Hi Dan, Thank you and everyone else who has replied to this topic. I have some questions to clarify though, as everything is so confusing regarding the copyright problem. Based on my understanding you said, the claim to fair use may not be applicable to my case, since the TOS is a contract for the users of the site? Is that right? If someone who is in a site with a copyright disclaimer (and no TOS), and like my case, cannot hear back to get permission from the site to use in their study, can they claim fair use as the case? Yet I am not unwilling to get the authorization for using the screen captures, just that no one replied.. So the things that I can do now is to keep sending messages to the site's moderators and other emails and hope that someone replies? And if no one replies, I can either as you suggested to use the image and hope no one notices/cares or not use any images at all? This is a very difficult issue... And I have no idea who to ask in Taiwan... I will try to find someone who is familiar with Taiwanese copyright laws to ask too. Thanks again for your answers. Emily -- Min-Ju Liu (Emily) M.A. Student in Applied Linguistics Department of Foreign Languages and Literature National Sun Yat-sen University On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 6:07 AM, Dan L. Burk <dburk@uci.edu> wrote:
Er -- yes. However.
Not to turn this into a copyright lesson or anything, but -- first, the United States is also a Berne signatory, so if this were relevant, Gaia being located in California rather than Europe wouldn't necessarily matter.
Second, notice that under Article 10(2) below, illustration is a matter of national legislation. Not even all the EU nations have a quotation/illustration right (see, e.g., Annette's previous message, about the blog post where she discovered that Denmark mostly doesn't).
Third, in countries that have implemented such exceptions, permissible "quotation" and "illustration" can be extremely narrow -- not necessarily helpful to a situation like Emily's.
And, fourth -- oversimplifying a bit -- treaties seldom provide rights; they reflect agreements between nations to provide rights. So you generally have to look at national law rather than what is in treaties (especially *this* treaty) to know what is allowable.
Regards, DLB
In Europe, we have the reference of Berne Convention article 10 the use of illustrations for teaching for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works but Gaia Online is from CA.
http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html#P144_26032
Article 10
Certain Free Uses of Works: 1. Quotations; 2. Illustrations for teaching; 3. Indication of source and author (1) It shall be permissible to make quotations from a work which has already been lawfully made available to the public, provided that their making is compatible with fair practice, and their extent does not exceed that justified by the purpose, including quotations from newspaper articles and periodicals in the form of press summaries. (2) It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union, and for special agreements existing or to be concluded between them, to permit the utilization, to the extent justified by the purpose, of literary or artistic works by way of illustration in publications, broadcasts or sound or visual recordings for teaching, provided such utilization is compatible with fair practice. (3) Where use is made of works in accordance with the preceding paragraphs of this Article, mention shall be made of the source, and of the name of the author if it appears thereon.
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