We are seeing a lot of photos lately, used to illustrate ideas, etc. There have been questions as to their origins. To avoid any difficulties, please remember: https://www.trainboard.com/highball...e-or-uploading-of-copyrighted-materals.93743/
I will promise, all photos I post are taken by me, and thus the copyright belongs to me. I haven’t personally seen anything that wouldn’t qualify as fair use being posted but if I do I will flag it. I have had my photography work used for other’s gain before and I didn’t like it. They claimed they were allowed to use it because they found it online. I found a lawyer that said otherwise.
I'm something like @Massey in that 98% of what I post are my images. Sometimes however, I do borrow from the 'net to further threads. I'm kind of wondering what the future is for enjoyable threads like our AT&SF Old Photos, DRGW Old Rio Grande, SP/SSW Southern Pacific Old Photos, RI Rock Island Photos, CNW - New Chicago Webcam and others where few of us or none of us were able to capture quality images, much less be able to scan, edit and post them. Links will work, but take us out of TrainBoard and might make continuing conversation a challenge. I do understand the concern though and the need to protect TrainBoard.
It's Railimages that's the concern. Hotlinking tends not to be scrutinized because the hosting site can stop that. So it's on them to protect it, if they don't want it shared. rrpicturearchives, for example, blocks that. But once the image is loaded onto Railimages, then Railimages becomes the hosting site, and liable. There's also an exception for education, which is arguably what all those threads do. It's certainly my intent when I post to them. I only load images which I took, or which I know were taken prior to March 1, 1989, and are not marked as copyrighted.
=> This post was simply a reminder to please think carefully when considering using photos which are NOT your own. => When it comes to copyright, there are too many myths thrown about. Especially with the advent of the Internet, they have proliferated........ => Whether watermarked or NOT otherwise notated, the photo is not yours, and there is still potential copyright. Even prior to 1989. A valid copyright may still exist. Beware. Also, these days it is very easy to manipulate a photo, and completely remove a copyright watermark. So you might mistakenly be thinking all clear.... => So-called "Fair Use" is not a blanket application and still has limitations. For more information, see the "Copyright Act". The most often cited portion being 17 USC 107. Which leaves room for argument. Something which TrainBoard ends up having to bear and pay for, not the members. => When there is a concern raised, it is not you, but TrainBoard they come to first. It is dumped into our laps, our issue to be mitigated. We know this due our real life experiences, from multiple occurrences, through these many years. Thankfully "DMCA" (2000) provides some protection for us, but does not account for the time and effort WE must expend. Nor the public bruising we can endure. Thus we take no chances.
While RailImages might be a problem, the largest is actually people simply directly uploading/attaching to their messages. "Education" is the arguable point. In our instance, I would tend to believe there would likely be a big tumble over how playing with toy trains fits into any educational system; denigrating, distracting; ignoring the historical discussions which I personally would believe are indeed educational. Beware of watermarks. They can easily be removed these days. Any photo software which can be used to clean up defects in a photo, can swiftly take away a watermark and very few folks would ever realize it was done.
