Excuse my stupidity but I want to learn what is right and wrong regarding photos which aren't mine.
I know that it is wrong to copy and upload photos which are copyright protected. So I assumed it would be ok to hotlink them into forums or websites since I am not actually copying anything. However I now learn that this is wrong and technically theft. (No arguments here from me, just never really thought of it that way before, especially since it's the norm for videos though obviously you are using YouTube's bandwidth). So, no copying and no hotlinking. But what about linking directly to the photo? Is that wrong? It kind of bypasses the website hosting it and takes bandwidth with no benefit to the owner but is it morally ok and legal? Just want to do the right thing.

I don't know, it's a tricky issue as technology seems to advance so quickly beyond the intended scope of the original laws, so it depends if case law has looked at this.

PS. I have copyrighted the letter "e", so please remove any copies from your post.

I think it's hard to answer the morality question without knowing what you're trying to do and in what context. Why don't you just ask the picture owner?

For commercial uses, I always try to contact the photographer or artist, who owns the picture's rights.
But for non commercial use (like if you only want to show us something in this forum), I think it is not a problem to copy-paste images. Or hotlink it.

If you want to put a picture to your website, (where you sell anything), I think you need to try to contact the owner.

Ok, say I was making a long list of links to certain subjects. I don't want to link to sites just the photos. For example - http://www.toronto.ca/archives/photogra ... 2small.jpg . It comes from http://www.toronto.ca/archives/photographs/index.htm . Is it wrong to post the first link with no mention of where it came from? If the photos were from numerous sites it just wouldn't be worth the hassle of asking everyone. Especially because a large number simply wouldn't bother replying or have easy contact details.
The example used is just random.

I think the first link is OK. The sites name is shown in the link so they get credit.

Off topic question: how do you get the address of just the picture?

In Firefox-
Right click on image
Copy image location

BTW This isn't really about friendly forums where pictures are seldom an issue. It's more about the seriously copy righted material in archives etc.

Tony,
10 years ago my department got blanket permission to use anything we wanted from the Economist. We were writing a test and wanted to use a small section of the article we found in said magazine, but to play it safe (because I'm a dumb bum and that letter didn't look like it would fly in today's world) I shot off an email asking permission to use said section.

I got a lovely email back within less than 24 hours telling me of course I could use their material-for the low low price of $1000.

So once again I shot off an email with a scan of original blanket permission fax sent all those 10 years ago...By morning they had sent me back another lovely email stating that my original fax was no longer valid (even though there was no completion date for my usage)

Another email was sent asking permission to directly link to the article in question (rather than linking through the online version in our library and giving the students the issue numbers, page numbers etc.-i.e. making life easy for everyone by eliminating the extra logins through the library)

As before, they sent me yet another lovely email that said of course I could do a direct link to said article and save everyone all those extra steps and all that extra time. All I needed to do was pay the low low price of $1000.

The moral of this story? Don't be a dumb bum with the other 10 year old blanket permission fax's.

If those archives are anything like The Economist, you won't be able to link. If you ask permission, you run the risk of getting reply I just got...If you don't you run the risk of ... at worse? jail time I would guess.

Tony, what's your context? What are you trying to get photos for?



Oh reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally?

It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

Th3 n3w alphab3t: abcd3fghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

K3lvin Scott, your wish has b33n grant3d. Whil3 you may hav3 succ33d3d in copyrighting th3 l3tt3r "3", th3 num3ral "3" has oft3n b33n us3d in conjunction with l33t-sp3ak, so I will b3 using th3 num3ral "3" as a substitut3 for th3 l3tt3r "3" from now on. According to US law, you cannot copyright a numb3r, so I m3r3ly n33d to cr3at3 num3rical cod3s for th3 r3maining 25 l3t3rs of th3 alphab3t. Now by conv3rting t3xt into numb3rs, I can basically say what3v3r I want, 3v3n if th3 sourc3 t3xt is copyright3d!

RƐally? I plan to usƐ this for now. D:

Or maybɇ this? This onҼ is prҽtty nicҼ.