I always try my best to give credit to the artists, designers, and architects whose work I admire and try to support
I have very little sympathy. If you don't have permission to use a photograph the proper course of action is not to use it. To use it without permission is definitely not trying your best to give credit.
Without knowing the full details, how can you be so quick to cast judgment?
There is a wide spectrum between actively stealing photos and mistakenly using photos because they seemed to be in the public domain. The key questions are: was the intent malicious? And how soon was it rectified?
And I say this as someone whose photo was used by a highly read tech blog without attribution; and when I pointed this out, they quietly put a link to my original photo in there, but still did not attribute it to me.
There's no such thing as "seemed" to be in the public domain. Either they are or they aren't. If you don't know then you assume they're not. If you assume they are when they're not, or you assume the attribution attached is correct when it isn't, then the photographer is entirely within their rights to sue you for approximately $5100.
This is why running a website properly is actually quite a lot of work.
And I say this as someone who's been running websites for 20 years, and I've seen lots of my content reused without permission. It's really annoying. I used to be on the side of "if it's online then it's fair to reuse it", but as more and more sites have appeared that do nothing more than repost content from /r/<some subreddit> I've changed my mind.
A simple rule: if there's no visible film grain, the photo is almost certainly copyrighted. If there is grain it might be copyrighted.
Copyright in the US lasts for the life of the author + 70 years, or the shorter of 95 years after publication / 120 years after creation for works made for hire. Digital photography hasn't been around that long.
Copyright is automatic. There's no need to register it. Willful infringement can increase the penalties, but is not required for there to be penalties. Your key questions are not particularly important from a legal standpoint.
Wow, so this is a case where trying to follow the law exposes you to legal risk anyway, on a non-commercial pursuit? I can see why she'd shut her blog down.
How can you obtain a positive proof? If you take from intermediary, the intermediary claims you have the right. They do not usually disclose how did they obtain it in the first place.
Agreed, I wish those Instagram aggregators would get closed down as well. I've had to deal with copyright claims a bunch of times already. IG is very good with swiftly resolving it. But those accounts do nothing but profit off of stealing others work. Just because you "give credit" doesn't mean shit. 99/100 times, no one is going to go visit your work, because someone copied your name in on the post.
I put in tons of hours of work, money, networking, photographing, post production, marketing, etc. Only for someone to swoop in, repost my work with a tap of their finger, and profit off of it. Millions of eyeballs for doing nothing but theft.
In this particular case it's specific resentment. I don't like it when people create websites that do nothing more than present content they've taken from other sites without permission in return for ad revenue.
I'm sorry, but from the screenshot another commentor posted, it clearly shows that this person had advertising on their blog. That shows clear intent of monetizing the blog and generating revenue. They might not have made much revenue from the ads, but they still showed intent to.
Its not the copyright, its the chilling effect of not visible copyright. This encasing of the whole web and everything on it with a invisible alarm-field for the users.
You may not send radiowaves. You may not distill your own alcohol, you may not do this, you may not do that. Let the professionals handle it. This is where some self-important case like the Taxi-drivers starts to enshrine a often trivial task to demand entry dutys and guild taxes.
I want you to clearly sign your content - so that is unreusable and nobody gets put out in the court to statuate a exemple, so that a useless caste of professinal may life from the fear of the comoners.
> I work hard on my hobby, but i do not feel entitled too money for it.
It's not that simple. What is just a hobby for you might be a source of income for someone else. You can't turn tables around and say they can't make money only because you don't expect a payment for your hobby.
I will give you an example. There are two people creating code, both working hard. One creates closed software, the other is creating open source. They both spend hundreds of hours on their projects. Imagine someone steals the closed source program and posts it on the web. Would you then talk about minefield, fences and living in constant fear? This simply makes no sense.
Before using an image for anything, I always check its license. It's so easy nowadays! Filtering by license is now part of Google Image search, so you don't even have to visit specialized sites like in the old days. Everything someone created is copyrighted and you can't just use it as you want, unless the creator allows you to - and many people do. It's so simple. They should teach these things early at school so we wouldn't have problems like the owner of the website in question.
I'm not sure I'd have made this particular blogger the target for my ire if it was my work, but in principle I agree with the penalty. Copyright sustains the people who create the art that this blogger was curating. Without copyright, there would be nothing for him / her to curate in the first place because there would be no such thing as professional photographers, designers, or writers.
People don't usually make money from the art or the books they buy. If "making money" was the only condition on which the requirement to pay or give credit was predicated, there would be no photography industry.
The creator has the right to license their work in any way they see fit. That work doesn't automatically become community property just because it's been published online.
I have very little sympathy. If you don't have permission to use a photograph the proper course of action is not to use it. To use it without permission is definitely not trying your best to give credit.