Links

There's always something new about this blogging business. Another first, the other day: I was contacted by a photographer who complained that TOP had used his photograph—of a 1937 Jaguar—without his permission.

I try to take rights issues seriously, so I went looking for it. I did do a few posts recently about cars, but I couldn't remember posting a picture of an old Jaguar.

I couldn't find it anywhere.

I have a poor memory in some ways. I suffer from what I jokingly call "proper noun aphasia," for one thing—an inability to remember names. It's not that the names aren't in there, it's just that they take a little while to percolate to the surface when I want them to. But I have a very good visual memory. If I'm trying to remember a person, what pops unbidden into my mind is an image—the name takes some effort, and a bit more time, to recall. I often do research for my posts visually, using Google image searches; I often surf the web visually too, going from one image search to another.

So I tried that. I just Googled "1937 Jaguar" and did an image search, thinking that, if I'd seen one of the pictures recently, I'd recognize it. Sure enough, there it was—one picture jumped out at me as one I'd seen before:

So once I knew what I was looking for, then I could go chase it down on the site.

Guess what? It turned out to be a hyperlink in a comment.

That got my dander up a bit. Here's what I wrote back to the fellow who complained:

That image isn't posted on my site. It's a hyperlink. The hyperlink takes readers to your page, where you have made the picture viewable by the public. The picture is not viewable or visible on my site, only on yours.

There is no infringement with hyperlinks; anyone may link to whatever they want to on the Web. With certain rare exceptions (for instance, if the page that is linked to is illegal), hyperlinks are permissible without restriction. This is perfectly in accordance with standard, widespread World Wide Web custom and also with the law—the right to hyperlink freely has been upheld by the courts on several occasions.

Thus, there has been no infringement on your rights and there was no need or requirement for us to secure your permission—neither common courtesy nor legality requires it.

I will remove the link to your picture because you have requested it, purely as a courtesy to you, but I suggest you familiarize yourself with the way the Web works; you really have no right whatsoever (nor any reasonable cause) to make such requests.

But it turned out that the fellow wasn't being obnoxious. He was quite polite in response, thanking me for the explanation. He's just new to the Web and still learning what's what, that's all.

I do tend to forget—there are always beginners out there. Not everybody already knows everything.

Trends
So, in the spirit of not assuming that everybody already knows everything, a few words about links on TOP:

What we mostly do in our posts are informational links, and affliliate links. An informational link can be anything—a link to an illustration of what's being talked about, to a citation that supports a premise or a claim, or simply to a site where more information is given.

An affiliate link is quite different. That's a link to one of the site's affiliates—usually, to a product you can buy. And which, if you buy it, pays me a small spiff. When you see a line like "I have two Micro 4/3 lenses so far and I'm thinking about getting a third," that's what that link is all about. (In that case the link also informs you as to which lens I'm talking about, so it's sort of a tease as well.)

Posts about new equipment might have a lot of affiliate links, but I generally don't hit those too hard. I just try to imagine what would annoy me if I were reading another site, and try to avoid annoying you.

Recently, however, a new trend has revved up. I now get offers almost every day to do "sponsored links" or "paid links" on TOP. That is, someone will pay me to write a post about their product or to put a link to their product or site in the text of one of my posts.

Well, I never do that. There has never been a sponsored or paid link on TOP. Affiliate links, yes, but I make all the decisions as to what those will be. Sometimes a link might look sponsored, but that's usually just because I'm doing somebody a favor, not because they're paying me.

Judging by my mail, though, there must be an awful lot of posts and links out there in the far-flung wilds of the Web that are only there because someone bought them. This is probably only going to get worse as time goes on, and as more people learn that there is money to be made in the trenches of e-commerce.

Mike

[UPDATE: The original version of this article contained a fake link that I thought would be a good way to make a point—it was a link that I fell for prior to Christmas, and I thought it would be interesting to see if other people would fall for it too. A bit later, however, I had a "what were you thinking" moment and decided I was not being half as clever as I thought I was. So I 86'd it. Sorry to those whose comments were thereby "orphaned."

Sometimes, the editor needs an editor. —Mike the Ed.]

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Comments

[Ken Bennett]

Re: the 45mm M4/3 lens. Do you need the macro? Because the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 m4/3 lens is just so sweet. Or maybe you have that one already, I can't remember.

[Ed Hawco]

Wait a sec... he sends you an email complaining that you've used his picture but he doesn't provide a link to WHERE it was used? That should be the first sign that he's a total n00b. That's like phoning a newspaper and saying "There's a typo in your newspaper" and hanging up without saying what day, what article, what paragraph, etc.

I don't understand how he could be so completely ignorant of how this stuff works, yet he had the wherewithal to know that his photo "appeared" on your site. Weird.

[Bill Pierce]

Much needed info for those of us who spend too much time perusing photo web sites. Thanks.

[Tom Judd]

Dear What's Your Name,

"proper noun aphasia"- I love that phrase. And can I ever sympathize.
Proper nouns must be stored another way from common nouns, and especially visual memory.
Aphasia indeed, but I hope it's advancing age rather than a brain lesion.

[David Bennett]

You've touched on a subject dear to my heart.

Can I broaden the topic slightly?

What about when it is not a link that appears on a site, but an image that is displayed by being referenced from wherever it originated?

The image has not been copied, not stolen, not lifted, not borrowed - but only referenced.

When Pinterest published its terms of service some months ago, the bigger question that was being asked around the web was whether the images that had been 'pinned' had been stolen.

Well to my knowledge, no one has sued Pinterest for all the many images it carries that are referenced from their source.

Nor has Google been sued for referencing and displaying the images it has indexed.

But consider this: If I publish a link to an image on my site, and say something nice about the image, but don't show the image - then anyone interested has to go where the image is hosted and see it there (and whatever else is of interest).

But if I publish the image by referencing the URL, then even if suggest that my readers should go and look at the site where the image originated, they might not.

Has the owner of the site from where the image has been referenced, something to complain about?

[Regarding Pinterest, I am leaving aside the fact (that I believe was acknowledged) that when a user pins an image on Pinterest, the system makes a thumbnail copy of the image]

[Steven House]

I, for one, had look up and see what 86'd meant.

[Roger Bradbury]

I can't remember names either.

I once did an electrical condition survey of every council-run school in the Milton Keynes area. There were about 110 of them.

Afterwards, if my boss asked me about any given school, I would just look at him blankly, but if he showed me a drawing (to scale plan) of the school I would point to various places on it saying something like, "this is the main intake, there are distribution boards here, here, here and here. The fire alarm system is about 10 years old and the main panel is on this wall"

[Peter]

@David Bennett,

There's also a tangential issue, if you're talking about what I think you're talking about. If you're hotlinking, anyone that opens that page will be using the original servers' bandwidth when the picture loads and is therefore considered a bit of a faux pas. At least it was when I paid attention to such things.

[Jonathan]

One reason to avoid "sponsored links" is the dishonesty of posting what is essentially an ad as though it were a link that you posted on its merits. Another reason is the possibility of degrading your Google rank, depending on whom you are linking to.

[Andrea]

"It's not that the names aren't in there, it's just that they take a little while to percolate to the surface when I want them to. But I have a very good visual memory."

I've had the same problem all my life, I think it's correlated to the way memory of some people works - I can remeber a phone number only as its image scribbled on a piece of paper, or an ATM code as the lines that the finger draws in the air while compositing it on the keypad... Little bit strange, I think...

[Mike Johnston]

Andrea,
I do that phone number thing too...in my younger years I would not need to take notes for school papers, because when I needed to find the source of a passage I could "picture" in my mind the page where I read it and "read" the page number and often the title of the book from the image in my memory. I can't do that any more. Its overall effect was to give me bad habits! Now I assume I'll remember things I actually won't, simply because I used to be able to.

Mike

[Michael Robinson]

Relevant: http://xkcd.com/1053/

[David Bennett]

@Peter
I wasn't thinking of 'hotlinking' but I googled for it and found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking

The section at the bottom on "Copyright law issues that inline linking raises" is interesting:

"The most significant legal fact about inline linking, relative to copyright law considerations, is that the inline linker does not place a copy of the image file on its own Internet server. Rather, the inline linker places a pointer on its Internet server that points to the server on which the proprietor of the image has placed the image file. This pointer causes a user's browser to jump to the proprietor's server and fetch the image file to the user's computer.

US courts have considered this a decisive fact in copyright analysis. Thus, in Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc. the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit explained why inline linking did not violate US copyright law:

Google does not...display a copy of full-size infringing photographic images for purposes of the Copyright Act when Google frames in-line linked images that appear on a user’s computer screen. Because Google’s computers do not store the photographic images, Google does not have a copy of the images for purposes of the Copyright Act.

In other words, Google does not have any “material objects...in which a work is fixed...and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated” and thus cannot communicate a copy. Instead of communicating a copy of the image,

Google provides HTML instructions that direct a user’s browser to a website publisher’s computer that stores the full-size photographic image. Providing these HTML instructions is not equivalent to showing a copy. First, the HTML instructions are lines of text, not a photographic image. Second, HTML instructions do not themselves cause infringing images to appear on the user’s computer screen.

The HTML merely gives the address of the image to the user’s browser. The browser then interacts with the computer that stores the infringing image. It is this interaction that causes an infringing image to appear on the user’s computer screen. Google may facilitate the user’s access to infringing images. However, such assistance raised only contributory liability issues and does not constitute direct infringement of the copyright owner’s display rights. ...

While in-line linking and framing may cause some computer users to believe they are viewing a single Google webpage, the Copyright Act...does not protect a copyright holder against [such] acts...."