I have a couple of cool projects that involve making my own decals that I would really like to share, but am not sure that I can. Here's the problem. For two of my projects, I used photos I found online to make decals of a mural ad on the side of a trailer and a mural on the side of a baggage car. I only used the part of the photo that contained the mural and even had to stretch, distort, resize, etc., before I tuned them into my own decals (both of the original pics were taken at a slight angle and I had to manipulate them to be straight on....you know what I mean?). Anyway, I wanted to post at least one of these projects online. I emailed the photographer of one of the photos to see if I could post the original photo and to also see if they had any problem with posting photos of the decals that were made from their photo. No reply after 2 weeks. I know you can post as link without permission, but photos I'm not so sure about. The original photo has a photo-credit already on it. And what about the decals? Would I need permission to simply post a photo of the decals or finished model? The decals would never be sold. OK you armchair lawyers....tell me what you think! Russ
My understanding is that you would need to check the conditions under which the person owning the photos place the images. Most times the conditions are to use for your own personal use, with no commercial use of the image to gain profit. I could for example use a graphic on a personal website but for a commercial site which generates revenue whether or not from the imgage or other is not allowed. Put a disclaimer up Pictures courtesy off....
In order to keep it simple for us here (as we end up having to talk to the complainers if you make an error), don't post anything that you are not sure is allowed. In the case that you don't know, or can't get people to answer your inquiries, just post a link to the page whatever you are talking about is on. Charlie
If it's a Fallen Flags reference, it's my understanding that George Elwood does not permit direct links to photos posted there either. General references are OK, i.e. "It's in the Erie Lackawanna section of the Fallen Flags website."
There is nothing that someone can do to stop a person from posting a link to a photo on their site and it would be foolish of them to think that they could. (Actually, there is something they can do, they can cause a disallowed URL to an image to route the person to their main page, etc. What I am saying is that you really can't just tell people "don't post a link to my site" as it is not enforceable.) Saying here is a photo on (whatever) web site: http://www........ is something that someone could do as it sends a person to that web site to see the photo the same way they would see it from visiting that site. However, I do know that George Elwood (and some others) do not want their photos displayed in posts on forum (or other) web sites. That, some folks consider theft of bandwidth. That we understand and when we notice someone posting one from his site (for example) we inform that person that we (and George) would appreciate people not doing that. We will edit the post to reflect a link rather than a call for the image (using the tags) as well. If people do not want their photos posted on forum web sites, etc., though, they really should block remote calls for images at the server level. We could do that on RailImages but obviously, the purpose of RailImages is to allow people to post the photos on forums. Charlie
E-8, I know there's nothing George can do to stop it but I feel it's a courtesy to him to comply with his wishes. I don't even provide direct links to his photos within the UMTRR; but that's my choice of course. With respect to your comment on redirecting direct links to a main page, that's exactly what happens on the UMTRR site and if I can do that, it can't be that hard!
I can understand someone not wanting their photos actually called into posts on forums as it causes them to have to pay for bandwidth that they did not consent to, and as well causes their content to appear on web pages that they did not give consent to. It's easy to understand that logic. But, I think saying "don't post a link" is just downright foolish. When you publish something on the public Internet people are going to look at it. If people don't want them to then it should be password protected. Someone that says, "don't post a link to ...." just seems crazy to me but that is just my opinion. Charlie
