Screenshots of GUI: copyrighted?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Charles Incharge reports: <<I am thinking of writing an e-paper on an aspect
of network security (firewalls and such).  The paper includes screen shots
of different application GUIs - some are commercial products, other
shareware. I do have one issue, though -- are these screen shots of
application GUIs protected by copyright law?>>

Caveat: I'm not a lawyer, despite having read a fair bit about copyright
law. I'm also not completely up to date on the U.S. "digital millennium
copyright agreement", which has some specific things to say about online
material that don't fully follow the copyright law for printed materials.

The short answer: yes and no. Yes, because anything published, including
electronic materials such as screens and Web pages, is protected by
copyright. No, because this does not prevent you from "fair use" of the
materials (e.g., for the purposes of a critical comparative review). There
are many touchstones and rules of thumb used to define "fair use", but it's
an extremely subjective field of endeavor, and as in all things legal, the
result of any dispute often comes down to who hires the most skillful lawyer
and whether the judge is having a bad life that week. The key to protecting
yourself under fair use really hinges on whether you made an honest effort
to add intellectual input to what you wrote (as opposed to simply assembling
a bunch of other people's work under your name so that you didn't have to do
any real work yourself). An important additional criterion involves whether
you acknowledged the copyright (by clearly indicating that the work belongs
to someone else and that you're citing it as an example rather than
pretending it's your work).

If you're at all worried, it doesn't hurt to write to the copyright holder
to obtain permission, but you're not absolutely required to do so. On the
other hand, I consider seeking permission an example of due diligence: even
if you're a scrupulously careful reviewer, it's easy to mess up a detail and
annoy a developer. That being the case, why not send your article along for
review before you attempt to publish it? With luck, you'll fix some problems
with your review (thereby ending up with a stronger article) and
simultaneously get permission to publish.

<<If so, are all the titles and website that discuss software (that include
GUI screenshots) violations of copyright law if they do not have specific
written permission?>>

See above for the criteria to use. It depends on how they're doing it. One
interesting recent case (check the techwr-l archives) involved a large
company apparently stealing another company's Web page and text and reusing
it on their site without even changing the underlying HTML code (which
included clear footprints of the original owner). That's just dumb.

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html

"Permissions? We doan need no steenkeen' permissions!"

 

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