One of the book’s primary purposes is to provide a history of how best practice guides have come about and how to create them. One thing is for sure, one person stating what best practices are for an industry is not the way to go about it.

As the two authors point out, a number of foundations have financed the development of fair use best practice guides for particular industries. The power of the guides comes from the development of a consensus through discussion within the industry by industry participants, lawyers, and insurance companies that write E & O insurance.

Your guide is a statement of your view of the law. It is not a best practices guide as the two authors contemplate because it is not (at least as you have described it) the result of a collaborative effort. It is the process that the authors describe that gives these guides power. The first folks to do this guide were the documentary filmmakers. That story is a fascinating one.

As the authors also point out, you have to be very careful about porting best practices from one industry to another. What is fair use for one group may not be for another.

I commend you for thinking along the lines of a best practices guide, but you are not there.

Good luck

Jack Siegel (I don’t know either author and have no financial interest in the book. I first learned of the book from an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education).

http://copyrighttoolkit.com/permitted.html

(dont get me wrong I think photographers should rightly get paid for their work but also journalists have the right to maintain democracy)

http://slcc.strath.ac.uk/scotslawcourse/ip/ip/copy/wbch4.html

channel 4 are making money from adverts

http://slcc.strath.ac.uk/scotslawcourse/ip/ip/copy/hubbard.html

good old ron!

I have no law training, im trying to figure this at the moment :)

The issue is the definition of fair use, if you are critiquing a work then you have the right to use a photo If – by not using it would make it impossible to express your view – , we live in a democracy afterall. However the concept of criticsm must not in any way be promoting someone elses service, or helping to promote YOUR service at the cost of the person/company you critique, afterall the concept of any wrong implies there is a wronged person to start with?
IE if the conclusion of the critique is that X product is rubbish and Y is great and your site is being sponsored by Y. Yet I guess only a court of law could solve this, to what degree was the editorial judgement neutral and to what degree was the ctitique clouded by being sponsored by Y and to what extent does Y gain from such a critique or not????

With this all said, it’s not hard to email a photographer or company and ask to use their pictures, for SEO purposes you can always put rel=”nofollow” in the link, however it is the right of free people that they should be able to express a view and that view should not be governed by the choice of someone else….if the photographer was a ***** then does that mean that a critique of 2 pictures that use the same building could not be compared????????

Does anyone have any well documented real-life casestudies of how a blog helped you photography business?

In order to receive statutory damages, the copyright must be registered in the US Copyright Office to give notice to the world of copyright ownership.

Otherwise, if someone infringes on an unregistered copyright, the only remedy to the copyright owner is an injunction.

More often than not however, it is just people not caring.

My question is about websites which use photos that are clearly copyrighted, but make money from adverts and by being affiliates of betting sites etc.

Can these sites use images as “fair use”?

I was thinking about starting a soccer site, so I really want to know. I see sites like http://www.adifferentleague.co.uk wich falls into that category, advertising income, income from betting, but photos I would imagine they claim “fair use” for. Soccerlens.com is another one, though they claim they are a blog unlike the first which says it is a magazine.

So where do I stand if I start something like them? Can I make money but still use lots of photos for free under “fair use”?

It seems a real grey area…..

How is it that the model involved in a shoot does’nt deserve to share the copyright or at least get a fair shake, if she uses a non commercial shoot of her image to promote herself?

Does she deserve at least the “Fair Use” protection under the law? Why is the photographer the only person credited to be the Creator of such a Work?