@Martin_Friberg i was in the same boat with SP catalog but their latest (Shiny and Oh So Bright) is well worth a listen. It’s very reminiscent of '93-'95 Pumpkins but also modern. It feels maybe just where it should be.
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Good example of the metadata issue. There are dozens of pictures of Billy Corgan out there. Also dozens of pictures of the whole band. Both Discogs and Allmusic use a picture of the band. Pretty sure that’s Nicole Fiorentino, one time bass player for band (not in the current lineup).
The irony is she’s listed here:
and has no image when you click through:
But I’d rather have her in the SP pic than this:
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Fair use/10 char
I’m not a copyright lawyer, but doesn’t seem like fair use would apply here if RoonLabs distributed it. You individually lifting your favorite picture of Jordan Knight off a google images search to prettify his bio is probably more of a gray area.
Both Roon and Plex are commercial ventures, and isn’t like you’re making a sculpture from a painting, which is the type of purpose behind fair use.
If you’d like a crappy analogy, your argument from a right’s holder’s perspective is a bit like saying that the mp3 files on Napster were there because “fair use”.
The covers are likely another matter, because that’s likely work-for-hire with the rights likely signed over to the record companies, but the metadata aggregators would still have to clear the rights for the individual artist pictures if they aren’t provided by the record companies, so I’d wager they have a bulk deal with Getty Images or (an)other provider(s).
If they’re using material that they scraped off the internet, they’re theoretically open to a pretty nasty lawsuit from the rights holders (to go back to the Napster analogy, if the rights aren’t cleared, what they’re doing is roughly analogous to selling access to an illegal streaming service). IP is IP, whether it’s a movie, a photograph, a drawing, or a poem, and the laws are the same. Probably won’t happen in practice, because the individual content creators would have to sue. Still not something I’d want to do if I were RoonLabs.
I’d like to see the ability to have multiple photos of for example The Beatles Stones Dylan etc so that when playing a record a photo representing that time could be displayed or multiple photos changing every few minutes would be even better
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That’s a very elegant argument which would make perfect sense if Roon distributed NO artist images. Of course they do distribute artist images, and this thread is about the stupid choices the system makes as to which one they distribute.
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That’s a leap in logic that makes no sense.
Roon licences material from providers like Rovi, and that’s where those pictures come from.
Those providers licence images from rights holders (be they image banks, record companies or individual photographers).
The problem, both in terms of rights and in terms of image choices is with Roon’s providers. There should be metadata there, either as sidecar files or in the headers, so best case scenario, it’s good and doesn’t just have a digitation date but also when the picture was taken, it’s useable to determine a “heyday”, and all you need to do is figure out “heyday” for the tens of thousands of artists in the database.
Since what you need is material that’s cleared in terms of rights, another way around it, assuming there’s multiple pictures available, would be to crowdsource picture choice to Roon users from the metadata provider’s database, without allowing for picture uploads.
Fair use would cover a user making a bitchin’ poster of Brian Austin Green for their bedroom (notice how the picture there is from his heyday). Unless the original material was licensed, it wouldn’t cover that user putting it on Etsy and selling it, and it wouldn’t cover another user taking it from Etsy and selling it back as a bedspread (which is what Roon would be doing if they allowed for users to distribute their choice of artist pictures).
We get images from TiVo (Rovi), but the very high quality artist images typically come from fanart.tv (do a search for “fanart” on this forum).
The website isn’t brilliant, but it has an up-voting system for images which we take into consideration, so why not create a fanart account and cast some votes?
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I’m not a lawyer, but I did stay at a holiday inn express last nite:
from fanart -
Fair Use
While we will remove images at the copyright holders request, we believe we have a fairly good case for fair use, for the following reasons:
-
- Images aren’t big enough to be suitable for printing, meaning only the original copyright holder would be able to make use of the image for anything other than displaying on a screen.
- The images aren’t the actual product in most cases, I.E. an image for the movie Thor, isn’t actually the product – the movie – Thor and so the owner’s rights should be very minimally affected.
- We provide a completely free service, that anyone can use.
- The purpose of the site is to help fans get the best looking library possible, which in turn results in higher fan engagement where fans are uploading images, discussing images, voting on their favourite images which also acts as free promotion for the source of their fandom.
- The images are generally transformative in nature – Where the original image may have been used as say an album cover – it is used by end users as a visual indication linking a physical product (an album) with a non-physical medium (An album they bought digitally, or format shifted), generally displayed in a digital format (in a mediacentre for example).
- A lot of the images are made painstakingly by hand.
- Most of the images on the site are PR / Promotional images, that the networks / studios / labels want shared as widely as possible in order to help promote the show / movie / band.
- The exception to all this would be where the copyright holder is a photographer who makes a living licensing out the images, under this case, uploaders must get the permision from the photographer before uploading their images to the site.
Well, I guess Getty Images’ licensing FAQ page makes for more relevant reading than Gideons’ bible.
This is irrelevant.
Same could be said of Napster.
This doesn’t apply to artist portraits.
Emphasis on most.
The first picture in their “latest” music backgrounds category (what’d appear like a red carpet pic of Hayley Mills) looks like it was lifted by a Fanart.tv user from Getty, without credit to them or Walter McBride, who took it. I’d wager it isn’t licensed from either Getty nor McBride for RoonLabs to use.
Oh, and it’s also factually incorrect to state it isn’t big enough for print.
1920x1080 (or 1080p), especially if it’s high quality, which, in the case of that Hayley Mills picture, it is, is more than enough for a daily, or in a magazine if you’re not being dumb about it.
The Canon D30, which was used by a number of photographers to cover initial operations in Afghanistan was a 3mpix, 2160x1440 camera. Canon’s pro body at the time was 2464x1648, so you’d better damn believe those files are usable in print and that Fanart.tv is full of shit when they say they aren’t. It is obviously suboptimal, and most photo editors in their right minds wouldn’t do it if they had any other choice, but see under “use of video stills to illustrate articles about ISIS” if you’d like more recent examples.
Fair use where ? Roon crosses many jurisdictions, some of which do not have fair use rights. In Australia, for example there are limited fair dealing exceptions, none of which would seem to apply.
This discussion provides some good resources about jurisdiction. Basically plaintiffs can sue in multiple jurisdictions, according to what laws and prospects for recovery suit them.
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jRiver does this trick handily you n their Theatre mode. There seems to be no limit in the photos they display when activated. Great band pictures both new and old same for individuals.
It’s a great feature. I doubt if they are paying any royalties for this data as if one does a search in his browser the same photos show up and are displayed one at a time on the screen for a few moments then on to the next photo. It’s a great feature.
I’m sure the wizards of ROON could come up with something better for sure as they are a class above the guys at jRiver it seems.
Come on Wizards of ROON.
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Take a look at the picture of Paul Simon. He really deserves better
Saw that yesterday.
I’ve often replaced artist pics I didn’t like or were of low quality.
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I’ve probably replaced half of those in my “Artist Favorites” list.
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In the case of the example posted (“The Smashing Pumpkins”), it’s also not the proper name of the band. Rather than “the” it is simply Smashing Pumpkins, which takes it from being simply the name of a thing to what could potentially be an action.
My argumentation here is off topic, but can’t say that one is as easy to settle on though, as some of their releases uses one or the other variant. From MCIS and onwards they write The Smashing Pumpkins.