Helping Academia Steal your Photos.

I think the point the OP is trying to make isn't that "Hey look I found a way to download pictures that are protected", but rather that "hey look I found a "legitimate" application used in Schools, which facilitates downloading" Kind of like finding a button on some video viewer in class with a direct link to torrents. Yes they exist, but class software should not make it easy to get there.
 
A legitimate piece of software that facilitates a legitimate use of files on the Internet, and for educational purposes. I cannot see the difference between that and using Google to find and download articles on converting a zeiss Sonnar to Leica mount.

If you uploaded it to the Internet, you make it available for "fair use".
 
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Fair use under the law is extremely broad. It is indeed one of the foundations of academic learning. It is an absolutely essential thing. Imagine if it were utterly against the law to print out a passage from a novel and then discuss it. Imagine how ridiculous it would be to be forced to describe a photograph of a scene in order to discuss it.

If a person uploads a photograph to the internet (web,discussion forum,e-mail list, message board, USENET, etc.) then he has, based upon his actions and the nature of humankind, decided to share the image with, potentially, hundreds of thousands of nameless, faceless people. Whining about largely theoretical cases or possible cases of copyright infringement which MIGHT occur after having uploaded photos to the world wide web seems really dickish. And actually, rather stupid. It's like whining that somebody took a $20 bill you left just sitting on a bus stop bench. Yeah--somebody took it...you f&%#ing left it sitting unattended in a public location!!!

"D'oh!!!"
 
http://www.asc.upenn.edu/dmca/
You can also crack a DVD and use short clips from it in your course.
Am I missing something? This citation appears to be a university's website, NOT a US Federal Government website. And, FWIW, I didn't see anything regarding still photographs mentioned.

A legitimate piece of software that facilitates a legitimate use of files on the Internet, and for educational purposes. I cannot see the difference between that and using Google to find and download articles on converting a zeiss Sonnar to Leica mount.
Intended educational use is NOT a carte blance to take anything and everything and use it however you wish. I would also suggest that if the software is by-passing Flickr's user-account protection system, that its legitimacy is at the very least question inappropriate.

...If you uploaded it to the Internet, you make it available for "fair use".
I'm not sure that I can count the number of ways in which this statement is wrong!
 
If you uploaded it to the Internet, you make it available for "fair use".
True, but not all uses would qualify as 'fair use' as defined by US Copyright law. U.S. Copyright Office - Fair Use

And, if the use is outside the US in one of the other 160+ signator countries, then the Berne Convention would apply.
 
It's entirely possible that blackboard is using a flickr-provided API, and that it is the API that is not respecting the user's settings.
 
...If a person uploads a photograph to the internet (web,discussion forum,e-mail list, message board, USENET, etc.) then he has, based upon his actions and the nature of humankind, decided to share the image with, potentially, hundreds of thousands of nameless, faceless people. Whining about largely theoretical cases or possible cases of copyright infringement which MIGHT occur after having uploaded photos to the world wide web seems really dickish. And actually, rather stupid. It's like whining that somebody took a $20 bill you left just sitting on a bus stop bench. Yeah--somebody took it...you f&%#ing left it sitting unattended in a public location!!!
"D'oh!!!"
Not taking a shot at you here Derrel, but this comment is something that I notice becoming more and more prevalent as a general attitude. Why do people feel that uploading an image to a 'site on the Internet is somehow different than publishing it in a magazine as far as sharing/copyright, etc?
 
...If a person uploads a photograph to the internet (web,discussion forum,e-mail list, message board, USENET, etc.) then he has, based upon his actions and the nature of humankind, decided to share the image with, potentially, hundreds of thousands of nameless, faceless people. Whining about largely theoretical cases or possible cases of copyright infringement which MIGHT occur after having uploaded photos to the world wide web seems really dickish. And actually, rather stupid. It's like whining that somebody took a $20 bill you left just sitting on a bus stop bench. Yeah--somebody took it...you f&%#ing left it sitting unattended in a public location!!!
"D'oh!!!"
Not taking a shot at you here Derrel, but this comment is something that I notice becoming more and more prevalent as a general attitude. Why do people feel that uploading an image to a 'site on the Internet is somehow different than publishing it in a magazine as far as sharing/copyright, etc?

I studied fair use at the university level back in the 1980's at one of the premier journalism universities in North America. We spent literally weeks discussing the issue, reading relevant case law, and discussing the basis of the laws, their history, and concepts. I am speaking from a point of view that is distinctly different from that of many individuals who have never studied anything about United States Fair Use laws, cases, and concepts. I am not discussing the theft of images for commercial gain, such as stealing high-resolution Flickr landscape photos to illustrate, say, calendars that will be printed in Bangkok,Thailand and then sold to insurance agents throughout the Asian sub-continent. I am coming at this issue from the point of the absolute, imperative, essential need to allow "Fair Use" of all types of material for academic, scholarly uses. There are a number of well-known reasons for Fair Use to have been created, and codified into law. And yet, we have on this site, a handful of people who rail about Fair Use from a position of ignorance--over,and over,and over,and over,and over, and over. These people strike me much as do prohibitionists of all types...such as, for example,those who decry say, the consumption of alcohol at any level, as the "abuse" of alcohol.

Why is uploading an image to a website, or to a Usenet group, and allowing free access to the image "different from" publishing in a magazine different than publishing the same image in a magazine as far as sharing/copyright? Well, in some ways it is not different, and the need to allow Fair Use of the images still exists.Fair Use is an exception to US copyright laws...it allows for legitimate academic,educational,critical,satirical, entertainment, and commentary-based uses of all sorts of copyrighted works. People who do not understand the need for Fair Use really ought to ask themselves what the world would be like if we could NEVER, ever see a movie clip, or hear a joke told, or see a single photo from any magazine in ANY location except where the work had been published by its initial creators or publishers--with NO exceptions.

Again, you seem to be confusing the issue of theft of copyrighted material for commercial gain with the issue of works used under Fair Use LAWS. Images that are simply uploaded to the world wide web, and allowed to be accessed by a world-wide audience, such as on Flickr, for example, are being literally given away for free by their creators. The creators still hold copyright. But, the simple fact of the matter is that United States laws have a rather extensive list of exceptions to copyright, and one of the single largest areas where Fair Use is allowed is in academic situations. Again, it seems that some are misinformed about the entire issue, and continually harp on copyright as if it is some iron-clad protection against non-pre-authorized and non-agreed-upon uses of creative works. It's not, and never has been. Now that millions and millions of people are literally GIVING free, unlimited, unrestricted, unfettered, 24/7 access and archiving potential to millions of images every single day, I think it's disingenuous at best to carp about legitimate Fair Use of these photos in academic settings. Again, I'm not talking about stealing images to print and profit from...I am speaking from the point of view of somebody who has studied what Fair Use actually is, and why it is essential to education, commentary, criticism, and indeed, the functioning of a well-informed society. The original post is discussing software intended to facilitate Fair Use of images in academic settings. That is not stealing images, as the OP alleged--it is facilitating legal,accepted,well-understood Fair Use of images for academic purposes, and alleging otherwise is disingenuous at best, ignorant at worst.
 
Last edited:
While I'm reasonably conversant wtih the fair use doctrine as applicable in Canada, I am by no means an expert, and certainly can't speak with any authority on the US equivalent.

Some of the concerns I have with the issue raised in the OP are that (1) Anything intended to be used for good will see far more use for evil; in other words, the intent of the tool is doubtless to support academic fair-use, but I think we can safely agree that it will probably see a lot more use for "other" purposes.

This may well be a national difference, but in general, Canadian fair use doctrine allows for the short-term use of portions or extracts of copyrighted work. Obviously you couldn't discuss part of a photograph, but taking say an entire set of images would be a violation, as would incorporating into a permanent lesson which is something that this seems geared toward.

My personal view is that since most colleges and universities are 'for-profit', and therefore by definition, a commercial enterprise, they should NOT be entitled to the privilege of fair use, but that's an argument for another post! ;)
 
The RFF member that walked into the bar and saw her pictures hanging in it, sold by an interior design company- had a good case.

Having your picture used in a Kid's 5th grade social studies report as it came up in Google Images, what would you do?

The Internet was a very different place in 1980, people used it to access remote computers more than anything else. It was used for work, was not a "social media".

And somebody stole my files back then. I got even. I hacked my own software to make it crash the computer everytime it was run, and let them steal it.
 
I took a look at the story for the first photo posted on the Internet, done 20 years ago.

In 1980, we had a peripheral on the Supercomputer that produced color slides, a "Dicomed". I wrote FORTRAN programs that produced color graphics and images, wrote them to 35mm slide film. They were processed and mailed to me. The Dicomed was also used to get hardcopy images from the first digital Infrared sensors.

Not the same as using the Internet to post an image, but did use it to create images.

As stated- using the Internet to download files without permission has been going on as long as there has been an Internet.
 

Most reactions

Back
Top