Here is a nice wiki page for reusable images
Magazines and books are published and then out there in book stores and on news stands. Where anyone can take a picture using their damn cell phone. That being said how is anyone going into your still or animation and determining the texture was downloaded from Bing. Assuming someone else doesn’t have your packed blend file. The one you just deleted yesterday and wiped clean.
I don’t know guys and I’m just asking a question here. Hell for that matter you might have used a screen capture for the texture. Or, does the copyright law say we can’t even have a magazine sitting on a coffee table in our renders? Although it might be actually sitting on our coffee table at home. Yeah, hell yes, I’m confused here.
Buying a magazine doesn’t give you the right to reproduce and sell that magazine or its contents. In any form. It’s that simple.
I never deleted any blend file sir, and I’ll be giving this model up for sale, which, would make it illegal if it was real. I don’t really blame them… If I wrote a book, I wouldn’t want someone using it, especially in a disgusting animation/picture… So, like if your making the file for yourself, fine, use the texture, but if you plan on using it commercially, make your own 
I didn’t pay attention to the first post, so I assumed the OP was talking about book skin textures, possibly books with hard covers. Now I get that he’s referring to pocket editions or with leaf covers.
My question is who on earth will go after you for copyright violations when you’re essentially advertising their books for free? They may even pay you for it. What exactly am I missing? The only people that I see quibbling about it or at least warn you is the owner of a site or platform where you’re going to display them. Like being interviewed on tv and you’re carrying some commercial product with visible label on it. It’s certainly not the authors or publishers of the book/s that are going to raise questions.
You can argue about it as long as you want, but you would still be breaking copyright law, unless you obtained the rights to do so from the person(s)/group(s) who own the original copyright.
I saw the book “Catcher In The Rye” in a Mel Gibson movie. It made me buy it and I did, and I assumed so did a million people. Anyone knows any detail who paid who in this instance?
A: They only ever showed the solid red cover edition of the book, so there was no art copyright at issue
B: They never had any character read aloud from the book, nor did they display significant portions of the text of the book on screen.
Given that, it likely fell under fair use, but I’d bet the studio also paid the estate of JD Salinger a hefty sum since the film was stating that the novel was being used as an element in a mind control program for brainwashed assassins.
The “it’s free advertising” argument doesn’t hold water because the owners of the content you want to use want and need and have the right to control the way in which it is being used and portrayed.
To the OP:
All questions of ‘what you could get away with as long as the copyright holders don’t know about it and you cover your tracks’ or ‘how wrong it is to infringe copyright when you’re potentially marketing someone’s product for them’ only matter when the central issue is how much you want to avoid getting into any legal trouble.
When the central issue is integrity, those questions are completely irrelevant. In that case, the question is pretty simple: does the content you want to use come with a license, EULA, or statement of any kind that you’re allowed to use it for anything at all? If it does, just abide by the rules you’re given. If it doesn’t, it’s usually safe to assume the content belongs to someone and that they own the rights over its usage.
Noticing Blenders new German Book I would like to say;-
I think Blender made a mistake modelling cars. In the USA movies could not use cars unless they met strict criteria such as they were out of date or withdrawn from sale. Even then the interior of the car had to be altered away from what they were really like.
On the other hand if the cars was kept small and unimportant as part of the general background they could be used. This idea carried over to the CGI industry. Complex models of cars are taken seriously.
What has that got to do with German books? Some people have been re-badging cars to say they were German. Not because anyone would believe that they were but because of the state of mind they wanted when driving.Thus fulfilling the legal requirement for illegality of not being harmless.
Whoa @Joey Blendhead where did that come from. In the first place I believe in the intent of the copyright laws. And, why does my picture or animation have to be disgusting. Also being a hobbyist I doubt if anything I do is ever used commercially. But, if I thought that I would certainly make my own magazine cover in lieu of buying one.
I thought I was simply asking a question and covering all scenarios with no post in mind. Disgusting animations: Evidently you have seen my production; ‘Granny does Dallas’ using MakeHuman figures. Get a damn grip.
No, I wasn’t talking about anything you made sir XD LOL! I never saw anything you’ve made… I was saying, I wouldn’t want someone to use my work in a bad way… Not saying that you do… But you never know who will 
LOL! Sorry for the misunderstanding 
To clarify a little bit:
I think use of copyrighted work as textures in your own work (meaning a still render or animation) would count as “incidental use” which is allowed. So if you showed a painting or book in the background of a render of a living room, that would be OK, even if it’s for commercial use*. Example: http://www.out-law.com/page-4098 … note that it’s got to be a minor part of your work, not the main part, usually. But “stuff in the background” is usually safe.
However, you can’t make a reproduction of something and sell that. So selling a model where one of the textures is just someone’s copyrighted work is NOT OK. So for example pretty much all of these models are infringing, because they use Apple’s copyrighted works (the backgrounds and icons) as textures and they’re right there in the download. (note that legally, the 3D shape of the devices is another matter entirely from a legal standpoint… a discussion for another day. Also note that they don’t tend to get taken down… seems that Apple doesn’t know or doesn’t care about these)
To use an analogy: You can take a photo of a room, and if a TV show is on in the background of the room, you can still sell that photo. However, you can’t put your camera right up to the screen, make a video recording of the show, then sell that video recording. That’s not ‘de minimis’ because a substantial part of the “work” is just someone else’s work in a new format.
*You’ll note that even though Nextel won the case, they still had to go to court and therefore spent a lot of money. Even if you’re legally in the right, you can always be sued by anyone for any reason. So don’t just think of whether something is technically OK. Think of whether someone is likely to be upset enough to hire a lawyer and sue you, too. At the end of the day, that’s what everyone (except huge corporations) need to be most concerned with.
This is probably mostly incorrect. Car designs aren’t even covered by copyright by default. Those designs are mostly a matter of patents, not copyrights, and to that extent they have no relevance to a film. A film might not want to show cars that haven’t paid for product placement, but that’s not matter of law in the first place.
My question is who on earth will go after you for copyright violations when you’re essentially advertising their books for free? They may even pay you for it. What exactly am I missing?
If you’re selling a model with a texture that’s just a scan of a book cover, you might argue that they’re getting free advertising, but they’d be within their rights to collect damages from you. It’s copyright infringement, whether you think it might benefit the author is irrelevant. You copied their artwork (the cover) and re-sold it as your own work (texture). That’s pretty clear-cut.
A weakly worded Govt page about Design rights can be found here.
http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/protect/p15_design_rights
It clearly states the obvious, that designs are protected by Copy Right!
Using other peoples products in your artistic commercial work has always been illegal.
I was clearly right.
there seems to be a lot of misinterpretations of the copyright here, i’ll clean this up:
With copyright it’s forbidden, unless allowed, not the other way around. You can’t use someone elses work in your own published work unless you have permission, eg. via a permissive licence (like those cc licences, or it’s public domain, etc) or a bought licence, OR it’s considered fair-use (educational, comment, criticism, news reporting). however intending something as fair-use doesn’t make it automatically fair-use. even if you were sued and still win a trial it would have been a huge and costly hassle. so if you want to be sure, you better get a permission (this can sometimes be very plain “can i use this for thisandthat” - “yeah sure go ahead, make sure to credit me”). So no, it’s not legal.
no you cant have sb elses work in your renders without permission. you can have it physically on your shelf, but youre not allowed to make derivative work with it.
everything you or sb else creates is covered by copyright by default, including cars. youre not allowed to use copyrighted stuff in your own stuff without permission.
No, you cant use sb elses textures in your work without permission.
If you’re a journalist and reporting news you would clearly be protected by fair use. however if you’re just doing your own work which has nothing to do with fair-use, you’re not allowed to show other peoples copyrighted stuff in a tv in the background.
No, you’re not allowed to use other peoples work in your work without permission. Your opinion about possible advertising etc doesnt matter. if you want to sell ad space in your work do that beforehand, you cant “assume” they’ll be fine with it.
The tv station is protected by fair use in this case. often lables and brands are still blurred though.
my point: you can gamble on the insignificance or fair-use of your work and the unknowingness, lazyness or indifference of the copyright holder, but if you want to be safe, dont use copyrighted work without permission, simple as that.
it’s even getting easier as permissive licences are in the rising, there’s tons of creative commons material around. you can also buy licences at those ‘royalty free’ stock photo sites (or video, or music). those dont cost the world.
What he said ^^
I agree with Blackdot.
But then how did cars get in to US movies???
Some things I remember are;
The Three Year Rule, after three years the car is not new any more.
’ Fair Useage ’ the car was never a proper design from the start. Cars are like textures and if there is doubt about ownership of the design then the manufacturer can not complain in the courts
The car was not in the movie. The car was just in the background and played no part in the film.
The manufacturer has gone bankrupt without paying for the design.
You realize of course that all these examples of real world objects don’t have anything to do with the discussion of textures. How did the book and the car get into the movie? Someone bought the book and the car of course. They didn’t download the car off Google Images for free.
A virtual representation of a commercial product is a completely different case from using an existing physical object that you bought and own. In order to use a virtual representation of a commercial product like a specific book or car rather than a purchased physical object, you need licensing and permission. This is why for instance most Transformers toys are representations of generic or imaginary models of car rather than a specific real-world model. Transformers that correspond to a particular model of car have to be licensed and usually only happen in conjunction with one of the live action movies. Someone paid for the rights to make a commercially used 3D model of the car for the movie, and likewise someone paid for the separate set of rights to make a commercially sold plastic action figure shaped like that car.
" They didn’t download the car off Google Images for free. " ;- There are a lot of empty houses too!!!
In English law copyrightable designs are ‘real world objects’ as much as cars and books.
In movies you are allowed to use real world objects as long as the use does not infringe copyright.
Computers and software are real world objects. Data is private and if it is a design it is copyrightable.
I don’t think any car manufacturer would license a copy of its designs for any other purpose.
Once the design owner starts using its designs for another purpose then its protection in law changes and others could claim ’ fair use’