Very interesting article over on Concurring Opinions about a potential backlash (of sorts) against bloggers from the mainstream media. Can the MSM use copyright to put the smackdown on folks who are criticizing the living hell out of MSM articles? Can they use copyright, in other words, to keep bloggers from using their own words against them?

There's a comment from a gentleman by the name of Bruce that I think puts the kibosh on that, or at least throws up enough legal chaff that might protect bloggers. ("Well spoken, Bruce!") Daniel Solove, the original article's author, does pose another interesting question, though: what about the use of copyrighted images in blogs?

First up, I thought about our basic policy on using images, particularly on Needcoffee. If we're featuring a product, we've obviously been sent that product to promote it and pictures are a part of that promotional effort. So that's covered. There's only one studio who's very particular about their photos and screen grabs and stuff, so we just don't use pictures for their featured items to spare ourselves the hassle of complying to those terms. Everybody else seems grateful for the coverage.

Anytime we use an image that's obviously from somewhere and not just floating out in the etrick, I try to put an "Image taken from" and a link to the source. I wouldn't think somebody would be upset because they just got a free out-of-nowhere product feature with a link of where to buy (if the thing's for sale) or if nothing else traffic from our link. So that's covered. I would hope.

He mentions a shot of, say, Tom Cruise taken from elsewhere. If it's from a magazine, well, those show up all over the Net, and not just on blogs. Celebrity pic sites, fan sites, the whole nine–they all use those things. People, for example, trying to take on that kind of mountain seems, to be anyway, to be pissing in the ocean. Serving cease and desist letters on that would be fighting the hydra. I suppose you could try it but once you unleash that beast, I can just see, if we follow the RIAA's lead, some widowed grandmother having to pay a $5000 fine because her orphaned twelve-year-old granddaughter (who lives with her) used a computer to create a [insert celebrity name] fansite on a free hosting service and used five copyrighted photos. That approach has worked so well for the music industry, ayup.

I've never considered taking stock photos from sites like the article suggests, though. That seems like asking for trouble. Now…you're probably wondering where the whole "free idea" aspect of this comes in. Let's say that places do get a little antsy about you using, hell, I don't know, a stock photo of a terrier. Somebody could create a service that does nothing but take photos of things and provide a license to a site to use them. $50 for the rights to use any photo from this new service on your site for a full year.

Then, of course, I can see it being taken even further than that. If it really gets bad, I can see an organized movement among net photographers. I mean, if we can have Grey Tuesday, certainly we can have a day where net photographers release ten photos into the public domain each. They could be anything: a picture of a hummingbird, a tree, a lion, whatever. Take a picture, upload it to a service, and bang, stock photos are reduced in value further. And I've seen some photographers who post their stuff to the net. These aren't, well, me with a digital camera. They know what the hell they're doing.

Even better, photographers could post this stuff to their blogs with a "free-photos" tag so they can be easily found (via Technorati or whatever rises to take its place). You need a picture of a hummingbird for an article. Search "free-photos + hummingbird" and you're done. Maybe people are already doing this. I'm a webmaster hermit. I know very little. But I do know the more people try to hold onto things, the better off we'll be if we just all work around them.

Good news is it's not an issue. Not yet, anyway.

Stapler tip to Boing Boing. I'm not currently wearing a hat and the stapler's the first thing I could grab.

Update: I just like the way the minds at Emergent Chaos work.