- Important update (08.09.2014): The BING widget has been temporarily removed! http://bit.ly/1s0Bbm7
- The Bing Widget was discovered by Jim Pickerell and Paul Melcher . The original blog article and a good explanation of the technical features of the BING widget may be found HERE.
Promoting the Economy of Free
The most obvious problematic feature of the widget is that it participates in “making-believe” that content on the Internet is free to use. The service proposed by Microsoft does not offer any tool to differentiate between protected material and not protected material. Neither does it educate the users but rather leads them to believe that any image found on the internet is available for free without a need for a license.
Using “third-party content” without authorization
The BING Widget allows to embed individual images or panels of images selected by BING following a keyword instruction of the User. These images can be shown either as a “collage” or in a “slide show” format. In short: BING allows the reproduction of these images although it has no license to do so or does not own the copyright on these images. Getty Images has found several of these images only a few days after the introduction of the widget.
The terms of services of the BING Widget carefully state in their article 3. (h) that users should not ““use the Services to infringe upon copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights of anyone”. However, since the selection of images is made by the search engine, not by the Users themselves, this condition of use is impossible to follow …
Other problematic features
The getty images claim (attached below) points to further problematic features:
- BING’s logo is displayed next to the panel of pictures
- A click on the panel of pictures links back to the BING’s website, not to any of the content providers or original websites
- In its terms of services BING reserves the right to charge a fee for the “service”
Taking Action
- Shortly after the release of the Widget, ASMP, PACA and CEPIC reached out to their contact at Microsoft proposing a meeting in New York at the international paca conference.
The object of the meeting is to discuss the impact of this feature on the image licensing market and, in view of Microsoft support of copyright, find a solution.
- Getty images was quicker: only two weeks after the release of the Widget, they filed a lawsuit against Microsoft.
They argue that the widget has already hurt their business and will hurt the entire photographic industry ; they are asking to shut off all Bing Widget operation until trial and seek statutory damages for the copyright infringement that they have already identified.
The text of the claim is attached (courtesy of getty images)
We will keep you posted on this important issue.
