Copyright is unintuitive
2007-10-25 / 09:49 / dave
My 22 year old go-getter writer friend–let’s call her M–recently scored an internship at a big-time D.C. political magazine. Interns can get lucky and have stories published, but mostly they’re in charge of managing the web. The other day M called with a simple question: why do her image links keep breaking? Hotlinking! I scream… but, er, wait… why is a major publication hotlinking?
It became a discussion on copyright and why it’s bad to use unlicensed 3rd party images, even if someone else has already used them on a different blog. I waved my hands for awhile before crying IANAL, sending her a bunch of links* and telling her to talk to their staff lawyer.
M is a smart cookie, so it’s not that she can’t understand copyright. It just didn’t make sense: if an image is on the web, it’s meant to be shared, right? If 22 year olds and 9 year olds think file sharing is fine it seems like copyright holders have their work cut out for them.
*here they is:
- US Copyright office definition of fair use
- Wikipedia on Fair Use
- The comic book version
- Creative Commons
- Flickr Creative Commons search
PS: Oh yeah, and why is M in charge of the web when she admits that her tech knowledge extends as far as IMG tags? Why don’t they just hire a web intern. Oh right… because they can get journalist students to work for free.