Copyright laws, and posting book covers on your blog

[TheBookGazer.Blogspot.com]

Hello all, I am a new edition to book bloggers and was wondering if putting up the cover or a book your'e reviewing is fair use, or copyright.

I myself have been personnaly just hyperlinking to the book cover to keep myself ON safe side, but it seems I am losing an edge to other book bloggers, that have been simply posting the cover on their website.

I have gotten many mixed theories regarding this topic via internet, and am looking for a decisive answer. please help!

 

PLEASE VISIT MY BLOG BTW @ 

I have found that hyperlinking works quite well, so for those of you unsure please try it!

* please follow my blog, or add it to your blogroll, I will return the favor! *

[Mia DiDio]

Photographers have to be very careful of whats in the shot. If there is a consumer product they have to black tape out any logos or defining labels beforehand or blur it out later. You will see this all the time on reality shows ~ people walking around with tape on their baseball hats or Izods with corporate branding. Hilarious.

I'm a previous photo/film producer so I had to be very careful and have these things buttoned up or (sadly) blow the budget. Not worth it.

[ManOfLaBook.com]

I believe they blur out the labels in reality shows as to not to give unpaid promotions. If you notice many shows have "product placement" in them - especially reality shows. 

So if Coca Cola paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to be shown (American Idol) the last thing they'd want is a Pepsi logo showing up somewhere.

[Mia DiDio]

Exactly! Somewhere on American Idol that is. And of course any other shows they choose to sponsor / advertise with.

And all those Isol commercials they do for Ford? A huge advertiser of theirs too that pays premium exposure.

[Mia DiDio]

EVERYTHING about Coca Cola is trademarked; even what you drink when you twist off the new cap. LOL But there are usage rights you can pay for and consumer products can be included unless it's a movie, TV show or commercial, magazine photo, then consumer products beg for production companies to call them for "product placement" that they sometimes pay for. It's not cheap to put an Apple computer in a movie but you can do it.

I mention Coca Cola font face because it is made available through font houses now. Usage depends on how, where, when and why on whether you have to pay for that usage. If it's non-commercial, e.g., not for profit, go ahead and use it for your family reunion but if you titled your book with Coca Cola font and went to make money on it, watch out for a cease and desist letter coming certified, then you scrambling into the marketplace swooping up all those copies in circulation.

[Renee Shelton]

I think Bri's right - if you hotlink a photo from another site, that's bandwidth theft. But if you get books direct from publisher, they generally have images for you to use. For me, I use either the book images that either the publicists/self-published authors send to me, or Amazon or Barnes and Noble book cover images since I have an associates account for both of them - which makes it easy to find book covers.

Here's an interesting q&a regarding fair use of book covers. According to this conversation - essentially, if the book is scanned in and used as the basis for review, it is generally considered fair use but some images in the book's cover may not be. (open url below)

http://boards.answers.findlaw.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?msg=87832.1&...

I'm not a law expert - so does anyone know if all book covers are 'fair use' images?

Renee

http://succotashreviews.blogspot.com

[ManOfLaBook.com]

You were told wrong (in the context of copyrights).

Even if you save the image to your computer you don't have the right to use it.

I don't think it's applicable in this case though (but it is courteous and a good habit because they can change the image).

If I want to use an image which is not a book cover, I always ask and 99 times out of 100 get a positive answer.

http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

[Renee Shelton]

Thanks for the info. Yes, I agree. The images I use are direct from publishers/authors themselves or from amazon/b&n through affiliate links. If I don't have permission or can't find the image through an affilate link, the review is simply without a photo.

 

My question is - what is fair use in book reviews? From this info (open url from the libraries of University of TX) basically educational and scholarly articles are covered in 'fair use'. I'm assuming regular book reviews are not, therefore any image must have permission before being used. And does it matter if there is advertisement on the blog?

http://copyright.lib.utexas.edu/imagguid.html

 

Just wondering if fair use simply means lifting a photo without permission for the purposes of getting info out to the public. I guess I'm not following how some would think that would ok in any instance. It all gets confusing. :)

Good info in this thread, though.

[TheBookGazer.Blogspot.com]

indeed lots of good info, Im currently using amazon slideshow. (an affiliate link)

[ManOfLaBook.com]

"In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. "

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use