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Post by stogadis (GER) on Apr 20, 2011 6:26:26 GMT
Hi everyone!
One important topic when it comes to sim horses, is copyright.
A long time it was common just to take pictures from google.
In Germany someone started relative early to teach the people what copyright is and what conclusions you draw from it:
Use of pictures you shot by yourself
Use of images under foreign copyright ONLY after you asked the person and became the clear authorization to use them.
ALLWAYS put an information about the copyright owner on the horses page (and with information i don´t mean name but also a possibilty to contact the person)
This is what the german law demands from us.
Like i heart this "teaching people about copyright" has started much later or never really started, in other countries. Now i´m interested what the law of other countries say about this topic, from where you take you pictures and all in all whats your opinion on this =)
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ionic
New Member
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Post by ionic on Apr 20, 2011 7:43:51 GMT
The basics are pretty much the same in Finnish law. The owner of rights is the only one who can give permission for photo usage and decide the conditions.
The awareness of copyrights has been quite high for several years in Finnish horse SIM scene and use of illegal photos is strongly discouraged in the discussion forums (sometimes the scolding is a way beyond any acceptable behavior and actually a lot worse than the "crime" itself).
I have been in the SIM horse world for a decade or so and have looked for and asked permissions for thousands of photos so I have quite a photo collection available. I have also some personal relations to several horse owners and breeders is Europe and USA. We also use quite much for example photos of Bob Langrish and other photo galleries which have allowed the use in virtual stables.
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Post by Nessa (GER) on Apr 20, 2011 9:00:41 GMT
ionic : Really ? I heard a complete other story about the finnish way of using photos to be honest. A finnish sim horse breeder told me, that the finnish stable owners dont really know about copyright laws and that the right in Finland says, you can use everything as long as the page is a non commercial page. Its strange to hear a complete other side of the story now, but I believe you, when you say, its similar to Germany.
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ionic
New Member
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Post by ionic on Apr 20, 2011 9:43:08 GMT
Nessa, I really would like to meet this person, who has told you that kind of things! No, we cannot use anything we like in Finland. I cannot say if the copyright law is stricter or not in Finland than in other countries as I don't know about other countries copyright law. There is absolutely no law which says anything can be used as long as the page is non-commercial. As I wrote, the owner of rights can decide of the use of the photos and the credits must be given.
Majority of Finnish sim breeders are careful with copyrights and photo usage. Or at least it seems to be so, honestly I don't know how many people just pick up some nice photo (from non-commercial site), write some sensible c-markings on the page and everyone thinks everything is ok... And always there are these sweet 8 or so year old girls who have just learned about virtual horses and eagerly they'll put together a stable of their own and take the photos in where ever they can, hot-linking etc. They don't usually come to the popular SIM forums and if they would, their stables would get a serious and not-very-encouraging tongue-lashing (which I really disapprove personally, not that I think breaking the law is okay).
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Post by Mimi [GER] on Apr 20, 2011 12:59:59 GMT
Nessa, I really would like to meet this person, who has told you that kind of things! No, we cannot use anything we like in Finland. I cannot say if the copyright law is stricter or not in Finland than in other countries as I don't know about other countries copyright law. There is absolutely no law which says anything can be used as long as the page is non-commercial. As I wrote, the owner of rights can decide of the use of the photos and the credits must be given. Majority of Finnish sim breeders are careful with copyrights and photo usage. Or at least it seems to be so, honestly I don't know how many people just pick up some nice photo (from non-commercial site), write some sensible c-markings on the page and everyone thinks everything is ok... And always there are these sweet 8 or so year old girls who have just learned about virtual horses and eagerly they'll put together a stable of their own and take the photos in where ever they can, hot-linking etc. They don't usually come to the popular SIM forums and if they would, their stables would get a serious and not-very-encouraging tongue-lashing (which I really disapprove personally, not that I think breaking the law is okay). Really? Sounds like the Germans. xD In Germany there is nearly the same system. "Two different worlds" of Sim Stables and when they met the "illegal world" gets some really unfriendly and discouraging comments. |
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Post by gespenst, FIN (admin) on Apr 20, 2011 16:21:32 GMT
There are kinda two worlds in Finland too. On the other side are those little 8-year old girls who have just learnt what is the internet and happily smash photos from google image search for their horses. Then is the advanced side where people attack very strongly everyone whose photo they are suspicious about, and then it usually solves out that the photos really are legal. It's really stupid imo. But it's clearly seen that nobody likes users of illegal photos for the sake of the reputation of the whole sim community.
In every country there are simmers who don't care or just don't know about the copyright law. But most of Finnish simmers care and know.
We have some pages where people have put their photos to share them for free. They are popular amongst younger simmers and older people don't like to use them so much, because the same photos can be found from every other novice sim stable.
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Post by Heidie [fin] on Apr 30, 2011 12:44:23 GMT
ionic just told about finnish copyright "habits" so I won't. I just have to say that I'm so suprised about swedish and american people's styles in copyrightmarkings. Usually I can't see any copyrights anywhere? I don't know anything about swedish or american copyright laws, but I feels wierd that everybody use photos without markings (maybe because it's so big thing in Finland).
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Post by Tessa {USA} on Apr 30, 2011 13:42:19 GMT
It's basically the same in the US as it is in Germany, though I think the US has a larger amount of people that don't ask for permission and that don't credit the site they found them at.
I've always asked to use pictures for as long as I can remember and a few years back I was the first person (in the US) to credit the place where I found the pictures and the real life horse.
This is just a rough example of how I use pictures on my site.
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Post by gespenst, FIN (admin) on Apr 30, 2011 15:42:42 GMT
Well it doesn't always mean that if a photo has no credits it is illegal (: If I remember right the law says that you can use photos without crediting them unless the copyright holder tells you to. But it really is a bit weird if no photos have credits.
We seldom name the real horse in the photos just to avoid misunderstandings: it's not nice e.g. if a foreign person googles the name of a horse and ends up to a sim game horse page and thinks that it's a real horse there.
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Post by Sunstone [SWE] on Apr 30, 2011 16:17:50 GMT
The copyright laws are basically the same in Sweden too. You're only required to mark or give credit if the photographer asks for it, maybe that's why you see a lot of unmarked pictures in the Swedish stables. And unfortunately it's quite common to use pictures here without asking for permission.
For a couple of months now, there has been a rule at the Swedish association (SISF) that you may not publish any material at the site that you don't have permission to use. So any threads containing illegal pictures or where they are offered/sold gets deleted, which I think will encourage more members to photograph their own pictures or ask others for permission.
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Post by Tessa {USA} on Apr 30, 2011 16:49:54 GMT
Im not saying that it is illegal without having credits on them  Im just saying that I do know that in the US a lot of people don't ask for use of pictures and that I was one of the first to start putting the credits on my stable pages for them. We've had different discussions on them in the past about it and I was seriously surprised at home many people said they didn't ask for permission.
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Post by Malin (SWE) on May 9, 2011 8:22:52 GMT
Sunstone is right, a way more then there should be are using pictures they don't have legal right to. I can honestly say I was one of them, untill like a month or 2 ago? I have asked around now and Almost change just about every horse in the stable to pictures I have permission to use. There are some that haven't changed yet, mainly because I am still searching for images or waiting for answer if I can use them or not. I have also made it into a habit of credit the photographers under the photo album and I also have a photo credit page. And I feel a lot better doing this legally. What really got me to change was that I took a picture editing class on a univercity and the teacher mainlt scared the crap out of me with his copyright talk and about all the suit (sue) *what ever the right spelling is* you could get for one picture. And then also because I before that didn't fell all right about it. So I am going legal But yeah our Swedish copyright law is pretty much the same. |
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Post by Nessa (GER) on May 18, 2011 6:59:55 GMT
I found a stable yesterday, which has pictures of a german page, which clearly does NOT allow to use their pictures (I had the permission once, but since 90% of the people, who were allowed to use the pictures, did not do what the owner asked for, they stopped giving the allowance and told us all to remove the pics)...The stable owner put the copyright under the pics and so on, so it looks kinda legal, but... it clearly is not. Well, I wont tell the name, I just wanted to tell this, maybe the owner reads this thread and thinks about it I think, it does not hurt to ask for permission. And you are save if you asked and got the permission A friend of me used pictures (it was around 2002 or something) on her page once which were copyrighted by Erwin Escher, a famous photographer (mostly arabians). He caught her doing this and she had to pay for every photo she used. How much that was ? Seriously, a lot. It was the amount of the triple charge for each photo he usually takes, and multiplied by the number of photos she used it was far more than 200€ back then. Most people dont get caught, but who knows...? So I only used pictures I am allowed to use, its much more save and it makes me feel good |
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![Sunstone [SWE] Avatar](http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Memmish/Design/Avatar.jpg){kind=avatar}
Im just saying that I do know that in the US a lot of people don't ask for use of pictures and that I was one of the first to start putting the credits on my stable pages for them.