While window shopping on eBay I came across some steam loco magnets, not bad magnets but I thought I recognized the illustrations from somewhere, a closer look showed the locos had model railway couplings and then I twigged that they were from the Hornby catalogue.

I sent the seller a question about whether they had permission from Hornby to use the illustrations and got the reply that they had found them by doing a google search.

I would have thought that taking other people's illustrations off the Internet and using them for commercial gain would be illegal but probably not too easy for the copyright holder to stop.

I don't intend to take the matter any further but would be interested to know how the Internet affects copyrights.

Regards

Veronica.

Quote from: silly moo link=topic=11716.msg120190#msg120
I would have thought that taking other people's illustrations off the Internet and using them for commercial gain would be illegal but probably not too easy for the copyright holder to stop.

Got it in one Hornby could pursue a breach of copyright, but probably not financially viable or worth the adverse publicity unless it threatens their image or income significantly


Paul

"Copyright and the Internet

Material that can be found on the Internet will of course also be subject to copyright. There are a number of licensing schemes that are popular with online publication and allow some free (normally non-commercial) use, the most notable being GPL and Creative Commons.

If you are making/distributing copies of work that you find on the Internet you should check that the licence for the work (or instructions on the site) allow this and that the site you obtained the work from is itself acting legally. If there is no such licence, do not use the work until you have the permission of the copyright owner."

Taken from this website

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p27_work_of_others

P.S. I have copied the exact wording from the site because I believe it falls under 'Fair Use'.

The fair use point really depends on the context.  For example a Hornby dealer using the Hornby stock photos to sell Hornby stock is OK, but using the Hornby photo to advertise something different probably wouldn't be.

Basically in most cases you should get permission before using things.

In this modern world copyright is broken in millions of cases every day, it is next to impossible to police and in many cases I doubt that anyone really cares, that doesn't make it right though.

I have had dealings with Copyright in the past when making a recording of other peoples music, I paid the royalties and enjoyed peace of mind.

With regards to a photo taken from Hornby I doubt Hornby would care to much, seems they are preoccupied trying to find someone to make their models, very sad.

i was too lazy to take photo's of the mrs old hair straighteners when i stuck them on ebay so googled an image,,,, GHD had ebay remove the listing as fakes, (they better not have been they cost me £150 in a posh salon)

Umm small point

*There is no such thing as "fair use" in British law*

Our fawning big media worshipping politicians of all types have in fact spent decades making sure that even ripping your own CD to an MP3 player is still an offience despite every single report and recommendation saying it needs fixing. They've still not acted on the Gowers report and all the others before it except by commisioning "further" reviews.

There is an incredibly narrow "fair dealing" exemption but you'd need to be a lawyer (and to afford one) to thread anything through that particular needle.

Fair use is a concept in quite a few countries (notably the USA where its the proper legal term for it), but not here. In the UK you can (and people have) been taken to court and clobbered for merely linking to a copy of something that was an unauthorised copy of something owned by big media companies, and in some cases the police have even then tried to go after the message board owners for "conspiracy"

Welcome to police state UK.

Alan

Thats amazing Alan, I think our coppers are to busy trying to catch criminals and look for lost backpackers to be worried about some Joe copying his CDs to a Computer, the things I hear about my beloved home country the more I think my parents did the right thing by emigrating to Oz, mind you its only taken 55 years to start thinking that way 

I wonder if some of the forum members might have to review their avatars? Some look decidedly iffy, whether of real stations, real model trains or whatever.

Quote from: EtchedPixels on February 26, 2013, 03:05:01 PM

Fair use is a concept in quite a few countries (notably the USA where its the proper legal term for it), but not here. In the UK you can (and people have) been taken to court and clobbered for merely linking to a copy of something that was an unauthorised copy of something owned by big media companies, and in some cases the police have even then tried to go after the message board owners for "conspiracy"

Welcome to police state UK.

Alan

umm another small point.

some of these message board owners (especially the big 'downloads' and 'file sharing' ones) make a lot of money from linking illegally copied files. Far more than the small developers whose software they share while pretending not to know about it and blaming it all on their users.

We take a lot of damage from shared copies of our games (apart from the immediate hit on sales and chart position from downloads that aren't being paid for or counted, we're still paying for the bandwidth those games use when they connect to our servers). For a small developer that's a really big hit.

Quote from: Zwilnik on February 26, 2013, 09:12:55 PM
some of these message board owners (especially the big 'downloads' and 'file sharing' ones) make a lot of money from linking illegally copied files.

Like say Google and Bing... 

See if it wasn't a police state they wouldn't just go around picking on tiny people most of whom had nothing to do with it. They'd have a legal system which was honest and clear and if linking unlawful content was a crime would apply it to everyone.

Quote
We take a lot of damage from shared copies of our games

I know several academic researchers working in this area who would for the most part disagree with you, having looked in detail at buying habits and spend of gamers.

Perhaps a debate for somewhere else

Alan (who escaped the game industry long ago thankfully)

Quote from: Pengy on February 26, 2013, 07:10:45 AM
"Copyright and the Internet

Material that can be found on the Internet will of course also be subject to copyright. There are a number of licensing schemes that are popular with online publication and allow some free (normally non-commercial) use, the most notable being GPL and Creative Commons.

If you are making/distributing copies of work that you find on the Internet you should check that the licence for the work (or instructions on the site) allow this and that the site you obtained the work from is itself acting legally. If there is no such licence, do not use the work until you have the permission of the copyright owner."

Taken from this website

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p27_work_of_others

P.S. I have copied the exact wording from the site because I believe it falls under 'Fair Use'.

Are you sure that what you have copied above isn't copyrighted? You may be in breach of copying their text. I may be too now 

Maybe people over here in Oz don't take Copyright seriously but I would say while surfing the net it is almost impossible to avoid breach of copyright.

One example is when a model railway fan is looking for information about a loco or even location, where do you look ? the web of course and what do many of us do ? download plans, pictures or information relating to the chosen subject.

I believe like most Aussies that blatant copyright piracy is wrong, that is to say downloading a movie or piece of music knowing full well that it is covered by copyright is wrong, unless a picture plan or piece of information is marked with the "C" how would the average person know what is copyrighted and what is not.

I fully understand that Webmasters and Forum owners have to be well ant truly on the ball, breach of copyright can financially destroy a person, I guess we all have to err on the safe side but it doesn't change the fact that surfing the web is like dodging a minefield.

Quote from: EtchedPixels on February 26, 2013, 10:06:43 PM

Quote from: Zwilnik on February 26, 2013, 09:12:55 PM

We take a lot of damage from shared copies of our games

I know several academic researchers working in this area who would for the most part disagree with you, having looked in detail at buying habits and spend of gamers.

Perhaps a debate for somewhere else

Until academics actually start writing games and realising just how difficult it is to make money from them when big sites (including Google and Bing) are simply giving them away illegally, I tend to regard them as analysts rather than researchers.

The variables have all changed in the games market nowadays, especially on mobile. If you're one of the big guys, the damage done by file sharing can be minimised by a decent marketing budget and good sales. If you're a smaller developer, the downloads directly impact your chart position as they're not downloaded through the app store. When it's a free game that relies on chart position in its first weeks for its initial push, even losing a few hundred downloads in each territory can lose you a top ten position that would have kick started decent numbers (and resulting in-app purchases or advertising revenue).

but as you say, more of a debate for somewhere else. People don't want to hear about the guys doing the work not getting paid. they just want free stuff.

My avatar is certainly not iffy, if it was it would be more
interesting...

However I believe that internet  images etc are usually
subject to copyright although the volume of these flying
about might make them difficult to regulate.

Similar situation to tweets etc where various galoots
think they can denigrate individuals accusing them of
all kinds of misdemeanors.