Copyright and Fair Use

A blog entry on the NY Times site about printing out pics from sites like flickr got folks on flickr up in arms over people stealing their work, using without permission, etc. This follow-up discusses the issue of Fair Use and how the law hasn't yet caught up with the reality of the internet/web. There's no clear answer to this, but my feeling is, and remains, that if you're doing it for your personal use, it's fair use.

The best thing is to always ask permission, or look for a Creative Commons license. I have a CC license on my flickr pics that allow all non-commercial uses, and while I like being asked first, I don't mind when I'm not. Because the reality is, it's easy to make copies without anyone knowing. You can print. You can save. You can do screen caps. You can take photos of the photo. Even with music, if you don't care about the quality, you can stick a microphone next to a speaker and record a song being played, on your computer or from the radio. You have the right to make recordings of TV shows and movies for watching later, and unless the disks have DRM on them to prevent it, it is physically possible to make copies of CDs and DVDs, which many people do.

People today are very accustomed to making copies of things to keep. There are photocopiers to make copies of articles in magazines or chapters in books. You can print from websites, in libraries, as well as at home. You can buy copiers, scanners, and printers to do this in the privacy of your home. When I was a kid, I made lousy recordings from the radio of favorite songs, sitting with the microphone of my little reel-to-reel tape recorder and later, a cassette recorder, hoping to hear a song announced or that I'd recognize it fast enough to hit the record button before too much was missed. Technology since the '60s and '70s has trained us that this is all doable and it's led to a feeling of entitlement, to acceptance of a practice the creators of the works being copied find akin to theft, even if no profit is made from the copying.

I fall into the "don't make a profit and I don't care" camp. If I post it online, it's for the taking, because I know there's no way to prevent it, anyway. If I cared, I wouldn't post it.

The music industry has made a mess of going after music download "thieves." They went after file-sharing Napster. They seem to suddenly see radio, which provides free publicity for music, as the enemy. I've read comments online from photographers who resent those of us who let people use our pics free of charge, claiming we're hurting the photography industry. My take on it is that maybe if they had to pay, they wouldn't even get the pics, or they'd take their own, or they'd buy from the cheapest photographer. Someone who prints a pic out from flickr might not want to pay for it. They'll decorate with something else. Stopping the free stuff doesn't mean sudden sales for the people who charge. The only way to stop the printing and copying would be a Big Brother setup and I'm not willing to go there.

This issue has become a point of contention for libraries which are dedicated to providing materials for free. People hate the sales they lose when people borrow rather than buy. But libraries are one of the biggest sources of sales for midlist and lower books and other materials.

I could say a lot more on this topic, but I'm starting to ramble, so this will have to do for now.

~~~o0o~~~