A language learners’ forum

Forum Rules wrote:
Copyright violations: We hate receiving angry letters from lawyers almost as much as the ones from Her Majesty's Government. More importantly, many good language courses are made by small publishers and family companies like Assimil. We want to encourage these people to create more resources. Please do not share illegally copied materials, or link to sites which are primarily used for that purpose. Some external sites like YouTube have their own mechanisms for taking down content, and it's usually safe to link to short excerpts on these sites—but not complete movies or TV shows.

The administrators of this website will not tolerate the illegal distribution or links to the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. Encouraging the use of illegal copyrighted material is also prohibited. This forum operations under the UK copyright system and the courts in the UK routinely issue injunctions in order to regulate and legislate to reduce copyright infringement. More information can be found on the UK Government Website. You can find more information about "Fair Use" and exceptions under UK copyright on that website if you're unsure about sharing a small portion of copyrighted material for criticism, review or quotation.

Copyright is a form of legal protection that is automatically assigned to content creators at the moment of creation. In other words, the moment you take a photograph, you own the copyright to it. You don’t have to register it with a special organisation, you don’t have to fill in a form or add a legal notice to the image. The rights to use, amend or sell that image are yours and yours alone.

You are also allowed to give away or sell those rights, if you wish - and that’s how many professional photographers make money; by selling rights to their work. That also means that no one else is allowed to use your work without your permission.

Many people assume that if content is online that it is "public domain" and that it's not copyrighted. That’s just a myth.

What if you’re a photographer who actually wants to give away your image rights to others? Creative Commons gives you an easy way to do that. Creative Commons licensing is inspired by open source and the GNU Project approach to software licensing. It allows you to select which permissions you want to give to people, for free.

With Creative Commons licensing you can give away all rights to your work, or just some of them. The site has an online form that helps you to configure exactly which of your rights you want to give away.

The most common licensing is an Attribution license, which lets anyone use your image in any way they like, as long as they give you credit. Which seems fair enough. All you should have to do is include a link back to the original page and to the creative commons license.

Creative Commons also makes it easier to find online imagery that you can use for free, with major search engines supporting the licensing structure.

When using Google Images:

Search for images using keywords as usual.
When results are returned click “Search Tools”
Choose “Usage Rights”. Select an option from the dropdown menu.

“Folks run into problems when they do more than just link to something online,” Koustenis says. "When you directly copy or display the actual copyrighted material—in whole or part—even if you also provide a link to the original content, you're likely engaging in copyright infringement.”

I Didn’t Know I Couldn’t Use That Content, so I Can’t Get in Trouble.

Legal Truth: Use that same argument with the cop who pulls you over for running a red light or driving under the influence, and let me know how that works out for you. Ignorance of the law doesn’t excuse you from the law.

When you steal stuff online, there are several actions that can be taken against you:

The content creator can sue you. Are you ready for a lawsuit? Costs can be hefty. You may be liable for damages that run into the thousands of dollars
Your website can be shut down if you host stolen content. If you post stolen content on your site, the copyright owner can file a DMCA Takedown Notice with your hosting company. Not only can they force you to remove the content, but your entire site might be shut down if you don’t comply.

Ogrim wrote:Thank you for the reply. As I said I don't want to enter a discussion, one has to accept the copyright rules even if one thinks they are not fit for modern technology.

It still begs the question if, when reproducing a Youtube video here on the forum, or on my Facebook page, I am actually breaking copyright rules? After all I have not asked the creator for their permission to reproduce it.