Oneboxing could be copyright infringement


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    This case began when Justin Goldman accused online publications, including Breitbart, Time, Yahoo, Vox Media, and the Boston Globe, of copyright infringement for publishing articles that linked to a photo of NFL star Tom Brady. Goldman took the photo, someone else tweeted it, and the news organizations embedded a link to the tweet in their coverage (the photo was newsworthy because it showed Brady in the Hamptons while the Celtics were trying to recruit Kevin Durant). Goldman said those stories infringe his copyright.



  • @pjh said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    the photo was newsworthy because it showed Brady in the Hamptons while the Celtics were trying to recruit Kevin Durant

    Uh.

    They didn't get to the part where it explained why it's newsworthy.

    What does Tom Brady have anything to do with the Celtics?



  • @pjh using an image without permission would be copyright infringement. I don't see why it should matter whether the image was embedded in the form of a tweet or just included in the page directly.

    I guess the question is whether it's fair use or not... the vast majority of oneboxes would fall under fair use, I'd think.



  • @anotherusername The guy who put him image in the tweet and (presumably) gave permission to those news outlets to republish it is really the criminal here. Right? Like... he stole it, and everybody else just stole what he stole.


  • Garbage Person

    @anotherusername said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    @pjh using an image without permission would be copyright infringement. I don't see why it should matter whether the image was embedded in the form of a tweet or just included in the page directly.

    I guess the question is whether it's fair use or not... the vast majority of oneboxes would fall under fair use, I'd think.

    Yeah. Maybe this will fix the "The news is just a Twitter aggregator" issue.



  • @blakeyrat I'd say that the person who tweeted the image was guilty, but then, news organizations clearly intended to use the image by embedding that tweet, so they'd also be at fault. And they're making commercial use of it.



  • @pjh Tweet embedding is done through Twitter's API, so does that mean Twitter is infringing its own copyright?



  • @anotherusername said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    news organizations clearly intended to use the image by embedding that tweet, so they'd also be at fault.

    Maybe but 99% of the time news organizations ask permission first. If they did that and thought (in good faith) that they had permission from the copyright holder, it wouldn't be very fair to punish them.

    If they didn't ask permission, then, yeah, fines away!



  • @blakeyrat I guess it'd depend on whether they could credibly claim that the guy who tweeted it convinced them that he owned the image and that they were free to use it, and they had no way of knowing otherwise. Then I'd say that it was all on that one guy.

    But just saying "great photo, can we use your tweet?", "yeah sure" wouldn't be good enough. They should be asking "are you the photographer who took this photo? can we use it?", and if he says "sure I guess, it's free, I found it", that should throw up big red flags.



  • @anotherusername My guess is that twitter's TOS force you to allow it to be embedded, and all the blame is on whoever twitted it without permission from the copyright holder.



  • @anotherusername said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    They should be asking "are you the photographer who took this photo? can we use it?", and if he says "sure I guess, it's free, I found it", that should throw up big red flags.

    Well yeah but remember the average newspaper in 2018 is staffed by 4 people, all of whom spent 70% of their time looking at job listings, so the quality kind of suffers.

    If newspapers weren't dying on the vine, they'd have their OWN photos of... uh some random NFL player in a specific location which is newsworthy because unrelated basketball team negotiates contracts?



  • @sockpuppet7 in that case, you don't have to worry about whether something on Twitter is copyrighted. You can simply go ahead and use it, make derivative works, sell them even.

    According to Twitter's TOS, Twitter claims the right both to use and sublicense to let others use your content:

    0_1518803731137_c5a57b03-9e46-4051-8aab-f3eb061e23ff-image.png

    Furthermore, it grants the right to reproduce, modify, distribute, sell, transfer, publicly display, perform, transmit, or otherwise use any content on Twitter, so long as you do so by utilizing the official APIs -- which they were doing, by embedding the tweet.

    0_1518803809859_495b375f-76c3-49b6-86fb-2126144996f4-image.png

    So according to that, if I want to reproduce (take a screenshot of) a tweet, all I have to do is use Twitter's official API (twitter.com or the embed), and I have the right to do damn well anything I please with it.

    Now, posting copyrighted content to Twitter is illegal (and it will be taken down if it's reported to Twitter). But if I'm browsing Twitter, and I see that someone posted some content that I wish to use, then Twitter's TOS allows me to simply assume that I'm allowed to use that content any way I see fit.

    So effectively, you could use any copyrighted image you want just by tweeting it from a sockpuppet account through a VPN somewhere in Russia first. Posting it would be a copyright infringement, but good luck tracking someone down when they're posting from behind 7 proxies. And then you would have complete plausible deniability to use the content: you can simply claim that you obtained it from that tweet, that Twitter's TOS says that you can use any content you see on Twitter, and you had no way of knowing that it was copyrighted or that the person who posted it was infringing its copyright.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @ben_lubar said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    @pjh Tweet embedding is done through Twitter's API, so does that mean Twitter is infringing its own copyright?

    Only if Twitter is the copyright holder of the content.



  • @sockpuppet7 All websites you can post stuff in have a section on their EULA about you giving them permission to reproduce that stuff anywhere they want. Somehow I doubt one of the biggest ones would have forgotten that minor detail. And when you use their API (which they very clearly give you permission to use), they are the ones sending the content to the people's browsers.

    Oneboxes on the other hand, might be a bit more dubious...


  • Impossible Mission - B



  • @lorne-kates said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    @ben_lubar said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    @pjh Tweet embedding is done through Twitter's API, so does that mean Twitter is infringing its own copyright?

    Only if Twitter is the copyright holder of the content.

    Twitter is not the copyright holder, but according to the rights that you grant them by posting on Twitter, they damn near might as well be.

    By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). This license authorizes us to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same.

    About the only thing that they don't claim is the responsibility for if someone posts something illegal.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @anotherusername That's a completely standard clause that protects websites from :trollface:s by enabling them to actually do their job. It essentially says "if you post something here, on our system that publishes information for the world to see, you can't later come back and sue us for publishing the information you posted for the world to see, even if the Berne Convention says you automatically hold a copyright on this thing you posted on our site."



  • @masonwheeler Similar to how private schools actually make students (and their families) give them a non-revocable license to everything the kid produces for school purposes. It's not quite a work for hire, so they need extra protections.

    Not that schools and students are any good at following copyright law...



  • From the Techdirt article @masonwheeler linked:

    A direct connection is made between the end user and the hosing provider (in this case Twitter).

    Yes, indeed.



  • @masonwheeler yes but if you scroll down, it goes on to say that if developers want to use content that's found on Twitter (including to reproduce, produce derivative works, or sell it), they have to use Twitter's APIs; implying that they can use any content, just as long as they use Twitter's APIs. And since Twitter already expressly claimed the right to transfer these rights to people, and now they're doing so... put two and two together here.

    I posted the screenshot of the relevant parts a handful of posts back, but I edited it in so you may have missed it.



  • @blakeyrat said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    @anotherusername said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    news organizations clearly intended to use the image by embedding that tweet, so they'd also be at fault.

    Maybe but 99% of the time news organizations ask permission first. If they did that and thought (in good faith) that they had permission from the copyright holder, it wouldn't be very fair to punish them.

    The way that typically works is that the news organization (or whoever reprints a photo) is found liable for their infringement, then they sue the person they got the image from to recover the damages they paid.



  • @anotherusername said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    @masonwheeler yes but if you scroll down, it goes on to say that if developers want to use content that's found on Twitter (including to reproduce, produce derivative works, or sell it), they have to use Twitter's APIs; implying that they can use any content, just as long as they use Twitter's APIs. And since Twitter already expressly claimed the right to transfer these rights to people, and now they're doing so... put two and two together here.

    I posted the screenshot of the relevant parts a handful of posts back, but I edited it in so you may have missed it.

    Indeed.. This leads to some real fun. A download via the API - legal. A screenshot - violation of ToS.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @thecpuwizard said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    A screenshot - violation of ToS.

    But not necessarily a copyright violation. It's into the whole Fair Use area potentially, but that's something that would need to go to court to be determined in each particular case (since it would be a determination of the facts, legal precedent wouldn't be greatly involved).



  • @thecpuwizard said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    @anotherusername said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    @masonwheeler yes but if you scroll down, it goes on to say that if developers want to use content that's found on Twitter (including to reproduce, produce derivative works, or sell it), they have to use Twitter's APIs; implying that they can use any content, just as long as they use Twitter's APIs. And since Twitter already expressly claimed the right to transfer these rights to people, and now they're doing so... put two and two together here.

    I posted the screenshot of the relevant parts a handful of posts back, but I edited it in so you may have missed it.

    Indeed.. This leads to some real fun. A download via the API - legal. A screenshot - violation of ToS.

    If the screenshot was of the embed or the tweet on the Twitter site itself, then I think you'd be fine, because it grants you the right to reproduce content, and that's what a screenshot is.



  • @anotherusername said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    If the screenshot was of the embed or the tweet on the Twitter site itself, then I think you'd be fine, because it grants you the right to reproduce content, and that's what a screenshot is.

    Except that the following:

    "Nothing in the Terms gives you a right to use the Twitter name or any of the Twitter trademarks, logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features."

    Each of which are part of a screen shot!!!!!!



  • @thecpuwizard but the terms don't take away your right to fair use, which is what it would be if you took a screenshot of a tweet and the screenshot happened to contain the logo, domain name, and/or distinctive features.



  • @anotherusername said in Oneboxing could be copyright infringement:

    @thecpuwizard but the terms don't take away your right to fair use, which is what it would be if you took a screenshot of a tweet and the screenshot happened to contain the logo, domain name, and/or distinctive features.

    Fair use of logos is a touchy subject.... A decent writeup is at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/fair-use-logos-2152.html


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