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use of life images from google in non commerciel schoolwork

Marcus [PersonRank 0]

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
15 years ago10,909 views

Please help clearing this up.

Regarding Life images on google: http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Is my danish school pupils allowed o use all your images to non commerciel projects.

An example:

make a project where the pupils make a little photo story and with speak tells the story while zooming and panning the images. This little video is uploaded to a free danish school video sharing. All use is offcourse mentioned in the credit/byline.

Is that okay ?

Hope you can help me on this.

Kind regards Marcus , Denmark

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

(Please note this is an independent forum covering Google, not Google... for questions to Google you would need to ask Google...)

There are two things to consider:
1) what Google/ LIFE says is allowed
2) what laws says is allowed

As for 1), Google below pictures prints "For personal non-commercial use only". This seems like it might make your use OK, though I can't give out legal advice, because for starters, I'm not a lawyer. (I once asked google on which pics of the collection they considered public domain, but they weren't able to tell me.)

As for 2), some of the photos are actually in the public domain, so you can use them even commercially, and certainly non-commercially. Which photos specifically passed into the public domain was an issue of previous debate here. One commenter argued you'd know for sure that pics from before 1888 were in the public domain zone: http://blogoscoped.com/forum/145045.html#id145077

Also in regards to 2), beyond a picture being or not being in the public domain, there is the law of fair use, a legal way to reuse copyrighted images. A school project by itself has a lot going for it that may push the use into being "fair": http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Jérôme Flipo [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Which laws apply here, the US, the EU, and/or the Danish ones?

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> There are two things to consider:
> 1) what Google/ LIFE says is allowed
> 2) what laws says is allowed

This is an important point which is often misunderstood. The actual permission is the UNION of these permissions, not the INTERSECTION.

In other words, whatever permissions Google/Life grant to you are in addition to any rights you already have under general laws such as the expiry of copyright.

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> Which laws apply here, the US, the EU, and/or the Danish ones?

The US and Danish laws both apply.

If Google is hosting the content on their US servers, Google must comply with US laws.

The Danish school pupils must comply with Danish laws, which will generally be aligned with EU laws.

Marcus [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

Thanxx for all your replyes......anyone know a direct mail to the chief in command ? I cant find a email anywhere to a person from Google that might have an answer.

My personal opinion is that all these images should be hidden away if normal persons not are allowed to copy and post it on there blog. We live en a culture – we are a part of a culture – why musnt we share the culture – thats my opinion when its about non commerciel content...offcourse a photografer shall earn some if someone buys his picture for commerciel use. Its very difficult to avoid pupils to use google to find images for mediaproductions – but that isnt the right way to do it. They have to know the law, but I think the public spread of google images has a easy chance to make the pupils or the teacher criminal.
Its a new age. Blogs and sharing is whats in focus now, so the copyright is outages...they have to change it from this:
For personal non-commercial use only
to this:
For non-commercial use only. You must use it on blogs, websites and other.
Google places stuff just in front of us...it would be the same as if I take my super bike and places it without lock in down town all night ....then I invite people to steel it...google or the owners of the stuff is doing the same. Hide it behind a password or let us use it under fair law

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> anyone know a direct mail to the chief in command ? I
> cant find a email anywhere to a person from Google that
> might have an answer.

I usually write to press[put at-character here]google.com but that's just for, well, press.
This post may give further clues but it may also dated by now:
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-05-08-n87.html

But keep in mind what we said above – you have rights beyond whatever Google may tell you is allowed from their perspective (i.e. your fair use rights).

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