If I am interested in using an image on one of the commercial sites I write for, I e-mail and ask permission, and I credit those images clearly. But what about putting an image from the Web on my wall? Writer I certainly understand the importance of getting credit for your work and getting paid for it. In order to get the legal perspective on this I talked to Anthony Falzone, a law professor at Stanford and the executive director of the Fair Use Project there. He said that an “All rights reserved” label on a photo did not necessarily give the photographer total control. “But that begs the question: What are the limits “When you say ‘All rights reserved,’ that simply means you’re reserving all the rights the law gives you,” Mr. That is where the doctrine of fair use comes into play. Falzone pointed to the 1984 Supreme Court decision in Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, which said that it was legal to use a VCR to recordĬopyrighted content from broadcast television for personal viewing. “There are a lot of parallels with what’s going on with Flickr,” Mr.
“People are posting photographs and know very well that they are going to be viewed by people on a computer,Īnd if someone wants to print a photo out that they see on Flickr to enjoy some other time and in some other place, that seems fairly analogous to what people did with the VCR.”įrom that legal angle, if someone decides to download an “All rights reserved” image from Flickr and put it on their PC desktop or print it at home, they should be covered under fair use.
Not fully caught up with the digital era, leaving lots of gray areas. “The real core question is, is this a fair use or not?” said Corynne McSherry, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group. McSherry suggests playing it safe and always asking.
Are trying to figure out how old laws apply in such cases, and it may take a while to develop clear answers.
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