Would it violate copyright laws...

[Comicopolis]

The answer is ... do it!

[Chip Cataldo]

I once won a case and got an $850,000 judgment...

 

Even without knowing your percentage I have to ask if you'd like to adopt me and my family.

 

Peace,

 

Chip

[Tony S]

[quote=the blob

 

2) Fair use is generally an academic/press defense, and even then, permission is usually received. If you see articles incorporating panels from a comic I'd venture to guess they got permission first.

 

My personal experience only qualifies me to to comment on the above. I have done some writing for comic related publications including a number of articles for Comic Book Marketplace. No permissions were sought. The articles were of an academic nature and in fact the editor was a college professor and well aware of fair use law. I also doubt seriously that anyone at the various fanzines published over the years ever thought about contacting DC before running an article on the LSH.

 

 

5) Generally, where infringing sales aren't involved (and even sometimes where they are when it's a dicey issue) these things are done via cease and desist letters before litigation is commenced, so you'd be able to take them off youtube I suppose if they had a problem. You, of course, can't assume they would do this, but I can see a judge being pretty irritated with them if they didn't give you an opportunity to fix the problem given that this is just for fun and not for money.

 

Just reading about this I would guess one could be pretty certain this would be the case. Even the daycare example quoted got a cease and desist letter first. And in fairness to Disney, the daycare was a for profit business located in Florida.

 

As others have noted, there are entire comic books being read aloud along with images on youtube.

[The Less Blob]

My personal experience only qualifies me to to comment on the above. I have done some writing for comic related publications including a number of articles for Comic Book Marketplace. No permissions were sought. The articles were of an academic nature and in fact the editor was a college professor and well aware of fair use law. I also doubt seriously that anyone at the various fanzines published over the years ever thought about contacting DC before running an article on the LSH.

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The problem isn't "an article about LSH", but copying pages/panels/covers from the comic and putting them in the article. I think it's tricky. For all you or I know Comic Book Marketplace had a pre-existing agreement in place with all the comic cos to use their stuff within this context.

 

Folks try get permission to be safe and potentially avoid irritation later. My wife is in academia and her department policy is to try and get permission when extensively quoting other's articles or using their images/charts for academic purposes even though fair use would protect that.

 

Fair use/parody and all that should protect you at the end of the day, but that doesn't mean you can't get sued and then spend a bunch of money/time defending the claim.

[The Less Blob]

I once won a case and got an $850,000 judgment...

 

Even without knowing your percentage I have to ask if you'd like to adopt me and my family.

 

Peace,

 

Chip

 

I wish. I was a salaried employee at the time, albeit well compensated. My firm, however, raked in about $400,000 in fees on the case as the $850K included an attorney fee award. Oh the good old days when I actually had money in the bank rather than a pile of unpaid bills. During my 9 years of government service I have become rather downwardly mobile. The income has gone down over 50% while the expenses have doubled.

[Tony S]

My personal experience only qualifies me to to comment on the above. I have done some writing for comic related publications including a number of articles for Comic Book Marketplace. No permissions were sought. The articles were of an academic nature and in fact the editor was a college professor and well aware of fair use law. I also doubt seriously that anyone at the various fanzines published over the years ever thought about contacting DC before running an article on the LSH.

-----------------

 

The problem isn't "an article about LSH", but copying pages/panels/covers from the comic and putting them in the article. I think it's tricky. For all you or I know Comic Book Marketplace had a pre-existing agreement in place with all the comic cos to use their stuff within this context.

 

CBM ran pictures of pages/panels/covers. I spoke to the Editor numerous times and he stated to me that what they were doing was covered under fair use. He also stated that in an academic/scholarly article, you could legally reproduce images like covers or panels. And that there was a "twice up / half down rule'. The images needed to either be 200% or more or 50% or less of the original in size.

 

Folks try get permission to be safe and potentially avoid irritation later. My wife is in academia and her department policy is to try and get permission when extensively quoting other's articles or using their images/charts for academic purposes even though fair use would protect that.

 

I really don't mean to debate, but there is more than one side that needs to be considered here. I understand why copyright holders have to be vigilante in defending their material - if they don't they risk eventually loosing the copyright. And I understand why you and attorney's in general would give the advice you offer here. You are just suggesting the safest course. But the USA has fair use laws (not all countries do) and consumers have rights under those laws to use copyrighted material. If we ask for permission to do things that we are lawfully entitled to do, it's not long before we have essentially given up those rights. This principle, this idea, is why groups like the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) exist.

 

I would take a moment to point out that covers and interior panels are posted up all the time on these boards. What exactly is the difference? Is it your opinion that all of us should seek permission before doing so? If that were the case - shouldn't CGC who provides this board be requiring we provide such permission before allowing pictures - lest they get dragged into it?

 

Fair use/parody and all that should protect you at the end of the day, but that doesn't mean you can't get sued and then spend a bunch of money/time defending the claim.

 

No one wants to be sued - and if the courts dispense justice as the founding fathers intended then lawsuits lacking merit should result in the plaintiff picking up the tab. In your examples listed earlier, your clients (the copyright holders) had suffered some demonstrable loss even if substantially smaller than the ultimate award. I don't see how a court or better still a jury would find that a comic book publisher suffered any harm from one of their comic books being read on youtube with children providing different character voices.

 

In fact I -and I think most people - should we find ourselves on such a jury would be looking for some way to punish the publisher for bringing such a suit.