A brief update on yesterday's post on Getty suing Microsoft for copyright violation based on Microsoft's embedded image widget.
I thought I'd try the widget out and see how it actually works.
Here's the result of the basic embed code:
The widget results in a frame that displays the results of performing a Bing Image search using the search terms specified when the widget is created. The term used in the sample provided by Bing is "volcanos" which is why you're seeing a bunch of those in Bing's widget.
Clicking on the widget takes you to Bing's search engine page.
A short description of how this works:
1) Someone visits a website that includes the embed code.
2) That website sends the search terms to Bing's search engine.
3) Bing does an image search using those terms and sends the result to the website's server.
4) The website uses the search results provided by Bing to display images in the widget.
The images displayed seem to be the thumbnails that Bing displays as part of its search results. These are low resolution copies that are solely designed to provide viewers an idea of what the actual image looks like.
Viewing the full-sized image requires visiting the Bing search page. (Clicking on the widget takes you there.)
My Take:
First, I'd thought it might be worth comparing Gety's embed tool.
Getty's embed tool:
I'm happy to say that Getty has addressed a major issue with their tool that I pointed out when it was first released. They have disabled right click on the image frame. No more copy and paste of the embedded image.
They have also managed to prevent tools like Download Them All! from working on the image. (I suspect that's because the image isn't technically "on" the web page hosting the image.)
They have not addresses the issue of screen capture. Doing a screen capture with the above image displayed enabled me to obtain an image roughly 600 x 380 pixels. That is large enough for certain web site uses. (I deleted the image after determining the image size.)
I find it ironic that the company that uses an embed tool that facilitates copyright theft is complaining about one that produces thumbnails unsuited for any use beyond displaying image search results.
From a copyright standpoint, I think the Microsoft embed tool can easily be defended under "fair use". It only provides a very limited example of the full-scale image. This is similar to providing a short snippet of a book in a book review.
The problem occurs on the Bing page.
Someone that performs an image search can view full-sized images in the search results. This requires Microsoft to copy the full-sized image and store it on their servers.
This is where the potential for copyright violations to occur, not the embed tool.
Microsoft creates full-sized copies of images on the Internet and makes those copies available to those that use its search engine. I'm not sure this can be defended.
(The same goes for Google that does the same with image searches. Google, Bing and any other search engine that stores full-sized images and makes those copies available as part of an image search might be on shaky ground when it comes to copyright law.)
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