Image Rights

mleyshon · Jun 28, 2017

Hi Guys,

New member and first time poster. Excited to be here sharing ideas with a community with similar interests.

I have just completed the first draft of my first novel and am now looking at working through a very lengthy "To Do List" of items in order to get the book ready for publication. One of the items I am researching is image copyright. My book (draft) contains images from various sources and I am looking for clarification on how to use them, and under what conditions.

Here are some scenarios:

1. Image is from a website
2. Image is a screenshot taken from a website (a screenshot from Google Maps)
3. Image from a website that was edited (cropped)
4. Image is a photograph that I have taken of a map that I have purchased.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated. I have high expectations for this book and would hate to see any revenue it generates going towards supplementing copyright infringement lawsuits.

Thanks in advance, and there will probably be more questions to come.

PeteMC · Jun 28, 2017

I have no idea I'm afraid, but I'm intrigued why you have website images in a novel?

mleyshon · Jun 28, 2017

The images vary.

Some are maps and diagrams. Others are actual photos of locations. Some of these I can remove but I thought some map snippets would help as a point of reference for the reader.

cornflake · Jun 28, 2017

Unless you have permission to use any of those, or there is an explicit permission attached to them (some websites have images that are free to use in any capacity, but you have to check the licenses specifically, you can't like, google 'free photos' and presume what comes up in images is usable, NONE of those would be ok.

Google maps tags their stuff, so I presume they're not for use, and you taking a picture of a copyrighted image (or cropping or taking a screenshot) does not give you the copyright of the image, no.

Cyia · Jun 28, 2017

INAL, but basically:

mleyshon said:
Here are some scenarios:

1. Image is from a website
Is it a photo that you took yourself of an object that is yours and not covered by copyright or trademark? For example, you can photograph your home dining table with a generic table setting and use that - so long as no name brands are showing. You cannot take a bunch of Transformers toys and photograph those for your personal use, as that is using someone else's "mark" in trade.

Likewise, you can't go to someone else's site, photograph their landing page or blog and use those images. They're not yours, and neither is the work contained therein.

Likewise, you can't go to someone else's site, or to a site like flickr, and snag images someone else has posted. They don't belong to you. They might not even belong to the person posting them. They're copyrighted to whoever took the images.
2. Image is a screenshot taken from a website (a screenshot from Google Maps)
Not yours. Those images are copyrighted to Google and you can't use them just because you take a picture of them any more than you could take pictures of the first chapter of a published novel and claim the words belong to you for publication purposes.
3. Image from a website that was edited (cropped)
Still no. (See #1) Cropping it doesn't change the ownership. This was an issue highlighted a few years ago with a Demotivation poster featuring a child, standing on a pile of books, looking over a wall. The implication was that the books gave the kid a better view. Demotivation took the image, slapped a thick black border on it, put a few words on it and posted it - it wasn't theirs and the creator was not happy.

You *can* usually interpret an image if you want to create your own version from scratch, (as in stage the scene to closely resemble the original and take your own photo) but again, it can be dicey. Most of the time people reimagine shots to share for fun, not profit.

4. Image is a photograph that I have taken of a map that I have purchased.
Still no. You own the single copy you purchased. You don't own distribution rights to it. You're violating the copyright of the mapmaker. If it's a really old map, and you took a picture of it in a museum, then fine. However, if you took a picture of a book containing the picture from the museum, then THAT book's picture is covered by THAT book's copyright.

Again, if you photograph the illustrations from Clifford, that doesn't mean you own them, even if you've bought a Clifford book. You couldn't turn around and put them in your own work, even if you took that picture with your own camera. And in that case, even if you redrew them, they're trademarked on top of copyrighted, so you still couldn't use your own drawing without some tangles.

Basically, if you don't generate the content, then you don't get to use it.

mleyshon · Jun 28, 2017

Thanks CYIA. It's all bad news really, but better I sort that out now.

Thanks for the comprehensive feedback.

Old Hack · Jun 28, 2017

You need written permission from the copyright holders of every single image, and it has to be permission to use the images in a commercial setting, which usually comes with a cost.

It's up to you to get those permissions, and to pay for them.

If an image is released under a Creative Commons license you must check the terms under which it's available, as most are not licensed for commercial use so you'll still have to pay.

You can't copy works from online and assume it's safe to use them.

Also, works you've copied from online are not likely to be of a high enough quality to work well in a published form: they almost certainly won't work in printed copies.

Image Rights

mleyshon

PeteMC

@PeteMC666

mleyshon

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

Cyia

Rewriting My Destiny

mleyshon

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman