no charge to operate iSpot, to support our research and to develop species identification systems and software. This may include sharing the content and information with other parties including those listed at 8.1;
b) If you are not the copyright owner of the content or information, you are confirming that the copyright owner has given their permission for this licence to be granted to us.
Copyright law is tangled and a specialist area. My understanding is that you are allowed to quote other people for what is ‘fair usage’. An example might be where you quote from an article in order to make a counter-argument or to write a book review. I don’t think that there is an exact definition of what is fair usage. When I worked on a magazine, we had an arbitrary rule of thumb that you could quote x number of words from another source - age is getting the better of me and I cannot remember what x was but I think it might have been 70. Personally, I think that a site like Naturespot which draws a lot of its material from other websites could be going over the line - unless, of course, they have already obtained the necessary consent from the sources they cite (mostly without credit, from what I’ve seen).
JoC has raised an interesting point, I am not sure whether the legal team who drafted the notice had this in mind, they were mainly considering original content produced by the ispotters but they may have considered wider issues too. Perhaps the fair usage comes into play as you mention and always good to give the reference.
Fair usage reminded me…
I think OU is educational. So no problem
Teaching
Several exceptions allow copyright works to be used for educational purposes, such as:
- the copying of works in any medium as long as the use is solely to illustrate a point, it is not done for commercial purposes, it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement, and the use is fair dealing.
.
Interesting, this is not too far removed from what I had remembered. And, as I suspected, ‘fair usage’ is not a precise term. I note that the above website says that in assessing fair use you must take account of
is the amount of the work taken reasonable and appropriate? Was it necessary to use the amount that was taken? Usually only part of a work may be used.
That is quite helpful in my view.
Yes, Jo, that is very reasonable, thanks