Fair use of photos on blogs

Fascinating discussion going on at Weblogs Inc.’s Nanopublishing weblog: Fair use of photos on blogs … the photographers speak out.

Jason Calacanis writes:

I had dinner with two big name photographers in L.A. recently. These are folks who’s name you might recognize even if you are not in the photography industry. I asked them both under what circumstances could use their images without paying them, they both immediately responded emphatically “under no circumstances!”

Interesting. I asked them if they had heard of the term fair use, and they said they had heard of it but their photo agencies had told them that no one can use their images ever without their permission. This, of course, is not true. There is fair use …

Jason’s right. I supervised a newspaper’s photo department years ago, so I’m sympathetic to my photojournalist friends. The question is, should bloggers just grab others’ images and repost them on their blogs without permission (but with credit)?

Unfortunately, it depends. It depends on whether it’s a newsworthy event worthy of wider dissemination, or just a really cool, artistic photo of a nature scene, a sunset or the night sky (I cringe when I see these reproduced on blogs rather than offer a pointer to the photographer’s site). It depends on how the blogger is reproducing the photos. A small reproduction is OK in my book — a full-scale photo may or may not be. That’s just the digital world we live in today.

Photographers don’t enjoy any special rights not accorded to other creative individuals such as journalists and authors, whose works are snipped and reproduced every day, on blogs and websites around the world, millions of times. But check out the photographers’ take on all this at Jason’s site.

Cross-posted to Darknet.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.