Is linking to a picture Copyright Infringement?

If you're actually showing the image from the other site -- that is, hotlinking the image from the other website -- that's bandwidth theft at the very least.

Suzanne

First, This is not legal advice.
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Basically If I understand your question correctly, your displaying images, at your website, which belong to another company or website yes?

A lot depends on what your doing and if the website is ok with doing this.

An example of this might be if a company has an affiliate program and provides a banner, the banner is hosted at the companies website, they allow you to do that because they benefit from the exposure of your website selling their product.

(usually they will indicate if this is ok or if it is not ok)

If your using images, from a website, by linking (AKA, hot linking)

Not only is this considered bad hat, but in the very near future it might even become a criminal event, should CISAP pass, CISPA, Approved by House, Poses Threat to Internet Freedom · FTC Beat

Here is the basic scenario, if you are hot linking images from another website and your profiting from that action, (in some cases you do not have to even profit)

But if you profit that is one thing, but if you do not profit, your still taking something without permission and that something is bandwidth.

Bandwidth cost money, so when your taking something like an image, and your showing that image on your website with the intent to profit then yes you might find yourself in some trouble.

This is why there are so many issues that are likely to start becoming a serious problem, right now what your talking about is happening all over the Internet and for the most part people are getting away with it, but that is about to change.

This is one reason why auto blogs and any business model that borrows content is on the edge of the abyss.

If you don't have the image on your site, that seems completely fair to me. It isn't copyright infringement by anything I understand, and mostly the original sites should be glad to have the links back to their pages.

That isn't the usual sort of attitude of people asking about images. Not many of them have been that careful or considerate.

That might explain why you got the answers you did so far in this topic, or maybe I'm misunderstanding something.

best wishes, nice to see the attitude

Okay, I'm not 100% sure what you are doing with the images. If you are posting a LINK to the page the image is on, then you are okay, although you'll be driving traffic AWAY from your website in the process.

If you are using the Image URL from the other website and posting the image on YOUR website, then you are stealing bandwith along with violating copyrights.

Of course I'm not a lawyer I just pretend to be one on internet forums!

It is unclear whether you mean providing a link like this..

or you mean...

Some will argue that one is ok and not the other, while others will argue that neither is ok.

When you have legal questions, it is always best to ask a legal pro.

This is not a legal answer, but here is something for you to think about. When I find someone hotlinking an image from my site, I change the name of the image (for my site) and load up another one with the old name.

The image that now appears on your site is the original image with a transparent white overlay so that the text that's now on top shows up better. The text says:

This image was stolen from XSite.com.

Depending on how busy my schedule is that day, I may notify your hosting company and domain registrar to take a look at the page because there are images that violate copyright laws showing up. If I'm feeling really vindictive and these are original images and not stock, I'll also put in a DMCA with Google.

Just saying.

When I catch a hotlinker, I switch out the image for the filthiest, most obscene photo I can find. I can't tell you how many eBay auctions I ruined for people (back in the old days) and how many websites I've "enhanced" that way. Some people have even had the nerve to email me and demand that I change the pictures back.

just an expansion on the thought ... what about news feeds that have a small thumbnail in the rss feed .. so long as you abide by their terms of service .. this would be acceptable?

Would this also mean that websites like pinterest, tumblr, stumbleupon etc are in violation as well?

Google can legally serve up copyrighted images as thumbnails in their search engine under the copyright fair use provision - according to many court rulings on the matter.

Thank goodness for fair use - can you imagine what the copyright police would do without fair use - as indicated in some of the posts here. Courts in some lands have even ruled that if you don't want your images found and used online, then don't allow them to be found on the internet. Simple.

Pinterest, in their terms of use, has put the copyright responsibility on the user. The user has to ensure that what they are pinning does not violate any copyright laws.

Talking about fair use of images, I took the definition from wikipedia.

"Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. 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. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test."

If the wikipedia is right, news aggregators are included here, at news reporting.
What do you think?