Can I use images fetched by Google Image APIs to use as content images on my webapp? I have a webapp where people can manage their packing plans for outdoor activities. In those packing plans they can add items like backpacks, boots, etc. They are also able to upload images for backpacks. I assume that users might search for those images with the Google image search, download them and upload them in my webapp. Is this somewhat illegal in Europe (Germany)? I am a bit unsure since a user can upload arbitrary images on every platform like here on stackoverflow I can simply upload an image of a backpack as my profile picture. This isn't considered a problem with copyright/usage laws is it?
If the image is protected by copyright (as most modern images are), the uploading it as a profile picture or using it on a web site is copyright infringement unless one has permission from the copyright owner, or an exception to copyright applies. If copyright infringement occurs, the owner can sue for damages, or issue a takedown notice, or both, but does not have to do either. In the vast majority of cases, no one will do anything about such infringements if the owner (or the owner's authorized agent) does not. All the above is true in all of Europe and North America, ad in most other countries as well. Permission can be granted directly by the copyright owner to a user, or granted by the owner releasing the image (or other wrk) under a license. Google's general developer TOS Document](https://policies.google.com/terms#toc-content) reads (in relevant part): Google content Some of our services include content that belongs to Google — for example, many of the visual illustrations you see in Google Maps. You may use Google’s content as allowed by these terms and any service-specific additional terms, but we retain any intellectual property rights that we have in our content. Don’t remove, obscure, or alter any of our branding, logos, or legal notices. If you want to use our branding or logos, please see the Google Brand Permissions page. Other content Finally, some of our services give you access to content that belongs to other people or organizations — for example, a store owner’s description of their own business, or a newspaper article displayed in Google News. You may not use this content without that person or organization’s permission, or as otherwise allowed by law. The views expressed in other people or organizations’ content are theirs, and don’t necessarily reflect Google’s views. It would seem that each Google service has its own terms which indicate in what ways one may use Google content. It would further seem that content originally obtained from others and distributed by Google will have some set of permissions granted by the uploader. These must be checked for each image, I would think. There is no single one-rule-fits-all answer. I gather that the APIs will have methods for determining which images are from Google itself, and which from others, and some method for indicating the permissions that accompany an image. A user of these APIs must learn how to extract ownership and permissions metadata for an image obtained via the API, and how to use it (or not use it) in accordance with the available permissions. Now let us look at exceptions to copyright. These vary by country. Several European countries have an exception for &quot;personal use&quot; which might cover the profile pictures, but probably will not cover general use on a web site. There are exceptions for &quot;news reporting&quot; which might cover images illustrating recent news events. Some have exceptions for educational or instructional use. The UK (and several othe countries) have the concept of fair dealing which bundles several exceptions together. This might cover an image used in a personal profile, use of images in news reports, and limited educational use, but will probably not cover general use on a website. The US has the concept of fair use which is rather complex, but does not specifically include a &quot;personal use&quot; exception. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? and other threads here tagged with fair-use for more on this. It is somewhat unlikely that any of these exceptions will cover general use on a web site of images obtained via Google APIs and used beyond the permissions listed in the metadata accompanying the image. But it will very much depend on the specifics of the case. If the image fetching is doe not by you in building a site or an app, but by your app's users who may then use them improperly, strictly speaking that is each user's own responsibility, you cannot effectively police what your users do, and have no duty to try. It will be a good practice if you include text explaining to your users that not all images are free for general use. You might want to link to the Google TOS. If the API returns metadata indicating the permissions status of each image fetched, yo0u might well want to provide this metadata in a useful form to your users. You might even want to allow a user to filter images obtained by permission status. But whether this is practical or useful to users will depend on the purpose and design of an app.
If that is the licence that Uber are operating under then they are breaking it. This is not legal in that Google can sue them for copyright breach. However, this is the licence that Google offer to the average person on the street for which they pay Google nothing. It is entirely possible that Uber and Google have come to terms on a completely different licence arrangement which may involve Uber handing over slabs of cash (or not) and not needing to attribute. Google is free to offer licences on different terms to different people.
Do you have an explicit permission by the artist? Does the artist give a blanket permission to anyone which covers this kind of use of their work (a license)? If no, then you commit a copyright violation when you use their work for your blog. This applies to practically any country which signed the Berne convention which is almost everywhere in the world. Having no commercial interest is usually not an excuse to violate copyright. Regarding which jurisdiction applies when you, your website and the copyright holder are in different countries: I opened a new question about this.
First of all, Google's TOS says we reasonably believe that your conduct causes harm or liability to a user, third party, or Google — for example, by hacking, phishing, harassing, spamming, misleading others, or scraping content that doesn’t belong to you And you ask: But suppose a researcher, say based in UK, managed to work around them, get a big amount of data from Google searches and use it to publish some research. You're confusing methods with results. Someone uses methods to get a result, but if the results are not legal, the methods are usually illegal, too. Would the above depend on how they circumvented Google's checks (i.e., by using lots of proxies)? The words &quot;or scraping content that doesn’t belong to you&quot; means just that; it does not give any wiggle room for the actual method used to scrape. Could they get, theoretically, into trouble? Very much so. The researcher would have at least civil liability, and possibly criminal exposure. Would they, practically? Google can be very not kind to people who break their TOS. And Google has lots of money to spend on lawyers and court fees to enforce their TOS. Google would probably be able to easily prove the data came from their servers, and would probably have server logs to help prove it. And see user6726's answer for specific legal citations in the US and UK.
I am not a lawyer, and none of the following should be seen as legal advice. While it is always best to assume every image has a copyright.... In your scenario... traditionally if you are selling a product, there's generally no harm in using images of that product to assist in the sale. But even then photographer copyrights should be considered. Images of products may not only contain copyrighted material within the photo, but the photo itself is probably also copyrighted by the photographer. Just blankety taking images from other web sites is a poor practice in general and will customarily just get you into trouble. However, many manufacturers or distributors will actually provide resellers with product images. You can check the product manufacturer's web site for a "press" or "media' section. There are often downloads provided in those areas. I don't know hairdressing.. but as an example, General Motors has a special web site known to GM car dealers where the dealers can download high resolution images of the cars and products for ads, etc. I've done work in the past for a GM dealer who provided me with the web site and log in details so I can get product imagery. In addition, few manufacturers will take umbrage that you are using their images to sell their products. They want their products to look as good as possible wherever they may be displayed. In many cases, they may prefer you use supplied images rather than use your own. Customarily you would include a disclaimer in the footer somewhere: The product names, company names and product images used on this web site are for identification purposes only. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Note, I am referring to images from the manufacturer's web site, not from competing businesses. If you are building a site for "Bob's Hair Styling" it's unethical to take images from "Kate's Hair Dressing" for your use. Stick to the manufacturer... if selling Paul Mitchell products, check the Paul Mitchell web site for available product images.
Yes, you did something wrong; you used both the university's trade mark and copyright without their permission. I don't know the law in India, however, if it is similar to Australia it is unlikely that the police will be interested in doing anything about it. While it is technically a crime, criminal prosecution is usually reserved for egregious breaches on a for profit basis. I suggest you apologise and agree to stop distributing your app.
It is unclear whether WINE is infringing copyright or if it can rely on a fair use defense. The CAFC held that: that the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection In that light, if WINE had original content in the structure, sequence, and organization of its API, the CAFC would likely also find that it is entitled to copyright protection. However, because this issue is outside the scope of the CAFC's exclusive jurisdiction (this is a copyright issue, not a patent issue), the holdings are not binding in any other circuit. Each circuit is free to review anew the copyrightability of APIs when such a case comes up. My guess is that this is the reason the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal on CAFC's Oracle v. Google opinion. To address your fair use question would be simply speculation, because fair use is always assessed case-by-case, and even in WINE's closest analogy (Oracle v. Google), the CAFC remanded the fair use question back to the trial court, and that question hasn't been decided yet: we remand for further consideration of Google’s fair use defense in light of this decision
You probably can. There are a few questions here. First, is the message protected by copyright? In general, it probably is, but there are many exceptions that might allow you to use it without permission. Unfortunately, these exceptions vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The exceptions tend to allow the use of small excerpts of a work for various sorts of purposes that don't undermine the copyright holder's ability to profit. That leads to the second question, which is why you are using that message. If you're including it in your source code so you can test whether a message generated at run time is in fact that message, that's one thing, and it's probably okay. On the other hand, if the owner of the copyright sells a database of all its message strings, and you're compiling a similar database that you also intend to sell, that's probably not okay. A third question concerns the Firefox license terms. It's entirely possible that they allow you explicitly to do what you're considering, in which case it doesn't matter what copyright law says about it. On the other hand, Firefox is open source software, and under some open source licenses, if you incorporate any of the source code in your own product, you are required to release your product's source code under the same license. If you're not already planning to do that, you should consider carefully whether including that error message would trigger that provision (if there is one) of Firefox's open source license.