[Web4lib] Copyright and Book cover images

Mon Mar 12 12:45:08 EST 2007

With my very limited experience (5 minutes at the Random House site), I 
have to agree with David. It looks like you either have to 1) download 
individual covers after searching them manually on their web pages or 2) 
get in touch with them to get a batch quantity.

Related to this, however, Tim Spaulding of LibraryThing is exploring the 
idea of creating an open database of book covers. I haven't seen any 
details, but it does seem that this is something the library world 
needs, and should be able to support with the cooperation of the 
publishers. I would prefer that the book covers in a library catalog NOT 
necessarily point back to Amazon.com. It would be neat to run other 
services off a link to the cover, like a shelf browse of covers, or a 
link to other libraries or local bookstores or... well, just about 
anything else that isn't *just* a link to Amazon, which is what is 
required when using their cover art.

kc

Walker, David wrote:
>>> The best source of cover images is 
>>> actually the publishers themselves.
>>>       
>  
> I disagree.  I don't think 'best' here should be measured in terms of the quality of the images, but rather in terms of the ease of use of the service.
>  
> To get a cover image from Amazon, all you need is an ISBN.  In almost any system you might design, getting the ISBN for a book and feeding it to Amazon is extremely simple.  (That you need to follow Amazon's terms of service is a given.)
>  
> Using publisher websites to achieve the same goal would require not only knowing which publishers publish each book, but where their website is located, what data I need to retrieve the book covers, and then a whole host of issues on the size and resolution of each image.  
>  
> That simply isn't feasible for any type of system searching more than a few hundred books.
>  
> --Dave
>  
> -------------------
> David Walker
> Library Web Services Manager
> California State University
> http://xerxes.calstate.edu
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org on behalf of Steven Jeffery
> Sent: Mon 3/12/2007 8:58 AM
> To: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Copyright and Book cover images
>
>
>
>
> 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
>>
>> ____________
>> Will Kurt
>> Research Librarian
>> BBN Technologies
>> 617-873-8019
>> wkurt at bbn.com _______________________________________________
>> Web4lib mailing list
>> Web4lib at webjunction.org
>> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
>>     
>
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-- 
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
------------------------------------