Using copyrighted pictures

Question

I agree it is very useful to use pictures when explaining something. The most typical example for electronics.se is clipping schematics and diagrams from data sheets. However, by the strict letter of the law, a data sheet is copyrighted in its entirety. It's probably never a real problem, because data sheets are also intended to be promotional material, so the more a certain manufacturer's data sheet gets mentioned, the better is is for them. But still, I would like us to be on the safe side. Thus, my question:

• Is it o.k. to clip information (pictures, tables, whatever) form a copyrighted source?

And a related questions that may lead to an answer:

• Is it o.k. to clip something short (just one diagram, maybe), as long as you mention the source, because it is covered as Fair Use, as linked in an answer to this question on the stackoverflow meta?

Even sources like wikipedia need to be considered, because, without being an expert, my guess would be it is o.k. to use freely licensed material only as long as you mention the author or source.

I have the feeling that the most troublesome feature of the site could be the one that clips entire pictures from other websites, because the way the feature is designed, the source is not linked automatically.

Answer 1

The bottom line is you are responsible for anything you post. Here is some of the legal speak:

Subscriber represents, warrants and agrees that it will not contribute any Subscriber Content that (a) infringes, violates or otherwise interferes with any copyright or trademark of another party, (b) reveals any trade secret, unless Subscriber owns the trade secret or has the owner’s permission to post it, (c) infringes any intellectual property right of another or the privacy or publicity rights of another, ...

Basically when you post something you specifically state that you have the right to do so. You also are saying that you grant SE the right to do with the content however they want.

A fair use claim can be made for some content, but my personal opinion is that we should be able to generate the content ourselves. This means schematics get drawn out by hand or use a schematic capture software. If you don't have any software to use then check out this question. For figures, they can be drawn out by hand or in paint or excel or matlab or you get the point.

As far as you bringing up questions about Wikipedia, they share their content under a CC Attribution-ShareAlike License and if you notice in the bottom right of the SE pages, we are shared under the same license. Don't hold me responsible for this, but I believe this means that you can copy and cite from wikipedia and be in the free and clear. I still think we should be able to create our own content though.

Answer 2

It is OK to use fragments of copyrighted material under fair use.

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-b.html

The four factors judges consider are:

1. the purpose and character of your use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market.

Answer 3

If you do it right you can embed a picture from another website without copying the picture - the picture remains on the target website only.

The format is: "![Picture Title][index]" and further down "[index]: picture URL"

Example:

![My Picture][1]

  [1]: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_com/images/srpr/logo1w.png

Which gives:

Not copied to imgur, and the picture owner can't really complain.

So, if in doubt about if you are allowed to copy a picture or not, don't - use the picture directly.

Answer 4

FWIW I tend to add a link to where I got images from - most don't seem to.

PDFs etc with images that are part of a page make it not possible to link to an image directly or even to copy the image directly.

I either screen capture and upload an image version of a PDF image or save to a dropbox location and link to that. I've generally stopped doing the latter.