With the explosive growth of self publishing the internet has
engendered, there are far too few would be authors who understand there
is a difference between option (c) and option (d).
No one wants to pay for content on the internet. Too many people wrongly
assume "If I can see it on the internet, I'm free to take it and use it
any way I want to." It's one of the reasons why I post so few photos
on-line.
What responsibility do companies like Blurb, Lulu et al have to educate
their users about not using copyrighted material without permission?
From: Stan Halpin
On Jun 9, 2012, at 10:40 PM, Matthew Hunt wrote:
An author of dog training books contacted my wife about a picture I
took of my wife and our late Doberman. The author wanted to use the
picture in a book she is writing. My wife respects the author and
liked the idea of being in the book, but I didn't want to give away a
photograph for a book to be sold at profit. I realized that the book
is likely to sell on a pretty small scale, so I thought a good
compromise would be to allow her to use my photograph, in exchange for
a free copy of the book. That would make my wife happy (for both the
book and being in it) and be a minimal expense for the author.
The author declined these terms. You see, she plans to use hundreds of
photographs, and clearly it would be too expensive to agree to such
terms.
(Since the author is seeking permission from the subjects, rather than
the photographers, I'm sure the book will be full of photographs that
she doesn't have the right to publish.)
If I were an author or one with aspirations to be an author, and if I
wanted to use photos or other artwork in my publication, it would
seem that I have four courses of action:
a. I could do the art work/photos myself;
b. I could hire a professional or several to do the artwork/photos for me;
c. I could find open source license-free artwork/photos I could use;
or
d. I could just browse around and steal other people's stuff without
attempts at compensation, acknowledgement, etc.
Actually, there is a fifth option - browse around and then do the
right thing by asking for permission and offering compensation. This
would seem to be the most complicated and potentially most expensive
so I can understand why she isn't doing that. But her apparent
preferred option, (d), is the most disrespectful of others
intellectual property. As an author, how can she be so mindless?
I have been involved in the publication of several professional books
(i.e., reference books, text books), either as co-editor or co-author
or as the supervisor of someone co-editing or authoring such books.
[And hundreds of technical reports and articles.] Even though we
tried to avoid it, there were times when it was just critical that we
quote extensively from others' works and/or copy
figures/tables/graphs. And that meant getting those authors' and
their publishers' permission to use the material. That is by far the
hardest work in writing something, even worse than doing an index.
Option (a) or (b) have got to be the best way to go.
If this woman is self-publishing, she can probably get away with
doing whatever she wants to. If she is going through one of the
handful of publishers who publish dog/cat/bird/hamster/ferret
material, then her publisher should be apprised of their exposure to
serious legal liabilities.
stan
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