[Web4lib] Copyright and Book cover images

[Steven Jeffery]

Regarding copyright issues it is my understanding that technically*  
you can download and display all the book covers that you want from  
Amazon because it is the publisher that holds the copyright. Amazon is  
likely displaying them under fair use (they probably have agreements  
in place with most publishers but Fair Use would still apply). I  
suspect that any cover images that have Amazon's "look inside" text  
and arrow embedded in them will not be in the same category.

Unless you have a license to use Amazon's bandwidth (AWS), then you  
should not be displaying the images using their bandwidth. The idea  
that many other people are doing it justifies doing it yourself is  
laughable.

The best source of cover images is actually the publishers themselves.  
The larger ones tend to have a system in place that gives you direct  
access to the images. Smaller ones will generally have no issue with  
you downloading them off their website. An advantage to this is that  
the images from the publishers tend to be of much higher  
quality/resolution.


*I say technically because there is likely a clause in the Amazon.com  
usage agreement prohibiting this.



Steven





Quoting Will Kurt <wkurt at bbn.com>:

> I have a question that I've been curious about for awhile, but haven't
> been able to find an answer to.  What are the copyright issues
> regarding the use of book cover images, especially ones from Amazon?
>
> I've noticed a lot of websites (LibraryThing for example) will pull
> images from Amazon, often directly linking to the image hosted on
> Amazon's server.  For obvious reasons using images of book covers can
> be very useful but I was always unclear of the legal/ethical issues
> surrounding this?  If I want to add images of book covers to my library
> website or OPAC is it okay to use Amazon's image covers, if so, is it
> actually preferable to link directly to the Amazon image or would it be
> better to host it locally? Normally I would assume hosting it locally
> would be better due to bandwidth issues, but so many people take the
> images hosted by Amazon I was wondering if perhaps they preferred this?
>
> Or do sites like LibraryThing pay a licensing fee to Amazon or
> something similar?
>
> Are there other routes to obtaining images?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Will
>
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> Will Kurt
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> BBN Technologies
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