Is reposting funny pix on a "Facebook Page" copyright infringement?

As I was thinking about this question more, Pinterest and Twitter come to mind. Same thing there, right?

I would say no more so than cutting out a Dilbert comic and pinning it to the bulletin board in the breakroom at work. You bought the paper that the Dilbert comic appeared in, and now you’re sharing the comic. Theoretically, it’ll make other people more likely to buy tomorrow’s paper, if they didn’t know about Dilbert previously. Free advertisement.

“Pinning” or “Sharing” a NYTimes article is going to drive consumers to click on it, read it, and possibly click on the site’s advertisers. The more viewers, the more money the site makes. This makes them happy.

If no one “shared” SomeECards’ pictures, the site wouldn’t last very long.

I think Copyright Laws are racing around trying to figure out how to handle the Net. Many issues have yet to be resolved.

It would be a very crappy world where that were considered copyright infringement.

I suppose that if you’re speaking technically, it is.

But on a practical level, those whom they bother to send letters to are those who profit monetarily from the image or article.

The various people doing the postings are not profiting financially so it’s basically not worth the effort for a one-off.

And, as noted, the Times and other sites get traffic for their websites so it all works out.

Plus, they have to factor in how much it would alienate people and cost them more good will in the long run by being so harshly stringent about policing this stuff.

That’s what’s continuiung to happen with the recording industry and people are just fighting it on principal. Because most instinctively know that the money is not going to the artists but to line the pockets of the fat cat executive bigwigs at all these music companies. They couldn’t care less about the artists.

If you’re presenting it as “your work”, then that is a prima facie copyright violation. Ditto if you’re presenting it as “something you own” (or “own the rights to”, as distinct from ‘something you produced’). That’s another real violation.

Generally, most works that you can find on the web and publish directly or via links through Facebook walls are for the purposes of “commentary and review”, and won’t get you into any trouble. Many copyright owners are pretty diligent about crawling the web to find unauthorized reproductions of their works and informing the site owners that they don’t have permission to host the work and further request that it be removed. This is why you’ll see notices on many recently removed YouTube links, for example, that the item in question was “removed due to notification from the copyright holder’” or some such.

If you get a notice from someone who seems to be the copyright holder (or his attorney) that you’re hosting unauthorized works, then is a good time to consider that noncompliance could get you into trouble. Facebook itself would be shut down in a heartbeat if its normal practices were flagrant copyright violations.

You have nothing to worry about on Facebook.

—I’m not an attorney, and this is not a legal opinion.

The Terms of Service for someecards.com contains the following paragraph:
“Someecards User will not use this service to create advertising, promote a product, brand, Web site, social media program, or Facebook fan page. Someecards are for personal use only, and can not be taken off the site. Only the social networking buttons on the site can be used to share the content.”
So, uploading these ecards to a commercial Facebook Page is obviously a violation of the Terms of Service. According to the TOS you can share ecards for your own personal use via networking buttons. The TOS for most other cards are very similiar. I haven’t found any ecard site that allows commercial use.