• FreeAdvice has a new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, effective May 25, 2018.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our Terms of Service and use of cookies.

Linking Images on Website

Accident - Bankruptcy - Criminal Law / DUI - Business - Consumer - Employment - Family - Immigration - Real Estate - Tax - Traffic - Wills   Please click a topic or scroll down for more.

kumar10

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? California

Based on some earlier postings, I understand that I may be violating copyrights if I copy and paste someone's image onto my commercial webpage (without their explicit permission).

My question is wrt the following two scenarios:

1. What if I "linked" the target image onto my webpage - in other words, when someone visits my webpage, they will not see the image until they click on a link which will show the image from the source site displayed in a popup?

2. What if I "included" the target image onto my website - in other words, the image would still be on the source website, but when someone visits my webpage, they will get to see the image embedded inside the page?

Any inputs would be greatly appreciated.
 


divgradcurl

Senior Member
General rules:

Linking is generally okay. However, if you link in such a way such that YOUR website goes and gets the picture and displays it on YOUR website, even if your website doesn't host the picture, this would probably be seen as copyright infringement. I am not aware of any caselaw on this point, but it doesn't seem to be any different from embedding the picture.

Embedding is never okay, unless you have permission.

In both cases, your website is creating an unauthorized duplicate of the work -- it's copying, without permission. There may be some tricky issues here -- by simply linking, the infringement doesn't occur until the user clicks on the link, so maybe you are not directly infringing -- but you would certainly be contributorily infringing, and a court would probably find you to be directly infringing as well.

The only way to avoid potential infringement is to either a) get permission from the owner of the picture to use the picture yourself, or b) link in such a way that the picture comes up in it's original context -- in other words, pop up a window that displays the webpage that the picture resides in, and not just the picture itself.
 

JJM

Junior Member
If I understand correctly he is talking about doing something like this . (If it would be infringing I hope it is ok seeing as this is the freeadvice.com logo) Is this really copying? Doesn't the website hosting it still get the hits on their site when someone accesses it? Doesn’t google sort of indirectly do this? And would this same sort of this still apply to emails and such?
 

divgradcurl

Senior Member
If I understand correctly he is talking about doing something like this . (If it would be infringing I hope it is ok seeing as this is the freeadvice.com logo) Is this really copying?

That wasn't my understanding of what the OP was talking about -- but if your version is correct, it's probably unlikely to be infringement. Maybe my understanding was incorrect.

Doesn't the website hosting it still get the hits on their site when someone accesses it?

That's irrelevant to the question of infringement.

Doesn’t google sort of indirectly do this?

You can't really point to Google and say hey, if they do, it must be legal. Google, and certain other net entities, have convinced Congress that they are "service providers" and have been given free passes to do what would be infringing if a regular website did it. So, using Google as a guide to what's legal for you its probably not a safe bet.

And would this same sort of this still apply to emails and such?

Not sure where you are going with this here.
 

JJM

Junior Member
divgradcurl said:
Not sure where you are going with this here.

Well I don't think I would call an email a published work. And if what I think he meant was infringing I'd think that whether or not it was published or not would make a difference otherwise bookmarking this sort of thing would be infringing.

but since it would be ok it doesn't really matter
 

kumar10

Junior Member
Linking Images on Website examples

Here are the two specific cases I was referring to in my posting.

For scenario 1:

Please refer to the following URL - specifically to the Sylvania TV on sale. http://www.edealinfo.com/DDCateg/televisions.shtml

The Sylvania TV image seems to come from http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000BTQPAO.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

A normal user visiting this site will not know that this image is coming from amazon.com. Is this legal?

For scenario 2:

JJM's example is what I was referring to.
 

Steel City Kid

Junior Member
If by linking you mean using the source of the image as it is, such that the image is loaded via the owners bandwidth, this is theft. It's also easy to trace back to you. Most sites call this "hot linking" and it can get you into trouble easily.

I'd avoid it. The only 100% legal way to do what you want is to ask permission to use the image, and assuming the other site has permission in the first place, grants you useage of the image in question. Anything else is too grey to screw with.

EDIT: Kumar, what you're doing is exactly what I was referring to. Not only is it 100% illegal to do that, but consider from a web aspect that they rewrite that image with something else like hardcore pornography, not that amazon would, but you can see that it would load that image into you page then. See what I am getting at?
 
Last edited:

The Occultist

Senior Member
Besides, you don't know whether or not Amazon gave permission for that. As previously stated, hot linking is illegal because you are using somebody else's bandwidth to host pictures or whatever, and you're getting the benefit of it. A lot of site owners will even post that they don't mind if you use their content as long as you aren't hot linking it. Simply talk to the owner of the content and get their permission. If you are afraid to do it, you're probably doing something illegal.
 

racer72

Senior Member
When I find out someone is hot linking or deep linking to any of my websites, I like to replace the content with some very disturbing content. Some dirtbag selling the same thing as me on Ebay found out the hard way a few weeks ago. The pictures of what I was selling was replaced with pictures of dog crap. The guy was not amused but what could he do, he stole my content. :D
 

Happy Trails

Senior Member
racer72 said:
When I find out someone is hot linking or deep linking to any of my websites, I like to replace the content with some very disturbing content. Some dirtbag selling the same thing as me on Ebay found out the hard way a few weeks ago. The pictures of what I was selling was replaced with pictures of dog crap. The guy was not amused but what could he do, he stole my content. :D

Funny, so basically the guy was selling $hit......
 

Find the Right Lawyer for Your Legal Issue!

Fast, Free, and Confidential
Top