We enter day two without a response from CBS Outdoor on why they used a Spacing cover in their street furniture renderings (we’ve now sent three emails asking to speak with them). Click on the image to see a larger version.
If you don’t know what we’re talking about, check out the post from Sunday.
In Spacing’s short existence this our third incident of people or companies not understanding the meaning of copyright or how to pick up and phone and ask for permission. There was the National Post fiasco during the World Cup last July, there was mayoral candidate Jane Pitfield’s direct plagiarism of a John Lorinc column during the recent municipal election, and now this.
17 comments
out of curiosity, do you have/need cbs outdoor’s permission to post their renderings on spacing wire and to publish them on flickr?
Yes we do. It is part of public documents that the city gave the media on CD.
Yeah, Spacing keeps getting its copyright infringed, and all you end up doing in response is effectively apologizing to the infringer. Spacing will engage in any form of activism as long as it’s ineffective. When your copyright is infringed, the appropriate weapon is a bazooka, not a lace glove.
We can republish excerpts from the street-furniture drawings under hte fair-dealing exemption two ways– fore review and criticism and as news reporting. The concept of “public document” is legally meaningless in Canadian copyright law. (For example, government documents, rather illogically, are still protected by copyright.)
Joe, does anyone ever do anything you do like?
“When your copyright is infringed, the appropriate weapon is a bazooka […]”
There’s no such thing. A regional, quarterly periodical isn’t going to crush CBS Outdoor in a years-long intellectual property suit, culminating in a ticker-tape victory parade and huge yet typographically tasteful headlines in the New York Times.[*]
Especially not over a 20à —20-pixel derivative work.
Or by “bazooka” do you mean that Spacing should work itself up into a painfully boring unilateral feud with CBS, infusing the Wire with oblique stewing over ever-more-imagined slights?
[*]Stolen joke, brilliant in its original context.
Why aren’t you suing?
Sue for what damages, thickslab?
It would surprise me if this constituted a copyright violation. (It would also surprise me if CBS Outdoor’s permission were required to post a limited number of the publicly-filed renderings on Spacing Wire.)
The outrage seems not to be over CBS’s illegitimate profiting of Spacing’s work — it is very hard not to view the amount reproduced, as trivial — but over the linking of the two brands. This is an issue of moral rights, referred in federal copyright law as the “integrity of the work”.
I’m with Eric S. Smith. I don’t tend to think that CBS’ apparent reproduction of a Spacing cover in a tiny portion of a render of a proposed part of a bus shelter, is something that harms the integrity of Spacing’s work. Of course, I’m just some onlooker. Still … really?
Hey, Anon et al.: It’s illegal to duplicate all or a substantial portion of a work without permission and in a way not covered by exemptions. Tell me, do you think the cover of a magazine is a substantial portion? How about the illustration on that cover? It was duplicated in its entirety.
There may in fact be an application of droit moral, which is actually the core of copyright (not the portions about unauthorized duplication).
The argument that Spacing is small and CBS is gigantic, so nothing can be done, undermines Spacing’s entire reason for being. Of course, that’s just how they’ve been acting: “We’re too small to do anything but beg for an apology.†Well, they aren’t. They *can*, in fact, sue their pants off. Or – how’s this for an option? – simply negotiate a fair but healthy settlement, whose details would by necessity not be published here until they were ready.
Really, You People seem to be willing to take any action to effect change in the public sphere… unless it might actually do something. Spacing and its contributors keep getting their copyrights infringed and the response is always to stick out the lower lip, cast the eyes downward, and beg for forgiveness. The correct weapon is, in fact, a bazooka. Maybe somebody could rig up a little trailer so it could be carted to CBS’s lawyers by sustainable alternative transportation.
Joe makes the correct analysis, I think. But his characterization of Spacing is insulting and unfair.
What a tempest in a tea pot. The real isssue is what CBS was thinking when they did it. Its posible, as hard as many may find to accept, that CBS thought it was a good idea and hoped that it might win favour with Spacing readers; who have the interest to possibly steer the outcome of this debate. Thats probably the plan; does anyone think that they did it to provoke an angry response that could reflect poorly on them in public ?
I think readers are more concerned that Spacing may be associated with big bad CBS and I do think that in that case there has been a violation of moral rights (althought this was the basis for copyright law it can be a loose concept that varies from place to place) just as there would be if GMC used the cover of Greenpeace magazine in an SUV ad.
Of course everybody seems to be a copyright expert these days and as somebody who deals with it in the real world where real people get sued by real people the reality is that Spacing does not really have many cheap and easy options at hand. This is a time when similar companies threaten to sue another public interest web site for basically telling the factual truth (dont need copyriht protection for that!). A solution may be to trade infringments or make a deal and proceed anyway. Many documentary film makers are following this route; basically saying we think this is fair solution and if you don’t then sue us. It puts reverses the onus back on the larger company to start spending money first. And money is usually where threats and real action are seperated. Spacing should expose the infringment, call it infringment officially in a statment that is posted, and infringe CBS on on the Spacing site in an equal manner. As goofy as this may sound, people are starting to use this approach as a way of fighting back without loosing all their money.
Would you be offended if we started calling you “Bazooka Joe”?
Oh no! The first image is now private! Sad!
“[…] infringe CBS on on the Spacing site in an equal manner.â€Â
Thus putting Spacing in the wrong as well, and in the sights of one of these bazookas that Joe Clark is selling?
The documentary filmmakers you mention are presumably enriching their works by using another party’s content in a potentially infringing matter. Even if Spacing did want to stoop to ripping off CBS, does CBS have anything that Spacing would want to use?
I imagine they could start streaming episodes of CSI.
Here are two good sites on what is going on in copyright right now:
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/fair_use
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/
Scott, those might be good sites for U.S. copyright issues, but I don’t see anything there about Canadian copyright law. I think it’s fairly clear Canadian law applies in this situation.
And no, the two aren’t the same. (See the government’s explanation of Canada’s fair dealing principle for a very brief comparison.)
I should point out that just because the CBs renderings were given to the City does not mean there is permission to republish them. There are many “public” documents that one has to go to City hall to see but cannot be copied without the originators permission such as developers drawings. For the street RFP it is obvious that the renderings would have to be seen and seen by the public but none of the companies has given up any ownership of the designs or renderings and could in fact ask Spacing not to show them. That would be a dumb but perfectly legal idea.
The fair dealing concept is under change here and in the US. After years of frustration those in Cultural industries are moving forward on both sides off the border to set new legal precedents. Fair dealing/fair use actually is similar in both countries in that it remains somewhat undefined. The “broader application” of US courts has narrowed over the years and in fact in the US, and more and more here, it is the THREAT of lawsuits that is in fact “policing” the fair deal/fair use issue instead of the courts; hence the movement for new legal precedents.
There will be a Canadian doc on this and how it relates to the internet coming out very soon.