Discussion:
I live in Canada, my server is in Florida, US.
I own a website that has advertising displayed so it qualifies as commercial though it does not make significant money.
One of my early efforts, that now constitutes a small portion of my website, consists of scans of a series of maps. The maps are from books published in the 1960s and early 1970s (now long out of print) and my main motivation in publishing them on the internet was to make them accessible to a wider audience.
The scans have been online for five years now and no one has ever complained or asserted copyright. I do get occassional requests for purchase or use and I consistently reply that the scans are in place for educational use and I do not hold a copyright on them. I do not sell the scans or charge users a membership. Most of my visitors are students and teachers.
I am now considering my options regarding these old scans. Ideally, I would like to redo the set and add to it. However, I have no interest in hunting down the copyright holders. In my opinion, it would take time and money that I am not prepared to devote to the effort. And, I honestly doubt anyone cares about this stuff because there is no profit to be made on it anyway.
I realize that the safe thing to do is simply remove all the images from my site. However, it also occurs to me that these images are substantially reduced versions of the original works; they constitute a very small portion of the published books from which they are derived; and, the information they contain would essentially be lost (since the works will not likely be reprinted). So my rational is that I am making fair use of the material. Note that if someone were to actually assert copyright and demand I stop using these images, I would comply.
My questions to this forum is:
What are the chances that anything more than a simple demand to cease and desist would ever arise from a case like this?
Is there a significant risk of being taken to court (even if I did comply with a cease and desist demand)?
Answer:
I live in Canada, my server is in Florida, US.
I own a website that has advertising displayed so it qualifies as commercial though it does not make significant money.
One of my early efforts, that now constitutes a small portion of my website, consists of scans of a series of maps. The maps are from books published in the 1960s and early 1970s (now long out of print) and my main motivation in publishing them on the internet was to make them accessible to a wider audience.
The scans have been online for five years now and no one has ever complained or asserted copyright. I do get occassional requests for purchase or use and I consistently reply that the scans are in place for educational use and I do not hold a copyright on them. I do not sell the scans or charge users a membership. Most of my visitors are students and teachers.
I am now considering my options regarding these old scans. Ideally, I would like to redo the set and add to it. However, I have no interest in hunting down the copyright holders. In my opinion, it would take time and money that I am not prepared to devote to the effort. And, I honestly doubt anyone cares about this stuff because there is no profit to be made on it anyway.
I realize that the safe thing to do is simply remove all the images from my site. However, it also occurs to me that these images are substantially reduced versions of the original works; they constitute a very small portion of the published books from which they are derived; and, the information they contain would essentially be lost (since the works will not likely be reprinted). So my rational is that I am making fair use of the material. Note that if someone were to actually assert copyright and demand I stop using these images, I would comply.
My questions to this forum is:
What are the chances that anything more than a simple demand to cease and desist would ever arise from a case like this?
Is there a significant risk of being taken to court (even if I did comply with a cease and desist demand)? U.S. Law only. It doesn't matter where your servers are, you are in Canada, so you are subject to Canadian law.