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

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Sooo, this struck this place also, huh?

Always been having issues with the intelectual property ownership, and it's such a tricky discussion often.

Well, from what I read, it's complicated.

But I'm confused on one thing...

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

Anthony, you say here it's our burden to know if something is fair use, and it is, it's our task as members of this site to abide the rules and not get the site in trouble, I agree with that. But, in case something is posted that isn't allowed to be used on here and so on, as you say that all content posted onto here is owned by myPTSD forum. Wouldn't that sorta shift the burden, the legal responsibility onto the forum? Just thinking, could that get you guys in trouble, wouldn't want that...

For example, YouTube uses the system where they literarly throw around legal responsibility like it isn't even an existing thing, but they generally try to push it onto users. Here, though, it seems sorta opposite.

How would a DMCA takedown notice be dealt with by the forum, and how much trouble do such things pose for you? I've only had to deal with those things once or twice, back on another webpage, and it went pretty smoothly, but like, how would it go for you, I'm pretty sure a lot of the law changed since then and so on. I know the DMCA made some quite serious trouble for many more serious pages and services.

Just ranting a bit of my random thoughts on the subject, though I think with the most of the stuff not appearing in google searches, and so on, it's an extremely low chance of anyone getting to filing a DMCA notice...

On those same lines, have you gotten any such copyright infringement notices before? If you are willing to answer

THank you in advance
 
@Saelben - even though you addressed Anthony, I'm going to answer and then he can cover anything I missed.
. But, in case something is posted that isn't allowed to be used on here and so on, as you say that all content posted onto here is owned by myPTSD forum. Wouldn't that sorta shift the burden, the legal responsibility onto the forum?
Yes and no. First, yes it does - on the very top level of the interpretation - which is why we cannot condone the posting of materials that are not owned by the member. And, no, because then we can argue to shift the responsibility back to the user because of our terms of use; however, that gets into more hours for a lawyer, and the possibility of losing. There is an expense attached to these kinds of problems, and the forum isn't a cash cow. Not to mention the time that goes into these sorts of things, which isn't a matter of just sending a few emails.
Please see @anthony's response, below:
The legal policy states: OWNERSHIP OF CONTENT. Unless otherwise noted, all written text is protected by copyright and owned, controlled or licensed by Us...We do not claim copyright of images posted by members, HUGE difference. Legally, you cannot by law claim copyright of imagery on behalf of another just by them posting it onto a website. Text, yes, we can. Images, no, we can't.

So there is actually no issue with the burden residing with the poster as per the legal policy which you accept, placing all such burdens upon yourself as the responsible person. The legal policy is clear that you will not post copyright content, or content that infringes the rights of others.

How would a DMCA takedown notice be dealt with by the forum, and how much trouble do such things pose for you? I've only had to deal with those things once
It's happened here before, and it's been a big headache for Anthony. It's the reason MyPTSD put a stop to all image threads a number of years ago, and it's why we aren't just letting things slide now.
those same lines, have you gotten any such copyright infringement notices before? If you are willing to answer
I believe this has been answered by the above - DMCA stands for Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and is the legal mechanism invoked by an owner of a copywritten image.

Anything that is owned by someone else is not available to be copied - period.

There actually are a good number of means by which a person can obtain images that are free-for-use in non-commercial settings. More and more, those artists are applying a Creative Commons license, which has a number of tiers to it, but is essentially designed to protect the owner from the material being sold or appropriated for commercial purposes. I expect over the next 5-10 years, Creative Commons will be applied more frequently, which will actually make many things smooth out again.

Nature photos are one of the most obvious case studies; pre-Internet, it made sense for a photographer to be in staff for an institution, and paid just to take the picture, with the rights on the picture going to the institution. For freelancers, it was financially most advantageous to sell the rights to their image, rather than sell a single use, when their goal was publication.

Now, with the Internet completely changing what a publication even is - it's digital more than physical - a content generator (artist, photographer) has many different options when it comes to distributing and licensing their work.

The biggest, easiest mistakes for people to make are in thinking that 'fair use' means 'as long as no-one is making money on it, it's ok to use' - or, that an original work ceases to be owned when captioning is added - or, that satire and parody are legal, so turning an image into a joke is legal.

Satire and parody are complex designations and the precedent cases are still ongoing. Fair use primarily covers educational institutions, and has four different points to prove itself on; and the act of altering a work requires that a distinctly new work emerge from the alteration.

Fees for breach of copyright are calculated based on how long the image has been 'up', and how many people may have seen it. Getty images, one of the largest image-holders, has an entire department dedicated to finding breaches and filing DMCAs. We are a volunteer organization with limited financial resources.

It's not worth the risk - ever.

I hope this has helped.
 
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Wouldn't that sorta shift the burden, the legal responsibility onto the forum?
Yes and No, but different reasons than above mentioned.

The legal policy states: OWNERSHIP OF CONTENT. Unless otherwise noted, all written text is protected by copyright and owned, controlled or licensed by Us. You shall abide by all additional copyright notices, information or restrictions contained in any Content accessed through the website.

We do not claim copyright of images posted by members, HUGE difference. Legally, you cannot by law claim copyright of imagery on behalf of another just by them posting it onto a website. Text, yes, we can. Images, no, we can't.

So there is actually no issue with the burden residing with the poster as per the legal policy which you accept, placing all such burdens upon yourself as the responsible person. The legal policy is clear that you will not post copyright content, or content that infringes the rights of others.

We have a burden to remove content we know, without doubt, is not yours to post, the moment we become aware of said content. If we do not know, then we have no burden, and it all still resides with the infringing party who posted it.

Internet law, long ago, place much of the burden with the poster... because a website owner can not knowingly know what you own and what you do not.

Now if you posted a poem that you wrote, we can copyright it. If you posted a poem by another, which is copyright by another, you first have no right to post infringing works of another, second, we can not copyright what is not ours, third, we are obliged to remove the content.

If the Internet were not so vast... if a person infringed the rights of another, an owner would likely have a responsibility to report the infringement to the owner or authorities for action. But with the www being so vast and literally impossible to police at such level, everything is done on a case by case level, and often for digital works, a DMCA does the job without complication.
 
They are an image sharing website, who credit the original source and are in essence, infringing copyright with their service. I imagine they get a lot of takedown notices. They're using Amazon EC2 to run it... which I'm shocked nobody has reported as blatant copyright infringement service hosted with Amazon. I was expecting their hosting to be in a country where such laws really aren't supported.

Most people don't care about image sharing... but the few who do, are the ones who can have an entire service cancelled for repeated offences.
 
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