J.D. Lasica points out a heated debate over whether a new KRON-TV blog overstepped the rules on fair use with its publication of photos of G8 protests in San Francisco, images that originated on Indymedia sites.
SF Indymedia and Indybay published the photos in several posts, including here and here. KRON's Brian Shields, doing real-time blogging during the anarchists' protests, posted some of those images on KRON's The Bay Area is Talking blog. Indymedia folks complained that the use of the photos on KRON's site violated copyright law.
Shields, in the post's comments section, defended his use of the photos under "the fair use exception to the copyright laws for breaking news coverage."
Terry Heaton, a blogger and consultant who helped launch the site, didn't address the legal issues but suggested that Shields and KRON were helping the Indymedia citizen journalists reach a mainstream audience with their message. "If, in fact, you are giving voice to those who wouldn't normally have a voice, why would you wish to limit that voice to a closed network?" he wrote in a comment on the KRON blog.
Lasica said he believes Shields' legal argument is "well-founded," and he chastised the Indymedia folks, saying, "But why in the world would Indy Media want to restrict the widespread online distribution of such a newsworthy set of photos? What rank hypocrisy."
Meanwhile, comments from posters indentified as "janky" and "k" took KRON to task for using the images without permission. Janky said:
I would ask that you take them all down and link to the individual articles where they were published. The copyright law for the SF Bay Area Indymedia site clearly states the obvious use limitations of content that is published on the site.
All the photos on this site were taken by people within the community and were posted on indybay.org for a reason. If you do not respect that, then at least leave comments for each individual to contact you for permission for use.
You cant just take photos willy nilly and repost them on a site that is for-profit without expressed permission. Either that, or I get to start making HD copies of Kron4 broadcasts and posting them everywhere on the net due to "fair use" laws.
You folks have paid reporters who make a living from this.
UPDATE: Discussion about fair use has continued in a separate thread on The Bay Area is Talking. Read the comment posted Sunday by Jackson West of sfist.com. He has the most thoughtful, well-reasoned approach so far of all the comments I've read in this thread and the one that started the debate.
Comments