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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>but rather Twitter did in order to fit the aspect ratio displayed within the application.

This is bonkers. The attribution is still there, you just have click it. Besides, I doubt anyone who cared about the image is going to be content looking at the low-res thumbnail. The reputational damage done to the photographer is negligible.

Punishing the retweeters is also problematic because they themselves didn't crop the picture, twitter did. What does this mean for cropping that's done by the user-agent, or is otherwise device specific? eg. you post on the desktop site, where nothing is cropped, so you think everything is okay. Little do you know on the mobile site, all the images get cropped. Are you now liable as well?

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> This is bonkers. The attribution is still there, you just have click it

This means, almost by definition, that the most viewed versions of these photos on twitter, probably by a very high margin, have no attribution.

Why is this bonkers? The right to attribution is clear, and it’s not your place to judge whether or not the artist should be exercising it.

The latter question comes down to how feasible it is for a person tweeting to know how their tweets are going to look on the main timeline w/regard to attribution, which seems like something it’s reasonable for a court to decide.

>This means, almost by definition, that the most viewed versions of these photos on twitter, probably by a very high margin, have no attribution.

>Why is this bonkers? The right to attribution is clear, and it’s not your place to judge whether or not the artist should be exercising it.

Does it mean that any sort of action needed to see the attribution constitutes "hiding" it, opening you to liability? What if the image was too big and I have to scroll down to see the attribution? What's the difference between having to click on a thumbnail to see an attribution, and having to scroll down? What if the attribution is too small to see at normal zoom levels, and you have to zoom in? Unless his name was plastered all over the picture (thereby ruining it), I doubt anyone on a phone is going to be able to read the authorship information. Do we need modals in front of every image with the attribution, so we know for sure that the viewer knows who created the image?

> What if the image was too big and I have to scroll down to see the attribution? What's the difference between having to click on a thumbnail to see an attribution, and having to scroll down?

Scrolling is a way to navigate a single, continuous document. The publisher has published a document in which the image is displayed properly, with attribution, i.e. the publisher has done everything right. The user's device has decided to change how that document is displayed but it's still clear and obvious that the attribution is part of the document.

A cropped thumbnail is something entirely different. This is a copy of the image, something new that the publisher created and inserted into a document, without attribution. It has a link to a document that does have attribution but the document, in isolation, lacks attribution.

The issue here is that a new copy of the image was created and displayed, specifically, a copy without attribution information. This is also illegal in the US under DMCA [0], though DMCA requires that it's intentional.

> What if the attribution is too small to see at normal zoom levels, and you have to zoom in?

Same deal.

[0]: https://www.photoattorney.com/2007/07/watermarks-can-be-musi...

This is a solved problem. Don't crop photos on your platform. If you want photos to be cropped to fit a square box, make it explicit for users to enable. Have an additional attribution field if that's not sufficient enough.

The only solution is to have the attribution in a separate field, presumably charging the poster with providing the correct information. "Not cropping" is not one because the alternative is resizing and it potentially has the same obscuring effect.

No matter what the solution is, the people who retweeted are definitely not the ones to hold responsible in any sane justice system. They retweeted a picture but had no input on how it is displayed, and have no control over whether this changes in time.

> They had no input on how it is displayed

To rephrase that, they had no control over whether the result of their action is legal or illegal.

They did it anyway.

In this scenario, one should verify the result of one's action.

In any case, this is bonkers! But it probably feels that way because social media has conditioned us to take other people's work and do whatever we want to it and with it.

So I should be able to post a 400x1000000 photo on my feed and anyone that comes across it must scroll for at least a few minutes to see my attribution and get past the tweet.

Of course, this also means the "hide this tweet" functionality must be removed for images since, otherwise, you could hide the tweet after seeing only the top part of the image that doesn't have the attribution and thus Twitter would be aiding in people not seeing the image's attribution (as they are doing in this court case).

> Do we need modals in front of every image with the attribution, so we know for sure that the viewer knows who created the image?

Don't give EU lawmakers ideas...

What Twitter does likely violates (eg.) all cropped cc-by-nc-nd licensed images on twitter.

I'm certainly not in favour of allowing one of the big tech companies to systematically undermine such Creative Commons licenses just because it's more convenient for them.

If we're going to allow anyone to ignore license terms, let's not start with corporations.

>Why is this bonkers? The right to attribution is clear, and it’s not your place to judge whether or not the artist should be exercising it.

Why not? It's precisely our place as citizens to criticize laws we deem absurd/unfair/bad, including people who chose to exercize them in hamrful ways.

Human law != some divine dictum everybody should not criticize and uphold at all times. Seggregation was a law too.

what's bonkers is wanting to punish users for something they didn't do. judges not understanding technology strikes again.

I believe this decision punishes Twitter - not the users.

to punish twitter they wouldn't need the identities of the retweeters. the only use for knowing the retweeters is to haul them into court.

To be fair, they could be asking for the identities in order to summon them as witnesses against twitter. I don't hold much faith that this is the intention though...

the thought crossed my mind, but wouldn't you do that after you sue in the discovery step?

Most people don't watch the credits of a movie. That doesn't mean the actors didn't get attribution.

Interestingly enough, in japanese movie theaters most people do stay to watch the credits. From what I hear, specifically out of respect for creators.

...Well, I'd say it's because there's often additional short scenes after credits.

Sounds more like the reputational damage is to the court system allowing this to occur.

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