Posting Images: When Its Ok, And When It's Not.

[hodge]

Great!

 

[anthony]

I would be very grateful for just a yes or no to this one.

See legal policy, prohibited use of content, item 8: to disseminate any material which is or may infringe the rights (including intellectual property rights) of any third party.

This has not changed since the inception of this website. That specific clause has always been present here, thus every single member has agreed to it upon registration / continued reading of this website.

We, MyPTSD (all staff) cannot endorse copyright infringement, as that would hold us liable. So our answer to any copyright infringement is, NO. If you infringe copyright of another, you are responsible and may be held legally liable.

As @joeylittle said, avatars are tiny and often not an issue and may fall under fair use due to their use, however, we (MyPTSD or staff) do not endorse any copyright infringement. We presume you either own, or have the rights to use an image when you upload it here. Otherwise, you are liable.

I know lots of my writing has been reproduced online without credit, hubby's, too.

You can request any reproduction of your owned content to be credited, or they must remove it. If they refuse to credit the reproduction, regardless of age, you can use a DMCA email to the host provider to have the content removed. Host will action it immediately or they will terminate the website from their servers for legally infringing copyright. You get the DMCA template and send it yourself... no cost, legal, and very actionable by a host providing you can prove yourself as the original, source, author.

For example, last time I used a DMCA I could use the request to credit the work discussion, where the person admitted to grabbing the image from Google images, refused to remove it even though they had credited it (I didn't want copyright infringed, period), combined with the date of posting here where the image is used, which was before the infringing use date.

That is exactly what happens here, and every website online. Repeated offences may incur permanent removal from a service.

 

[ladee]

I am so grateful I am 'tech stupid', but I get it. If I don't own it, don't post it... Got it.

 

[hodge]

Yes, I know my publisher has done something like what you described. I could never really keep up with the intricacies of it all. But it's an uphill battle. Reference book publishers have had to compete with the internet for quite some years now (one of the reasons we all got laid off 10 years ago). Our stuff is all over the place, uncredited. It's crazy.

 

[UnKnown-Self]

I pay for many of my images on deposit photos. How would you or anyone know I paid for the privilege to use the photo? Is using it here considered personal or commercial use?

 

[joeylittle]

Great question, @Alice.in.Wonderland.

Anything you'd post here will fall under personal use. But, how you are allowed to utilize that photo would be dictated by the terms of use given you by Deposit Photos.

If you can send me towards more info (via a link or PM) I'll be able to answer your question properly (rather than outlining the multiple hypotheticals).

 

[anthony]

I just looked at their license, and I would say no. A standard license allows for use on a website / webpage design, providing it is not be redistributed for sale or such.

Stock photography is typically for personal use, not distributing it across many websites for your personal use. Typically, personal use defines you own the medium that you are using the image upon / you are creating it. Republishing does not normally fall under this. Example, if you wrote a new thread here and included that purchased image on that thread, that would be valid, but if you just posted the image, that would not, as you do not own the copyright to publish that image will nilly across the www, as that is redistributing it without creative works.

I use stock photography from shutter stock specifically, as the license allows for use in a blog post, providing it does not exceed $10k in any production cost.

istockphoto, for example, technically if you stockpile photos by bulk buying them, anything used after your subscription download period ends, your license thus ends too, which is why I don't use them.

How do we know? We don't need to, that burden is yours, not ours.

 

[UnKnown-Self]

Not trying to beat a dead horse I understand I cannot use photos here unless I take the photo or create the image myself using photos I've taken or non-copyrighted images.
Your in a position of when in doubt take it out.
This is a place of healing and creativity is part of healing.
If this question was asked please just point me to the post number or tell me to that answer has been addressed and read through the thread :)
How do we know an image is copyright free?
Also, if our work, be it things said in a thread, pictures taken or created by us, poetry or or other written works become property of MyPTSD, does that mean anyone using that work outside of this forum including the poster need your permission to use it?
Before people start circling @anthony and get furious with me, please know
I don't see @anthony as one who has any ill intent and the purpose of this forum is for the safe gathering and connection of people who have difficulty doing so. It is a place to say what we can't say and be understood saying it.
I am just wondering because the law is tricky.
There are a good percentage of us who think about writing that memoir someday even if my low estimate of 90% never will including myself it would be good to know if someone would be required to submit a copy to MyPTSD aka @anthony for review and approval since a bulk of personal work is through interaction on this site.
Also, since MyPTSD becomes the owner of things posted here. Does that make them accountable for protecting our work? If someone else takes it and uses what we've written for profit and it was blatantly our work and taken from this site. Is MyPTSD responsible for protecting it?
PTSDers can have irrational paranoid moments and I am no different. I don't feel threatened or anything but there is a poking curiosity.
I would imagine this is covered somewhere to protect MyPTSD and if not perhaps it should be.

 

[joeylittle]

@Alice.in.Wonderland -

Here's how the ownership works: once something is posted, that post becomes the property of MyPTSD.

If a member wanted to use their posts or information therein for a memoir say - yes, MyPTSD would need to be asked for permission to do so. And that has happened in the past, and permission is granted.

If a member - or guest - wanted to use a fellow members' content, MyPTSD would not grant that permission. This is actually how we protect your content, here.

If you came across your own diary posted in someone else's blog, say - you'd tell us and we'd deal with getting it taken down.

For images: it's actually helpful to imagine that the image is an actual physical thing.

So, you take a picture with your camera. You can print unlimited copies of it. You can pin one to your media galley here, another to Facebook, another to your wall at home, you could give them out as gifts...

If you buy a single print of an image at a store, you have one print, and you can 'hang' it one place. If you took that print to a copy shop and made five copies and posted them also in your office at work, your bathroom, your cousins house...you have essentially stolen those copies; if you wanted five of them in the first place, you needed to have paid for five.

If you found a picture on the street and didn't know where it came from - you'd assume it belonged to someone, probably. That's the way to treat images found on the web.

Copyright and DMCA exist in order to protect the owner of the picture you might find on the street, only the 'street' in this case is the Internet.

If a owner has made reproductions of a picture available for 'sale' - such as through an image supply house - and you purchase one copy, you can use that one copy wherever they say you can. If you post it here you are essentially hanging it on a wall in a big building called "MyPTSD", and we are now responsible for it.

If and when you want it back, you ask us, and we decide whether or not we can give it back.

Back to text: you post text here, we now 'own' it, and we protect you from a random individual finding it, making a copy, and putting it somewhere else.

This is an oversimplification, but it's the foundation of all copyright law. The 'fair use' concept exists because certain kinds of applications (scholarly ones being the most common) depend on sharing knowledge and materials; and so, educational institutions in particular are granted the right to excerpt from other works without paying for it for the purposes of educating others.

I hope this has helped.

 

[joeylittle]

How do we know an image is copyright free?

An image can be free for use under one of two conditions:

It is considered "public domain" - most copyrights expire eventually, and some things are never placed into copyright, meaning they revert into the public domain (accessible to all) after a set period of time (depending on the medium). You need to do research to demonstrate that something is in the public domain, it's not something one can just assume.

It has been proclaimed to be free-for-use: some people just make things that other people can use for free, as they wish. Those kinds of images are found by searching specifically for images that are considered non-copyright or free for use or public domain image bank, or a dozen other search terms.

And this is why the staff doesn't have time to ascertain whether or not an image is free to be replicated without penalty. We frankly have our hands full just making sure that text isn't copied and left unattributed - that happens an awful lot.

The Internet is a wonderful, messy, huge repository of text, images, content....all sorts of things. Regulating it is difficult, and the laws are ever-evolving.

 

[ladee]

Thank you so much @joeylittle ~~ I didn't ask the question but you made it easy for me to understand... Thank you Cat Herder Extraordinaire !!!

 

[UnKnown-Self]

Thank you @joeylittle for taking the time to explain. I asked the questions I did because I thought I was not the only one who wondered. You did a great job in explaining :-)