copyright united-kingdom intellectual-property internet licensing
How does Google and other websites avoid infringing on 3rd party copyrights for displaying images for &#39;commercial&#39; purposes?
<p>I really hope someone would be able to clear things up, because this question has been bugging me for a long time now.</p>
<p>Google Images (and frequently Google Search as well) shows images associated with your search (kinda the point of an image search engine). Yet, the Google platform is a commercial product and is there to make money by displaying ads. Even non-profit websites like <a href="https://www.wikipedia.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Wikipedia</a> or <a href="https://search.creativecommons.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">CC search</a> which ask for donations (i.e. money making albeit not for profit),  thereby using images in a <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/jxKFa.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">'commercial' (money making) context</a>.</p>
<p>In the UK, commercial use of images <em>may</em> require a licence (a written permission). The licence must be obtained from <strong>the author</strong> (the photographer) <strong>and</strong> sometimes <strong>the landowner</strong> (I believe this is a branch of what is collectively known as 'third-party' rights, property rights in this instance, assuming the author didn't obtain such permissions).</p>
<p>One example could be the UK's famous <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Durdle+Door" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Durdle Door</a> which requires a <a href="https://lulworth.com/the-estate/services/film-photography-locations/location-enquiry/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">licence</a>, if photographs are to be used for commercial purposes. It appears to be a very similar story for sites belonging to <a href="http://www.nationaltrustimages.org.uk/photographic-access" rel="nofollow noreferrer">National Trust</a> and <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about-us/our-people/terms-and-conditions/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">English Heritage</a>. Yet, there is no shortage of images used in a commercial context without obtaining such licences (apparently) e.g. <a href="https://search.creativecommons.org/search?q=durdle%20door&amp;license_type=commercial" rel="nofollow noreferrer">CC Search</a>, <a href="https://pixabay.com/images/search/durdle%20door/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Pixabay</a>, <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g1420384-d546417-Reviews-Lulworth_Cove_and_Durdle_Door-West_Lulworth_Dorset_England.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Trip Advisor</a>, Google and many others.</p>
<p>I appreciate this is a branch of the civil law and requires a 3rd party to actually raise it as an issue. I highly doubt any of the websites showing images in a commercial context request a permission from landowners around the UK - an unmanageable task. Yet, it feels like Google (or other websites) would not risk a lawsuit to show images unless they had solid basis they are allowed to do so.</p>
<p><strong>Question</strong>: given that photos of many landmarks in the UK require a written permission (i.e. a licence) to be used for a commercial use, how exactly do websites (e.g. Google, TripAdvisor, Wikipedia and others) operate without infringing on 3rd party copyrights?</p>
<hr />
<p>Clarification: I am less concerned with the author's copyright claims (like those in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com,_Inc." rel="nofollow noreferrer">Perfect 10, Inc. vs Amazon.com, Inc</a>) and more with the 3rd party claims. The <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/open-access-land-management-rights-and-responsibilities" rel="nofollow noreferrer">UK's government website</a> is pretty clear on that (emphasis mine):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What people cannot do on your land
The CROW Act has a list of general restrictions that limit what people using their open access rights may do, unless you give them permission to do something on the list, or the right to do something already exists.</p>
<p>They cannot:</p>
<p>[..]</p>
<p>run commercial activities on the land such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>trade or sell</li>
<li>charge other visitors for things they do on your land</li>
<li>film, <strong>photograph</strong> or make maps</li>
</ul>
<p>[..]</p>
</blockquote>

<p>It depends.</p>
<p>Wikipedia is quite strict on its policies, and it only allows uploading images (and other media) that either are in the public domain or with a licence that allows to be reproduced (often, Creative Commons, CC).</p>
<p>If you go to the <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Durdle_Door_Overview.jpg" rel="noreferrer">details of the image</a> it claims that the picture is licenced under CC, with attribution to Saffron Blaze. So most probably Saffron Blaze got permision to take the picture, and he distributed it with the CC-Attribution licence.</p>
<p>When scrapping a web site for data, Google and other engines usually search for metadata (the <em>robots.txt</em> file) that tells them what to index and what to not. If a user gives them permission to index a picture by not stating restrictions in the robots.txt, they can do index it.</p>
<p>Of course, in both cases it might be that someone uploads a picture that he does not have permission to share. In this case the situation will, of course, depend on jurisdiction, but many laws have provisions that ensure that, if the content provider is dilligent in addressing copyright issues caused by the users, they are protected.</p>
<p>For example in the USA the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act" rel="noreferrer">Digital Millenium Copyright Act</a> establishes &quot;safe harbor&quot; provisions that protects content providers if they give a way to denounce copyright infringiments and address those in a given timeframe.</p>

<p>The rights of a landowner, in general, include the right to control access to his land (but these rights are subject to, among other things, the CROW Act you refer to).</p>
<p>The landowner may consent to you coming on to his land. That consent may be subject to conditions (for example, don't take photographs, or don't take photographs to be used commercially). You may have rights under the CROW Act, but those rights are subject to the limits set out in the CROW Act.</p>
<p>If you don't comply with the conditions of consent, or if you exceed the limits of your rights under the CROW Act, then the landowner's action is in trespass. By entering the land to take photographs, for which you have no permission and no right, you are a trespasser.</p>
<p>Thus the &quot;rights&quot; you talk of are not akin to copyright at all. The landowner has no rights in the image, the landowner has only rights in his land. You may have done wrong by entering the land as a trespasser and taking photographs without permission, and you might be sued for damages for that (which might be determined, similar to copyright, by reference to the landowner's lost opportunity to license - give consent to - entry of his land for the purposes of taking photographs). However the landowner has no right akin to copyright and thus there is nothing intrinsically unlawful about the photographs, only the process of taking them. Hence Google and others are doing nothing wrong.</p>
