Hi @aasifwani,

Instead of responding to your last reply directly, what follows below is an iteration of the exchanges between us in chronological order followed by commentaries on each of those exchanges and finally my response to your last comment.

The following is my opinion based on my observations and presumptions derived from them. If you have proof otherwise, I welcome you to rebut my presumptions and show that you are not in breach of copyright. Merely asserting that I am making assumptions (presumptions, to be precise) is not sufficient to escape blame.

In my first comment I commented,

You are in breach of copyright.

Commentary:

I deliberately left my comment short without giving details of your breach so as to give you a wide latitude in your answer. It was meant to be an opportunity for you admit your mistake (as I perceived it) and escape scrutiny and simultaneously a trap if you are not willing to admit your ‘mistake’.

You responded,

I have given sources.
Thank you!

Commentary:

Many of the community leaders (including the community leaders of @BestofIndia) have misled their members to believe that merely providing the link to the source of an image would in and of itself is adequate to absolve them of any liability for infringement of copyright. Many users of Steem (including you) believed in it and followed it in practice and many still continue doing so.

In my opinion you, being a lawyer, should have first checked the legitimacy of such a practice before following it yourself. Being a professional qualified in the laws, you should also as a follow-up action corrected the misconception held by your community leaders.

Your response, "I have given sources" amply illustrates your mistaken believe in the adequacy and legitimacy of such a practice.

I responded as follows:

At the end of this para, I have given the links to the Terms and Conditions of the websites you sourced the images from. Please tell us in what way you have complied with those terms and conditions by merely citing the sources.
Here are the terms and conditions:
First image: https://www.ledgerinsights.com/terms-and-conditions-2/
Second image: https://www.dezshira.com/terms-of-use.html

Commentary:

Again, to trap you I left my response short without giving reasons as to why you are in breach which if I had given you would have been cautious and would not have responded recklessly as follows:

Your response:

Can there be the possible case of having taken proper consent from them, before using their work?

Commentary:
I wish to draw your attention to the following clauses from the terms and conditions of the two websites referred to above:
The first website (Ledger Insights) clearly states as follows in Clause 3.5:

"3.5 Unless you own or control the relevant rights in the material, you must not:
(a) republish material from our website (including republication on another website);
(b) sell, rent or sub-license material from our website;
(c) show any material from our website in public;
(d) exploit material from our website for a commercial purpose; or
(e) redistribute material from our website."

You are clearly in breach of Clause 3.5 (a).

Further there is nothing in their terms and conditions allowing you as a user to apply for consent to republish their material. They clearly do not have any intention of giving consent to others to republish their materials. Even if they did have such a clause evincing an intention do so, for reasons I will give later, I submit that they are not in a legal position to give such a consent.

The second website (India Briefing/Dezan Shira Associates) deals with copyright issues in Clause titled “Use of News Releases, Photographs and Related Content.” In essence it states that users may republish their content for Editorial Use if, and only if, they have obtained prior consent from them. There are three issues here:

First it must be for editorial use only.

Second you must obtain prior consent.

Third, to be able to give consent, Dezan Shira Associates must own the images or at least must have the right to give consent from the owners of the images.

The images used were both commercial stock images. They are on sale, for example, here in 123rf and here in Shutterstock

Since tbe images used were both commercial stock images they were not owned by the website owners or even if they happen to be the owners, they would have lost the right to give consent to others the moment they put those images for sale in a stock photo company. In either case, they merely have the right to use it for themselves only, at most.

Commercial stock image companies do not grant their licensees the right to give consent to any random blogger to republish their images. Their business revenue depends on, among others, bloggers purchasing their licenses. Why should they then allow their licensees to give consent to bloggers, who potentially number in millions, and lose their potential revenue stream? That would be suicidal for their business model.

Typically stock photo companies make it clear in their License Agreement that the license is “Non-transferable.” I notice that you have, since the posting of my comments on this post, started using commercial images from iStockphoto.com in your latest posts. (I would leave the readers to draw their own conclusions as to why you have now suddenly started using commercial stock images.) iStockPhoto.com defines “Non-transferrable” in Clause 4 of its License Agreement as follows:

"Clause 4. Who, besides me, can use the licensed content?

The rights granted to you are non-transferable and non-sublicensable, meaning that you cannot transfer or sublicense them to anyone else. There are two exceptions:

Employer or client. If you are purchasing on behalf of your employer or client, then your employer or client can use the content. In that case, you represent and warrant that you have full legal authority to bind your employer or client to the terms of this agreement. If you do not have that authority, then your employer or client may not use the content.

Subcontractors. You may allow subcontractors (for example, your printer or mailing house) or distributors to use content in any production or distribution process related to your final project or end use. These subcontractors and distributors may not use the content for any other purpose.

Please note that seat/user restrictions apply. You may only use the content with appropriate amount of users, as explained in Section 5 below."

Having read and appraised of the terms and conditions of the two websites but still being ignorant of the fact that the images were merely licensed to the website owners, you quickly tried to salvage your position by advancing a new defense that you could possibly have obtained the consent from the website owners.

You are now attempting to shift your original defense (“I have given sources”) to a new sham defense (“Can there be the possible case of having taken proper consent from them, before using their work?”) as a possibility only.

Why are you not asserting that you have the consent? What is preventing you from assertively saying you have the consent?

Perhaps, you have applied for consent as an afterthought after the facts and waiting for their consent? Or is it a backup defense, in additional to the original defense?

If you already had the consent, why the drivel, “Can there be the possible case of having taken proper consent from them, before using their work?” Is it a drivel just to frustrate me from pursuing you further?

Then I responded as follow:

It is certainly not impossible. It may be difficult. Besides you have many other choices to use compliant images. There are millions of relevant free to use stock images available online.

Are you saying that just because it is difficult for you obtain consent from copyright holders before using these images, you now have the right to trample on their rights?

Commentary:

In my opinion, given that the images were licensed to the website owners, it was ‘practically impossible’ to obtain consent, yet I said it is ‘not impossible’, to lead you to answer in a certain manner.

You responded to the first para of my answer as follows:

That is right. So my case may possibly be the case of prior consent as well?

My response:

Again another drivel. Paraphrasing and repeating your earlier sham defense. You should know that repeating a sham defense does not make it a solid defense.

If I had said, ‘It is practically impossible’ you wouldn’t have responded as above since you would have checked why is it ‘practically impossible,’ and probably would have found out they were in fact licensed to the website owners and they didn’t have the right to consent.

You responded to the second para of my answer as follows:

Aren't you a bit too good at assuming?

My response:

As I have already stated earlier whatever presumptions I made are based on reasonable grounds as explained above. It is now for you to rebut them, failing which, you will be judged accordingly by the readers of Steem and me.

If you are trying to exhaust my patience by these drivels and drags I have bad news for you. I don’t give in that easily.

Reading the foregoing you should know by now that your purported sham defense is no defense at all. You should offer solid evidence of the purported consent you have in your possession. If you don’t and keep driveling and dragging, then it is only reasonable and proper that we (the Steem community) draw our own conclusions.

NOTE:

I had long ago drafted a response in the form of an article (not as a comment here) with the title “Response To @aasifwani,” with copies to many of the community leaders. I did that because I observe that many community leaders are mistakenly allowing the practice of providing a link to the source of the image, without more, as adequate for complying with copyright rules.

However, since I perceived you as a person who doesn’t like to admit being in the wrong, I didn’t have the heart to publish the original draft to avoid hurting your feelings.

Consequently I had to delay responding to your last comment. But leaving it unanswered is also not advisable because the mistakes I have alleged you made are all too common in the Steem community and most importantly I am of the view that admitting one’s own mistakes is nothing to be ashamed of regardless of one’s stature. Hence I am publishing this comment which is a watered down version of the original draft meant to be an article.

Law is an extremely wide field. No lawyer can claim to know all of the law. This is especially so of subject which are not thought in law schools. Intellectual property law (including copyright law), shipping law, insurance law, IT law are some examples of specialist areas of law which lawyers usually learn only when they go into practice. That too only if they wish to specialize in them. I am sure there are thousands of experienced senior lawyers who know nothing of copyright law. Hence, there is nothing wrong for any lawyer to admit that he doesn’t know copyright law or for that matter any specialist areas of law.

As I stated earlier in this comment, I welcome you to rebut my presumptions and prove me wrong. I will not be hurt if you do so.

Finally, if you are not able to (i) rebut my presumptions and (ii) prove that you have valid consent from both the website owners from which you sourced the images, I suggest you remove the non-complaint images and replace them with compliant images.

@steemcurator01 @bestofindia