I think publishing someone else's image does indeed trigger copyright regardless of where it is hosted, and linking to the copy on their server further does them economic "harm" in terms of bandwidth costs, even if it doesn't really cost them anything extra that month.
Adi was right that this is essentially a fair use question. I happen to believe in a more expansive vision of fair use than the limited version staked out so far in US courts, but the only way to expand those courts' definitions is consideration if more unauthorized use circumstances. Not that I would let a matter like this get to court, because I would probably be responsive to any takedown requests, formal or not. I cited a thought experiment in the first pages of my thesis http://ottonomy.net/portfolio/thesis showing just how much our lives bump up against copyright law every day. The law wasn't originally intended to apply to the masses like this, but copying an image is actually one of the more blatant offenses we might commit in everyday life.
_______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss
