New blog post! đ
A few months ago a media org demanded a license fee for an open graph image I linked. I paid the fee because I was worried, but it raises serious questions about open graph usage on the web!
This goes through how it went and my thoughts.
@accudio Incidentally, I have a friend who had one of his photos (of a chili-dog) used by a major newspaper website several years back. He wrote them a nice letter asking to be credited and paid. They asked how much. He asked for something like $500 and was promptly paid.
But what you experienced is so very-very different from a power-structure point of view.
@accudio Hmm. They sound *very* dodgy. I definitely wouldn't have assumed good faith or truth on their part. I'd question that they own it at all. The "discount" sounds very fake to me. They sound like an extortion group given them demanding 16x more for licensing the same image than some other company (and therefore not "reasonable"), the tiny viewership of it, and your robots.txt.
I'd at least put T&Cs on your website that assert an equivalent fee for anyone ignoring your robots.txt.
@accudio This is extortion, plain and simple, very sorry you had to deal with that⊠but that is a nice thumbnail. Thank you for sharing all of this with us, kind of important to know. đ
Do you think tweetback copying the image locally was the downfall? i.e. if the image was hotlinked from the newspaper website itself, might their argument that you are using the image have fallen through? (EDIT: I see @awfulwoman has the same train of thought â same here, not defending this legal (mal)practice!)
@accudio reading this, it sounds like you got legally scammed by some bottom feeders who buy up or encourage the dissemination of IP, and then go fishing for folks they can scare into paying them.
I donât blame you at all for paying, but I probably wouldâve told them to pound sand.
@cferdinandi
"buy up or encourage the dissemination of IP, and then go fishing for folks they can scare into paying them" - Yep, that's totally what I thought as well.
I'm not a lawyer either, but I've read a lot about copyright cases, and I would've thought what you did came under "fair use". Making comments about news items is exactly the kind of scenario that Fair Use was intended for.
@eatyourgreens @SmartmanApps a few years back. I read a story from someone who had used a photo that was shared through a free photo sharing site like Pexels, and then after it had had been used in a bunch of places, was taken down. The copyright holder, then suit a bunch of people claiming they had violated their IP.
Thatâs obviously not exactly what happened here, but is the kind of thing I was referring to.
@eatyourgreens @SmartmanApps @cferdinandi we have "fair dealing", which includes
"Fair dealing for criticism, review or quotation is allowed for any type of copyright work."
@accudio Very very sorry you had to deal with being shaken down in this way.
The impression I get is that Tweetback produces an offline backup (i.e. downloads and stores) referenced images, and you published the archive including copies. You consider this an designed-for use case of the protocol. I really am sorry to say it, but you *must not* think this! It is very dangerous for your time on the web. [1/2]
@accudio It would be equally valid to say that img tags are expected to be downloaded (they are) so I should be able to republish any image I find online (you can't).
Note that I do not say it is invalid, just that it is dangerous. You must understand that there is a world of difference between publishing a copy of something and linking to it. You should think of all copyrighted content as basically on fire, and you cannot touch it except by passing the URL to a client. [2/2]
Unlock origin filter to remove ALL Open Graph code and images needed.
If open graph forces an image into my timeline I will contact lawyers and police.
@accudio Oh wow that's interesting. Having some background (IANAL) when it comes to copyright what comes to mind immediately would be whether the tool you used downloaded the image so that it's now served from your website. E.g. "making available" (you're now hosting the image) vs "transient caching" which would be what OpenGraph intends with the original licensee (the newspaper) being the ones that make it available/host.
If not, and your website truly just displayed whatever Xitter does from the newspaper, I agree I cannot imagine this case having not gone your way. Well. At least in the EU. The UK is a bit weird now ;)
@accudio not the Lobster font! :D
Great blog post!
@bastianallgeier @accudio oh man, sorry this happened to you, too. This is such a loophole and at least here in Germany some law firms specialized on things like this and unfortunately make good money with it.
Also it's very funny that both of us made similar article image decisions đ
@accudio thanks for sharing this. It sucks, but I agree itâs hard to argue against their request.
Decided to take down my Twitter archive after seeing this. Itâs nice to have a backup of all my posts from âthe before timesâ, but having them live doesnât do me any favours these days. Maybe a simple copyright disclaimer on the archive website would be enough?
Alistair
poleguy looking for lost tools
Thomas Steiner 
Mike
mag
Stuart 
Charlie OâHara
Christopher Kirk-Nielsen
Harris Lapiroff
Jason Grigsby
Chris Ferdinandi
David Windham
đĄđđđșđđđđșđ đ°đđđđ±
Colin Watson
Evil Jim OâDonnell
Steve Fenton â
toerror
Dan 
Kevin Russell
Troed SĂ„ngberg
Nic
Thomas Michael Semmler
Bastian Allgeier
Maurice
Dave 𧱠
Sara Joy 
Jannis Fedoruk-Betschki
roddie digital 
Ăbergabe | Medien fĂŒr die Pflege