We’ve been so busy putting out the next day’s TM content every day that we haven’t really been keeping an eye on all the comments here. Doh!

Just to give you my $0.02:

It’s our policy not to use “All Rights Reserved” photos without permission. We just accidentally missed one. And regardless of any fair use rights we might fall under, it’s not our desire to fight with anyone to feature their project or shop. These are meant to be happy moments drawing attention to the creativity and work of our awesome readers. Honestly, if we received a request from someone whose CC-commercial-licensed photo of shop/project we’d legally featured asking us to remove it, we’d likely remove it. There are over 5,600 posts on TM, and removing the one won’t hurt us or readers, especially if it’s causing grief for someone.

That said, we’ve had exactly two requests to remove photos/posts since we launched. One was about a year ago and involved our fully-legal use of publicly-released photos and descriptions of a commercial tool. While our legal staff assured us we were in the right, we thought “what right-minded person would want to remove a post with a positive spin on their product?” and removed it anyway. The second was this one. We’d have removed the post as well as the photo, but there were already comments on it so we left it alone and added the photo description so it’d make sense.

Of course TM readers may take it personally when someone publicly says “I don’t want to be a part of your community anymore.” No one benefits from the following nastiness, so the far-and-away easiest way to make such a request is to email us via our contact form and let us know what’s up. We try (and succeed, I believe) to respond to such issues quickly and reasonably, and we can help determine the best action to make things right with the minimum grief for all parties.

Regarding “DMCA takedown notices” and ISPs, it’s worth noting that sites like TM draw tremendous bandwidth (ouch, my wallet!) and are generally hosted with better-than-average hosting services. (We love ours, BTW, and would happily recommend it to anyone.) If an individual (or anyone) sent legal notice of any kind to our ISP, they’d contact us to discuss, and we’d take appropriate action. No one is going to “come down hard” on anyone — at least in our case — because we’re all real people with real business relationships that act accordingly and reasonably.

All said, I’m going to go ahead and close the comments on this post so we can move on to more tool-related fun, like Txinkman’s sweet toolbox restoration or the talented Jmillerid’s shop buddy, Jeff.

When you’re done making ridiculous straw man and ad hominem arguments, please let the rest of us know.

cl

Sorry to disappoint Jon, Ted is my real name, I am a real photographer, I’ve neither met nor spoken to Mr Gomez/Lemieux.

I am a bit of a copyright zealot, and, admittedly, I do like to argue with proponents of internet thievery — it may be tilting at windmills, but everyone needs a hobby.

In my mind the true sock puppets here are the “pile-on” types who all jumped in to condemn Mr Lemieux like a bunch of internet sheep. Net-thuggery in the guise of “community” is just sad.

YMMV, Ted

Again, spirit of giving….. Call any time you need help……..

Shopmonger will be there

Mr. “Lemieux / Addams” was rude. I am fairly certain that a private e-mail would have resolved the issue with no drama. Based upon what I’ve seen here and elsewhere, he looks for these types of confrontations. He probably enjoys the attention. There are ways to handle issues discretely and that wasn’t done. He had to have looked into referrer logs to know that the image had been linked.

I’d bet that Ted is a sock-puppet or a fan-boy.

There are a couple of reasons for citing WikiPedia, first it tends to be written in plain English, therefore easier for the layman to understand, second in a “common law” country, such as the United States, law is an evolving entity, each new judgment shapes the way laws are applied in future cases, WikiPedia isn’t a definitive source but has a better chance of being current than a direct citation of statute.

As for copyright holders destroying fair use — it’s a bit of a tug of war, if you don’t defend rights, you lose them. Take a look at the photocopied “course packs” that were chewing up textbook publishers profits a few years back, one might argue that the evil corporate giants “had it coming” (a fallacy IMO), an argument that ignores the “little guy” writers and photographers who wrote and illustrated the books.

The net is a wonderful thing, the so-called “death of copyright” is not — if there is no way to get paid for being creative there is very little incentive to be creative.

Cheers, Ted

Frankly, seems to fall under fair use to me, but what do I know. The copyright holders been doing a fine job of destroying fair use over the last 15 years anyhow.

He would never have been called any names had he not displayed an elitist judgmental attitude in his initial comments post. There isn’t even a reason to post anything in the comments, when the Toolmonger blog has a very easy to find “Contact Us” link to reach the blog maintainers. Rather than simply dealing with it behind the scenes, G.Addams condemned the toolmonger community as a whole for a relatively minor error on the part of the blog authors… earning him the criticism he received.

Sean made (I believe) an honest mistake. Gomez notified him of that in what really was a tongue and cheek way. Sean admitted the problem and, correctly, took the photo down and let people know.

Now the bunch of you attack Gomez and try to justify copyright infringement??? It doesn’t matter if Gomez distributes for gain or not. Its HIS photo. He placed it online WITH THE TRADITIONAL “ALL RIGHTS RESERVED” LICENSE!

As Ted points out, “fair use” is NOT and absolute. I don’t know what the photo above originally looked like but Gomez felt it was not fair use. And Sean obviously agreed with him and took the photo down. Case closed.

Sean, none of this is aimed at you. It’s aimed at the majority of posters here who are “douche-canoe’s of the highest calibre imaginable”!

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

and read carefully.

You’re throwing around “fair use” like it’s an absolute, it’s not, especially for commercial entities such as Toolmonger. Were you to post a thumbnail of Bill’s image linking back to his original placement in the Flickr pool you would be correct.

As the copyright holder, Bill has a lot of rights to control how his image is published.

“Naughty, naughty. I shake my finger at you.” is a lot less douchy than threatening to sue you, which he is well within his rights to do.

And, for what it’s worth, while I must bow to your superior critical skills and judgment, I must point out that “You can’t possibly think there’s any viable commercial value in that photo, so why, exactly, do you care (not that it matters; see “fair use” above) what someone else does with it?” is not a valid defense against copyright infringement either, it’s also not a terribly nice thing to say.

Cheers, Ted

Whether or not some large percentage of Internet users don’t understand this is completely orthogonal to the question. I hear the Wizard of Oz is handing out extra brains. Maybe your MP3-downloading-Bit-Torrent-addicted-freeloader straw man would like some?

cl

The average MP3 downloading Bit Torrent addicted freeloader couldn’t care less about the devaluation of intellectual property or the direct affect it has on the ability of individuals to make an honest living in the arts.

Berating Bill because he has politely asked for his rights to be respected is highly disrespectful and frankly, offensive. It appears to have been an honest mistake on the behalf the TM staff and ought to be resolved simply without name-calling.

Ted

The owner of the content has every right to remove them as does the website itself.

I have found material on websites taken from other websites and provided as their own. I have notified them and so should others. Both were a business (small one man business’s). It is common but it doesn’t make it right.

I don’t think this blog had any bad intentions, in fact it was giving full credit. Next you should read about the website before you post to it. What is the purpose of the website? What does it do?

Negligence is a two way street.

I still like the brackets.

nor is there any commercial value in a photo that is posted on a “open” site like flikr

A rather large number of pros who make substantial income off photos posted on Flickr would like to disagree.

But, again, this pic had no commercial value.

TM did not use this for any commercial gain, nor is there any commercial value in a photo that is posted on a “open” site like flikr…..

as as stated before…..

I just come here for the tools.

As for shop pics….

I am working on mine for flikr…

thats right the Shopmonger Shop will be revield….. Sean you can post, modify, deface, crap on, any picture that I post.

Peace to all and thank god for a FREE country.

p.s. long weekend the water heater crapped out so i spent sunday re-piping my new water heater…

but it is nice 80 gallons of hot (controllable) water…..

Why? In recent memory, there was this whole debacle with some company making up ads from kid’s pictures on Flickr:
http://commercial-archive.com/content/virgin-uses-cc-licenced-flickr-photo-ad-campaign-forgets-model-release-gets-sued
So having properly licensed photos shared on sites like Flickr for me is important

but anyways, I agree 100% with @Pencilneck. There had to be better ways to request something without being so self-righteous…

“I thought my request was respectful under the circumstances.”

Your request might have been respectful, but you didn’t stop there you made comments here and on the flikr pool that insighted this barrage of comments in the first place.

“very few people on the internet understand copyright. According to some commenters here (ie; “what did you think would happen”), it would seem that if you found it on the internet, anything goes. I’ve never read this blog before this week, a friend pointed out the blog post via email.”

1) Why would you post you photo to a group you knew nothing about? I stand by my comment. I’m talking about common sense, damn the legality. You did post the photo to the group without doing your research. there’s a lesson for us all here.

2) I disagree that few people on the internet understand copyright, I think people have a pretty good feel for whats right and wrong without necessarily being able to verbalize it. They comments you made didn’t meet people’s expectations about how a reasonable person would have handled this situation and that’s where the outrage came from.

It is because there is so much debate over that litmus test that the U.S. Copyright Office’s advisory publication FL-102 states:

“The distinction between “fair use” and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.”

and

“The safest course is always to get permission from the copyright owner before using copyrighted material.”

I thought my request was respectful under the circumstances. But the reaction I’ve seen on this page has been anything but. With one breath, the community says my photo wasn’t important (I happen to agree, as far as that statement goes - this debate wasn’t about the _content_ of the image at all) and I shouldn’t be up in arms about it.

And yet it’s apparently important enough to generate a lot of negative emotion - so much so that people feel justified in descending to high school level name calling.

If I were as big a “douche”, “jerk”, etc, I’d simply have filed a DMCA takedown demand with the hosting ISP. And as we all know, most ISPs don’t bother debating or looking into the facts when they receive a DMCA takedown demand, they just come down (often unfairly) on the webmaster. THAT would have been a jerk move.

Well, I’m done debating this. You folks go ahead and believe whatever you want about what is right and proper - clearly it is only your interpretation of the letter of the law which matters.

I do hope the rabid insult-slingers here keep more civil tongues in their heads when they talk to people in meatspace than they do when hiding behind the supposed safety of their keyboards. It never ceases to amaze me what people will say to a stranger on the internet that they would never dare say in person.

Yes I’m familiar with “Fair Use” doctrine, but when someone states “all rights reserved” that pretty much trumps “Fair Use”, full stop.

No. Absolutely not.

What on earth do you think “fair use” rights are all about anyway? They’re so that copyrighted works can be used without the owner’s permission in appropriate places.

In fact, given Chris’s observation about it being a reduced version, and the other points of the fair use doctrine, I suspect that TM was wholly within legal limits to post it and comment upon it.

The post was made for commentary/criticism/teaching purposes. TM was not trying to profit off of it, even though they have ads, but this is the most debatable point. The nature of the work is that it has no commercial value, it was posted in a reduced resolution format, and there was no harm upon the potential market value of the work.

That means it was used properly under the fair use doctrine, and while you could take TM to court over it, you’d probably lose. And TM — I suspect that the EFF would happily take up the court case for you if it had come to that.

very few people on the internet understand copyright

Well that, at least, is correct. Unfortunately you’re included in that group. I do know copyright, and it’s part of my job to know it.

1) consideration for other people’s rights (or just considerate behavior in general) is a dead concept;

2) very few people on the internet understand copyright. According to some commenters here (ie; “what did you think would happen”), it would seem that if you found it on the internet, anything goes. I’ve never read this blog before this week, a friend pointed out the blog post via email.

Yes I’m familiar with “Fair Use” doctrine, but when someone states “all rights reserved” that pretty much trumps “Fair Use”, full stop.

The ad hominem attacks on my character add a real touch of class to the site and comments.

I might add that I’m astonished at the insight into my personality that the readers here were able to glean from my request.

cl