sharing – be as clear as possible at i live in science land

sharing – be as clear as possible

the interwebz is pretty cool and there is so much fantastic content on it. in my day job, i am always amazed at how some people just think everything is free for their own use, even for corporate use – from YouTube videos to superstar music to fonts and images

there is a lot of free content out there but you need to be diligent about using it. Flickr has an advanced search that let’s you find Creative Commons licensed work, even work that can be adapted for commercial use!

there are also free fonts out there but be careful about their licenses. three years ago, NBC was looking at $2 million US dollars in damages for the improper use of one font!

if in doubt about an online asset, don’t use it!

yesterday i messed up with the attribution to some beautiful OARs out there, i’ll blame it on being a french canadian and that i don’t talk good – but ignorance is no excuse. i strive to be accurate and in things like that post, the images typically link back to their flickr pages where you can see who the owner of them is. that’s interesting in itself in regards to copyright – the pictures themselves are the copyright of the photographer and that photographer might need to obtain permission from the OAR creator to use them – especially if they were used in a commercial way

commercial use of OpenSim Flickr snapshots?

yes! it would be easy to create a series of beautiful e-books of fantastic OpenSim builds and sell them for like $4.99 each. you could go to Amazon’s CreateSpace and setup a self-publishing account, buy a 10 pack of ISBN numbers (about $300, maybe less from them), and then sell your books! they’d be listed on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble and you’d probably break even or even make money (heck, toss in some public domain text from Shakespeare or some other greats). you could go a step farther and use your CreateSpace account to create real coffee table books and sell them for $29.95 or whatever. in both of those cases, you would need to have permission from those photographers

when we share stuff – our OpenSim stuff – take an extra moment to state how it can be used. you can do it in a blanket manner like this blog (see the footer or this post) and like Linda Kellie does OR do it on a per item basis

creating a license is very easy, just a few clicks with the Creative Commons choose a license wizard and you are official!

what's your flavour?

Thank you Ener for clarifying certain legal issues. I didn’t know it was that easy to create & publish a book *WOOT*.

I already have a secondary blog which I use as a showcase for sims in InWorldz. I have always sought permission from sim owners when taking pictures or making videos of their sim(s).

I have also learnt that it is important to save any convo/NC’s/IM’s regarding permissions/licencing. Which I will start doing when I’m going to update my ‘Showcase InWorldz’ site.

~ Toodlepip.

Eros Deus

27 May 12 at 8:28 am

Ener –

There are some fair-use exceptions for editorial content.

For example, if you are reviewing a piece of software, you’d be perfectly free to use a screenshot of the software. If you’re reviewing an art installation, you’re perfectly in the clear to take a picture of the art and run it in the review.

Similarly, you can go out and take a picture of a celebrity without her underwear on and post it all over your front page.

The main requirements are that you are:

* Reviewing
* Critizing
* Commenting on
* Reporting on
* or Parodying

the original work.

So if you are writing a review of an OAR file — even an OAR file that someone is selling — you can legally post a screenshot of that OAR, just like you can post a screenshot from a videogame that you are reviewing.

HOWEVER. You can’t use that screenshot to make a product.

* You can’t put it on a mug and sell it.
* You can’t turn it into a T-shirt or necktie or tablecloth.
* You can’t use the celebrity snapshot to market your own line of crotchless panties

If you want to use that picture for any of those commercial uses, you’d need to get permission first, and usually pay some kind of royalty.

Now, there are plenty of companies out there that don’t like bad reviews, and would like to keep magazines and bloggers from posting pictures of their software or their devices. And there’s plenty of celebrities out there who definitely do not want their underwear-less photos on the front page. (Or maybe they do. Who knows these days?)

But there is nothing they can do. In the U.S., at least, fair use gives the news media — and that includes bloggers — a whole lot of leeway.

The main exception to the media’s fair use abilities is that you can’t take another news photo and run it as your own. If your competition’s photographer goes out and catches the celebrity in an … indelicate … position, you can’t just take that photo and run it. You would need to get reprint rights from the original photographer, because you are using the photo in the way the creator (the photographer) intended. Similarly, if someone else takes a screenshot of software for the purposes of reviewing it (or a screenshot of an OAR) you can’t reprint that snapshot in your own review without permission.

The editorial exception still applies — but only when applied to the other guy’s editorial content. You can run a snapshot of the other blogger’s celebrity snapshot IF you are criticizing, reviewing, reporting on, parodying, or mocking the other blogger.

You might wonder what the distinction is. In the US, the courts ask themselves whether the use of a copyrighted item hurts the market for the original item. Nobody is going to confuse a review with the real thing. Nobody is going to confuse a short excerpt of a novel or a screenshot of a videogame with the novel or game itself. Nobody is going to confuse your criticism of today’s celebrity-driven media culture with actual celebrity-driven media culture.

But if you are running a similar review to that of another blogger, using the same screenshot as they used, the two could very easily be switched for one another, and instead of reading their review, readers will just read yours — hurting the original blogger. The same applies if you use another publication’s news photographs.

So, for example, if Hypergrid Business runs a review of the new New World Studio, and we take a snapshot, you can’t use that snapshot to illustrate your own review of the same software.

But feel free to use that snapshot to illustrate a post about why I’m an idiot and my review sucks. :-)

Maria Korolov

27 May 12 at 10:21 am

Taking care of the IP end of things is one of those projects I’m behind on, due to faulty memory. Thanks for reminding me of this, I’ll include it with the rest of my Spring Cleaning.

Sarge Misfit

27 May 12 at 10:47 am

[...] iliveisl.com – Today, 1:12 PM [...]

sharing – be as clear as possible at i live in science land | The Machinimatographer | Scoop.it

27 May 12 at 1:12 pm

good tip Eros on the IM chats! and Maria is spot on with all her info! she covers all the right aspects and is especially knowledgeable on the journalistic perspective

Sarge, the great thing about having your Excelsior Station Wiki is that it serves as a great foundation for your copyright of all your work! =)