I think publishing someone else's image does indeed trigger copyright regardless of where it is hosted, and linking to the copy on their server further does them economic "harm" in terms of bandwidth costs, even if it doesn't really cost them anything extra that month.
See http://blog.2createawebsite.com/2010/08/16/are-you-using-images-on-your-website-illegally/ For an article written by somebody who sends DMCA takedown notices for a living. Adi was right that this is essentially a fair use question. You have to ask yourself about the purpose of the use, commerciality, educational/journalistic use etc. I happen to believe in a more expansive vision of fair use than the limited version staked out so far in US courts, but the only way to expand those courts' definitions is consideration if more unauthorized use circumstances. Not that I would let a matter like this get to court, because I would probably be responsive to any takedown requests, formal or not. Consider how Google image search makes a fair use argument with its hosting of images without permission. They mitigate their infringement by responsiveness to takedowns, linking, and hosting only thumbnailed versions themselves. I cited a thought experiment in the first pages of my thesis http://ottonomy.net/portfolio/thesis showing just how much our lives bump up against copyright law every day. The law wasn't originally intended to apply to the masses like this, but copying an image on our own website is actually one of the more blatant offenses we might commit in everyday life. Nate.
_______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss
