Copyright issue | 1975 | Fair use | Japan or US?

June 8, 2007 9:52 AM

CopyrightFilter: Would it be naughty of me to scan some images from Japanese Time Life books from 1975 and post them on my little blog?

I was given a stack of Japanese Time Life Books from 1975 which cover different regions of the world. Some of the images are fascinating and I would like to scan and post them. However 1975 is not all that long ago...

The books are Japanese - but there is no Time-Life Japanese division. I think a lot of the material is derived from the US Edition. So the copyright states that I need to seek permission to reproduce material - but from who?

Then to consider Fair Use laws. I will probably only be scanning a few images to use for comparison. The books are Japanese, I am based in Japan - but my blog is about to be hosted on a server in the US. Whose Fair Use laws should I be paying attention to?

posted by gomichild to Law & Government (7 answers total)

Best answer: If you want to be a stickler for protecting the rights of the copyright holder you will need to write to Time-Life: [e-mail]
That's the contact address from Time-Life Australia site, which of course doesn't mention Japan (or Asia at all) but it seems the logical approach point.

Sorry, I don't get how much you want to post? I mean, if it was me, and it was a modest amount, I might post it with a disclaimer saying it will be taken offline if someone objects.

If you want to post huge swathes of it then you are relying on it not being noticed by the company. But it is almost certainly copyrighted material (unless the pictures were before 1923 in U.S.).

Fair use is a principle in law to the extent that I know. And it's predominantly an American concept, but there are parallel ideas in other countries. There's a series of 4 considerations that are applicable to fair use: see wikipedia. {also: copyright in Japan}

My understanding is that the jurisdiction is determined by where the material is hosted.

What would I do? Probably just post it if it was just a reasonble amount. But that's me. I would expect that if I wrote to Time-Life they would want a licensing fee and I wouldn't be happy about that.
posted by peacay at 10:41 AM on June 8, 2007

Somewhat off-topic, but would you please post a link to this blog if you decide to start posting these images?
posted by jtron at 11:10 AM on June 8, 2007

The legal side is addressed above. So ignoring that side of things, I'd suggest that unless these are really popular books that have been reprinted or are still in circulation today, you're likely doing the world a small favour. 1975 is old enough for material from then to have become hard to find, as old books get thrown out, or fall apart from handling, or disintegrate in damp cellars. In a lot of cases, someone's fair use reproduction of a section of a copyright work, eventually becomes the only surviving remnant of that work.
posted by -harlequin- at 11:24 AM on June 8, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks for your input!

The books are in excellent condition. I think they may have been sitting on someones shelf for the last 30 years. Some of them don't even look as though they've been read.

Obviously I've searched for images from them online - but haven't come up with much. What I find interesting about them is to see the changes in the pictures to now. I want to do a comparison - there are 13 books ranging from the Amazon to the Great Barrier Reef.
posted by gomichild at 11:43 AM on June 8, 2007

If you've been on the internet recently, you'll have noticed that all kinds of copyrighted printed matter gets posted all the time. Many people consider this "fair use", esp. if you aren't making money off of it, and there is some claimable educational value to what you're doing. Others would debate that, but the legal definition of "fair use" is quite hazy.

Your posts are unlikely to be noticed, unless perhaps if you posted scores of pages and/or your posts got linkage from some large site like BoingBoing.

And even if the copyright owner noticed, standard operating procedure these days seems to be that they would just send you or your ISP a cease-and-desist letter, and ask you to take the stuff down.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:26 PM on June 8, 2007

Response by poster: Well I am on the internet a considerable amount - but I like to know what is the lawful/right way to do things rather than blindly follow what everyone else is doing.

I've been linked from BoingBoing before so exposure is an issue - hence why I think looking into Fair Use and how that could apply to my situation.
posted by gomichild at 12:36 PM on June 8, 2007

Of course, you could just, you know, create a dummy site untraceable to you, and then link to it that way. If you don't mind not getting the kudos.
posted by chlorus at 6:24 PM on June 8, 2007