Displaying other people's photos on my website

February 9, 2009 9:24 AM

Can I show All Rights Reserved flickr pictures on my blog if they aren't mine?

Sometimes I find pictures on flickr that I find particularly interesting or appealing in some way, and I would like to show them to other people on my blog. I have no desire to take the credit from whomever took the picture, and would link back to the image and user by name.

I essentially want to be able to share neat pictures I find with other people.

I get the impression that just linking to the picture page is perfectly fine, and I feel that showing the picture on my blog would be okay, but due to the confusingness of copyright law, I'm not particularly confident about the second. Does it make a difference whether or not I'm making money off the blog?

posted by that girl to law & government (19 comments total)

If you want to display them, why not ask the person who posted them?
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 9:29 AM on February 9

Well, because hotlinking is bad, and you can't right-click and save-as a All Rights Reserved image on Flickr (by design), I'd say no.

This is what Creative Commons is for, which actually stipulates what can and cannot be done with the image.

You're safe offering a text link to it, but embedding it in your website is a no-go.

But you can always ask the photographer if you can use it, with credit. I did this just yesterday!
posted by nitsuj at 9:35 AM on February 9

Hotlinking is usually considered rude, but Flickr specifically allows it:

The Flickr service makes it possible to post content hosted on Flickr to outside web sites. However, pages on other web sites that display content hosted on flickr.com must provide a link from each photo or video back to its page on Flickr.

So personally, I would hotlink the images with ample credit and links.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that framing was not copyright infringement in Perfect 10 v. Amazon, using an argument that I find very persuasive.
posted by grouse at 9:50 AM on February 9

Well, because hotlinking is bad, and you can't right-click and save-as a All Rights Reserved image on Flickr (by design), I'd say no.

Yes, you can. Here's one example.

I've always understood you can Blog flickr photos as long as you follow the TOS (link back to flickr, fully attribute etc.) In fact, thats why so many photos (including the one I linked to above) have a BlogThis! button at the top of the photo.
posted by vacapinta at 9:51 AM on February 9

vacapinta: Take a look at that image you saved.
posted by niles at 9:55 AM on February 9

Flickr allows hotlinking (and even puts the button there to make it easier), even of "All Rights Reserved" images.

It's considered scummy in some quarters (some photographers will pull photos down or intentionally change their URLs, or replace the photos with something rude, if they detect it) but it's not illegal or copyvio.

My understanding is that it's only a violation if you download a non-CC photo, copy it to your server, and host it there while linking to it. That violates both copyright and probably Flickr's TOS as well.

If you want to avoid the whole mess though, stick to Creative Commons licensed photos; there are a lot of them on Flickr and you can hotlink and rehost them with impunity.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:40 AM on February 9

The law doesn't care if you're making money or not (Which is a good question, and a mistake a lot of people make.) in the same way they don't care if you're speeding on an empty road or a busy one--you're still speeding.

Linking is, of course, perfectly fine.

Showing the original image without attribution is, of course, on the wrong side of copyright law.

But between the two is all shades of gray. However you're allowed to show an attributed thumbnail or heavily cropped portion of the image. This is the same as quoting a paragraph from a book with citation. You can get away with it because the real thing is substantially different from your sample. You're even more in the clear if you create an original work out of it by, say, citing other photos and writing something insightful about them. But take a look at Google image search. You are (most likely*) in the clear if you simply use a much lower resolution image and link to the source.

* 'Most likely' because anyone can sue anyone for anything. But the chances of getting sued is very very small, at worst you'd get a cease & desist letter telling you to remove the image.
posted by Ookseer at 10:42 AM on February 9

The law doesn't care if you're making money or not (Which is a good question, and a mistake a lot of people make.)

It is much more complicated than this. Specifically, to decide whether something is fair use, a court would look at "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes" (17 USC §107). The important thing to remember is that noncommercial use may not, on its own, be enough for your use to be considered fair—there are several other fair use factors that need to be considered.
posted by grouse at 10:58 AM on February 9 [1 favorite]

Can I show All Rights Reserved flickr pictures on my blog if they aren't mine?

No.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:05 AM on February 9

Yeah, you can't do this. Well, I mean you can, but you'd be in the wrong. I don't understand how sites like fffffound don't get their asses busted, since they knick the photos they bookmark.
posted by chunking express at 11:17 AM on February 9

Well, I'm no copyright lawyer, but I am a photographer. According to Wikipedia, reserving all copyright "gives the creator of an original work exclusive rights for a certain time period in relation to that work, including its publication, distribution and adaptation". What you are doing on your blog is publishing the photo.

Legally, I have no idea how that translates.

As a photographer, I apply "all rights reserved" copyrights to my photos in the hopes that if someone wants to use my photo they will contact me and ask permission (as stated in my Flickr profile).

As a Flickr user, if you decided to use my photo on your blog without my permission but with a link back to my photostream, I would be able to find out via my Flickr stats. If I didn't like the way you were using my photo, I would contact you to ask you to take it down.

All this is to say that while perhaps not required by law, it would be nice to shoot the photographer a Flickr mail and ask their permission before using the photo. I would guess most of them would be fine with it.
posted by geeky at 11:45 AM on February 9

@grouse the Perfect 10 case isn't really applicable to posting images on a blog. The finding of transformativeness was based significantly on the fact that Google was improving access to images for the general public, not something you can really say about the average blog.
posted by sinfony at 11:52 AM on February 9

Unfortunately, Flickr provides a number of different and indepenent ways for a user to signal their intent about the ways they are willing to let other users do with their photos. The licensing setting seems straightforward, and it can be set on a photo by photo basis, but there are other options. The option on whether to let other users download photos (overlays a clear gif to make it more difficult) has been around a long time, but it is set at the account level. There are also account level option to allow other users to "blog" or "share" (including embedding it in another site) a photo.

The photo Vacapinta linked to is protected from easy download by a clear gif overlay, but it has a "share this," "blog this," buttons. Clicking on it shows an option to "embed" the image in another page. Click on that option yields an HTML snippet you can use for embedding it.

The photographers intent is muddied. The overlay gif and the license indicate that they aren't willing to have their image viewed outside of Flickr. The presence of the "blog this" and "share this" buttons seem to indicate otherwise, that the user is willing to have their photo displayed outside of Flickr, so long as it is properly linked back to the photo's page on Flickr.

The option to control who can share your photos is relatively new, but the option to control who can blog your photos has been around a long time.

To be safe, you should ask for permission. To be expedient, while still trying to honor the photographer's intent, I would think that if the "Blog This" and "Share This" options are active, then it would be reasonable to think that the photographer intended to allow the photo be embedded in a blog with a link back to the original in a manner consistent with Flickr's terms of service.
posted by Good Brain at 12:30 PM on February 9

the Perfect 10 case isn't really applicable to posting images on a blog

I am not to its analysis of the transformative nature of generating thumbnails, but about its analysis of framing, which is equivalent to hotlinking:

Instead of communicating a copy of the image, Google provides HTML instructions that direct a user's browser to a website publisher's computer that stores the full-size photographic image. Providing these HTML instructions is not equivalent to showing a copy. First, the HTML instructions are lines of text, not a photographic image. Second, HTML instructions do not themselves cause infringing images to appear on the user's computer screen. The HTML merely give the address of the image to the user's browser. The browser then interacts with the computer that stores the infringing image. It is this interaction that causes an infringing image to appear on the user's computer screen. Google may facilitate the user's access to infringing images. However, such assistance raises only contributory liability issues... and does not constitute direct infringement of the copyright owner's display rights.

508 F.3d 1146 at 1161.
posted by grouse at 12:44 PM on February 9 [1 favorite]

Okay, so the likely best way to go about this is to drop the user of the Totally Awesome Photo™ a line on flickr, and if they don't respond, cry myself to sleep that night and just link to the photo's page instead of posting the picture.
posted by that girl at 1:15 PM on February 9

Yes, that girl, that's the best course of action. I can speak only for myself, but if I wanted other people to blog my photos I'd make that feature active. A polite email would go a long way I think, towards influencing a photographer to let you post their work.
posted by blaneyphoto at 3:19 PM on February 9

All legal reasons aside, IMHO it's just polite to ask. I've found that most flickr users are totally open to my putting up an image of theirs as long as I've asked and put credit. If they say no, don't do it!
posted by minus zero at 3:22 PM on February 9

Why not just publish a link to any ARR images instead of the whole thing?
posted by gjc at 4:59 PM on February 9

That's what I've done, gjc, but I feel that people are less likely to click through a link to a picture, and it's not quite as effective to explain why you like a photo without it there for people to look at.
posted by that girl at 7:16 PM on February 9