A little background. Earlier this year I started a daily project that involved using photos and headlines from a local news website to create absurd and satirical images. I’ve been sharing them with a small group of friends and a few people have suggested I should put them online. I basically load up the front page of the news site and deliberately mis-match photos with headlines that totally changes the context. With some humourous results. I don’t write anything, all headline text is taken straight from the news site.
In short: will I get sued?
The main contentious apsects are: ‘stealing’ photos from the news website (though I screengrab them so don’t use the original digital filles), using images of people without their consent (presuming consent was given for the original news story/website) and also possibilty of causing offence from placement of controversial headlines with photos of persons totally unrelated to the original story.
None of it is intended to be controversial, at least not implying anything about individuals, it’s more just absurdist stuff. Is it OK to publish this as long as there is a disclaimer and as long as it’s clearly marked as ‘art/satire’ and not intended to be ‘news’?
It makes me more than a little nervous but also I do think it has some satirical merit and, even though I say so myself, often just plain funny.
I Am Not A Lawyer. Also, because I read too much HackerNews, this may be too US-centric (and I’m in the UK).
As I understand it, there’s a range of uses of material which might be construed as copyright infringement, but which are protected as “fair use”. Critique/review is one. Satire and parody seem to fall into a grey area, and increasingly US copyright law encroaches on these fair uses, and then on top of that automated systems that scan for copyright-infringing uploads sometimes catch and flag works which should be protected.
@Fin25’s right… If i wanted to do it, I’d self-host to a) avoid much of the hassle of the robots but b) take on all the risk myself.
Remember to play Cassetteboy whilst you do your collaging.
I work in publishing so know a little about copyright law (I’m not a lawyer though). This probably falls under fair use, but that wouldn’t necessarily stop anyone suing you. That said, you’re more likely get issued with a takedown notice rather than actually get sued, especially if it’s non-commercial and you’re not offending anyone. I should note that using screen grabs rather than the original file makes no difference from a copyright point of view.
Personally I think it could bring more hassle than it’s worth.
I’m wondering if I obscure faces of people that aren’t in the public eye ordinarily that it would make it a little ‘safer’. Also, not all of the photos are photos of people.
I’m also not a lawyer, but this doesn’t seem very nice.
Headlines have always been attention grabbing, that’s their point. Modern headlines have advanced the art to clickbait. You yourself identify that the headlines could be controversial. Considering the things happening in the world, mismatching headlines with faces could lead to fairly serious consequences.
If you want to go through with this then lawyer up with a publishing lawyer and work through your plans with them. They will tell you what is likely to get you sued, and help improve your chances of winning. Expect to pay over $300 an hour with something like a minimum of $20k to start. (based on general experience with lawyers, and assuming that publishing lawyers are on the inexpensive side of the scale)
It seems like a project that will cost you money and friends. It will annoy and alienate the community it pulls images from. I see many downsides and few upsides.
An alternate approach is to create these collages and then share them in a private slack or discord with your friends. Keep it small and underground and no one will notice, no one will be offended, no one will have a bad day.
Thanks, I appreciated the response. I have possibly given you (and others) the wrong idea about the whole thing. There is definitely no intention to upset anyone and the material is mostly absurd rather than offensive, in fact none of it is actually offensive it’s all in how you read the result of juxtaposing an existing image with an existing headline. That was actually the motiviation for the thing in the first place - one day I looked at the news page and was looking at two story headlines with accompanyting photo and I thought ‘Those headlines are so bizarre they could easily be interchanged…’ and it grew from there.
Anyway, as I’ve tried to explain, there is no motivation to offend, that isn’t my style at all, and so I won’t be putting any of it in public.
