I thought I'd share an email conversation I had with Groundspeak today. It's not a big deal and I'm not upset about it. But I have to admit I was a little bit surprised.

In a nutshell I was asking for permission to link to a cool picture on a photographer's web site. Just a link to an individual picture, not the site's homepage, etc. The answer was "Nope".



Here was my request:

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I'm setting up a new cache page. I would like to include an image / photograph of a deer on the page. After some Googling I came across the perfect one on the site of a professional photographer. I sent an email to the photographer and was granted permission to set up a link from my cache page to the image residing on her site. The idea would be to see a thumbnail image on the cache page which is being pulled from the photographer's site. Click on that and a larger version of that photo would be loaded.

Then I read this:

Commercial Caches

Commercial caches will not be published on geocaching.com without prior approval from Groundspeak. A commercial cache is a geocache listing or geocache which is perceived by Groundspeak, Groundspeak's employees, or the Volunteer Geocache Reviewers as having been submitted to geocaching.com with the principal or substantial intent of soliciting customers or generating commercial gain. The geocache is presumed to be commercial if the finder is required to go inside a business, interact with employees, and/or purchase a product or service, or if the cache listing has overtones of advertising, marketing, or promotion.

Additionally, links to businesses, commercial advertisers, charities, political or social agendas, or the inclusion of their associated logos are not permitted on cache descriptions without prior permission from Groundspeak.

So I have two questions:

1) Do I have permission from Groundspeak to link to the image of a deer residing on the photographer's commercial site? The HTML would look something like this:

<a href='http://theirsite/images/deer_bigger.jpg' target='_blank'><img src='http://theirsite/images/deer_thumbnail.jpg'></a>

2) Would it be acceptable to give thanks/credit to the photographer on the cache page such as:

Thanks to Donna at theirsite.com for the use of this beautiful picture.

Thanks,

- WakeboardLanier
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And here was the response:

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Hi,
Thanks for writing.

No we cannot grant permission to use the picture on a commercial site. It promotes the photographers work and would generate income for them. The same goes for thanking them It also promotes their work. I am sorry but you can not use this picture on their site.

Thank you,

Michael
Groundspeak - The Language of Location
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That's the biggest crock of crap I've heard today. Seems to me that Groundspeak was just trying to preserve 'THEIR' commercialization 'golden egg' - (where they can).

- For four consecutive years Jeep ran a commercial geocaching promotion and did it through geocaching.com

- The city of Ashville, NC ran a commercial geocaching promotion (Ashcache) designed to promote tourism

- The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia ran a geocaching promotion for the King Tut exhibit

- Geocaching.com has commercialized the sport with GeoTeaming.

- And their are other local ventures capitalizing on the name and popularity.

They ALL made money - you can bet on it. Maybe you should have thrown some money their way.

I would think that with permission from the photographer that there wouldn't be a problem using the picture (you've got the copyright stuff covered). How is that picture and a thankyou to the photographer for allowing its use going to promote any more business for her, than someone placing a micro under a lampost outside a restaurant or walmart promoting business for that store. Some of these picky little things are annoying.

quote:

No we cannot grant permission to use the picture on a commercial site. It promotes the photographers work and would generate income for them. The same goes for thanking them It also promotes their work. I am sorry but you can not use this picture on their site.

Playing the devil's advocate here, I think the problem is in linking to a commercial site. Not having seen the site I don't want to go too far in my interpretation, but if it's a site that sells "stuff" it would certainly be considered commercial. An example would be this site. If the site you link too isn't as blatantly commercial that would be fine, but I wouldn't want to judge at what level something is blatantly commercial and not ok, or only subtlety commercial and acceptable. I'm not sure if Michael had a link to look at, so you got the blanket response.

I would think that if you copied the picture, uploaded it to the GC.com site, and linked the image on the page to that URL you'd be fine. I don't think anyone would object to a statement that says "photo courtesy of Joe Blow", or whatever. It's when there are links to commercial sites that they get touchey. That is why I would recommend posting a copy of the photo with proper attribution but without taking people to other sites or naming businesses.

~erik~

I see all of this...to a point. Ie: I give you permission if you mention my website. Or even more blatant, "...and drop off a donation for the blah blah charity when you visit my cache." or ...while you're at my cache, sign up to be a blah blah sponsor of and get long distance service for..."

I've seen many cache pages use a 'visits counter' that when you select it you are taken to a commercial web site like: countersUSA, AT&T, etc.. That sounds commercial.

The Link provided in the GGA March meeting goes to the Gwinnett Environmental & Heritage Center...where they "sell stuff". How does that fit in? Non-profit perhaps? I bet they DO make profit.

On many event pages I've seen, the pictures displayed are a product of a commercial site. Whether it is a picture of a pile of bacon or a menu that exists ON a Shoney's web site. What about pictures listed on 'Photobucket.com'. Mouse over the pic or get the properties and you'll see "photobucket.com". Just one example.

Through all of this, my understanding is that a quick mention is okay, as long as it doesn't sound too commercial like. You interpret? Your example in this case would have showed the actual website URL ONLY if someone requested the properties of said image. (ie: right click and properties of image) This doesn’t sound too commercial like to me.

And whether it's official or not, you have that whole copyright thing.

Sadly I agree with the name sake of your topic here.

quote:

If the site you link too isn't as blatantly commercial that would be fine

Well, that's just it. I wasn't planning on having a link that takes them to another site. I was planning on displaying an image that was pulled from another site.

It would look kinda like this except imagine a thumbnail of a deer instead of my avatar. And when you click it you see the full size image. Hope this works:



As Joebids pointed out, you would just see a picture of a deer and wouldn't even know where the image was coming from unless you really went looking for it.

quote:

I would think that if you copied the picture, uploaded it to the GC.com site, and linked the image on the page to that URL you'd be fine.

The owner of the picture would allow that - for a modest fee. All boils down to money.

quote:

The owner of the picture would allow that - for a modest fee. All boils down to money.

I think I'd find a free deer picture somewhere.

~erik~

Excellent suggestion! That was my original plan. Although the picture can't just be any 'ol deer. It needs to be a piebald deer. For those of you who don't know what that is, keep an eye out for a new cache coming soon to a lake near you. It's a rare condition and photos of them are rarer still. I did find some good photos and my favorite was the one that got me into this mess. Didn't want to infringe on a copyright, asked permission, etc. etc. I suppose I'll go down that route again with the second best one I found....

How about a picture of a Baribusa?
(commonly known in Indonesia as the pig-deer)



Looks good to me!

Cute little mutant! If he's a relative I take that back.

Image removed phat.bak. Someone did not like you linking to it without their permission I guess?

Google is your friend.

http://images.google.com/image...=Search+Images&gbv=2

Surely one of those could be used for free if you did a quick contact with them. I applaud the fact that you asked for permission to use the picture. I've seen one of mine lifted and no credit given. Kind of bums you out.

I'll try again. Break out your 3-D glasses for this one.