Thank you for bringing this issue to a topic.

Even more if the website is run commercial and the owner of the site uses pictures from copyright protected material without permission of the copyright owner to charge customers for this "service".

Please also see the thread at ADT "SG Video Customer Care" and others for a detailed copyright discussion.

Regards,

Christian, SG Video Customer Care

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Good thing I never reviewed some of SG's flicks, I used to do screen shots on all the movies I reviewed and never asked permission. Granted I never really had people pay for my "service" and there were only like 10/15 screen shots per movie - usually 2 per scene.

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The key word in SG Video's warning: "prohibits the unauthorized publication, copy..." is unauthorized . It's not required that you receive authorization from the owner of the copyright. There are cases, like fair-use, where you have been authorized by the copyright laws themselves.

According to Stanford University Libraries, "Fair use is a copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials forpurposes of commentary and criticism. For example, if you wish to criticize a novelist, you should have the freedom to quote a portion of the novelist's work without asking permission. Absent this freedom, copyright owners could stifle any negative comments about their work."

As Zoid accurately pointed out, if someone is taking a bunch of screenshots and posting them on their website as "content", they are not protected by fair-use. But using screenshots on a review site, is clearly protected by fair-use.

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Edited by - PL on 9/3/2005 12:18:10 AM

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