Copyright Infringements With TGP Thumbnails
 

Ok, here's an interesting question. If you have a TGP and post submitted thumbs and thumbs from hosted galleries that you use, is that considered copyright infringement AND on that point, there's HUNDREDS of TGPs out there that do it, so does that mean that they're all illegal ???

In one word, POSSIBLY. A lot of licence agreements I have state the certain % that can be used by others in exchange for traffic. If for example, it gets exceeded, that is a violation of the licence agreement. If the agreement forbids then, then it is copywrite infringement. Now, the people listing non-licenced content as a thumb are as much at fault as the gallery poster (IN MY OPINION). Others will probably disagree though.
ZoiNk

tgps follow rules?

probably not 100% legal but it ain't gonna stop anyone

I think google wons some case where they could show preview thumbnails without it being considered Copyright Infringements.

I would think the same would apply to tgps

It's legal as long as they are thumbnails. The court ruling was a little vague on what was considered a thumbnail but it's still legal.

we need an inhouse lawyer here

Actually, the reason why I'm posting this is because I just got 2 emails forwarded over from my host that APIC sent them about me using copyrighted thumbnails on 2 of my domains :(

A couple of the thumbs were from submitted galleries, a couple were made from galleries that I got from a couple of my sponsors which I asked if it was ok to do and they said that I COULD make thumbnails, so who knows.

You cant reproduce any image that you dont own the rights to. Thumbnail or not...you dont own it.

What I don't understand if your point is true is how come there's so many TGPs in operation then if none of them are legal ???

If your license says you are allowed to make a banner from the content, a thumbnail is a banner used to promote the content you purchased. License agreements do not say that banners made from your content cannot be on other peoples servers. As long as they use that thumbnail to promote YOUR stuff then you are cool.

Thanks for your insight Choker.

To add a question to your remarks, most TGPs skim off to trades, so does that then change the aspect of the content use then if the links are skimmed a percentage of the time to trades and the rest of the traffic to the content purchaser (sponsor).

*IF* you decide to reply to him at all:

Tell APIC to fuck himself.
Send him copies of rulings (there are at least 2 now) that show federal court ruled thumbnails are not subject to copyright.
Then, DO NOT BUY anything from anyone promoting APIC.

I think legally the person listing the gallery should have a chance to remove it before he gets in any legal trouble. There's no criminal intent on his part. How is he supposed to know if someone copied the gallery that they submitted?

Only reply to certified mail or mail from a goverment agency. :2 cents:

Good question I am not sure about this. I think the bottom line is that if any content provider tries to crack down on thumbs being made from their content and hosted on thumbnail preview tgps, they will loose half if not all of their future sales. Word spreads fast and nobody wants to buy content from a provider that tries to enforce a copyright that is borderline legit like this is.

Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp.

Thumbnails are fair use and being lower in size and quality than the originals do not damage the value of the originals.

http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/cjoyce...e10/Kelly.html

May have been overturned or later changed, but that's the one I know of.

Of course, that was about a search engine that collected hundreds of thousands of thumbs indiscriminately from the web.

It also doesn't address the issue of skimming.

So ask a real lawyer. ;)

I see plenty of CJ1s using sponsor content for thumbs. This is a pretty clear cut case, since you will never ever see the sponsor gallery by clicking on that thumb...

In all other cases, I would say that the sponsor would take the view that the webmaster is promoting them, and surfers that click on the thumb want to see more of that content. Even with skimming they will still get a bunch of reasonably targeted (as in - the surfer likes the look of one small image) traffic to their hosted gals.