Academic Book About Emojis Can’t Include The Emojis It Talks About Because Of Copyright
from the that-damn-emoji-movie-ruined-everything dept
Ah, copyright. Eric Goldman alerts us to to a new bit of copyright nonsense. Jieun Kiaer, an Oxford professor of Korean linguistics, recently published an academic book called Emoji Speak: Communications and Behaviours on Social Media. As you can tell from the name, it’s a book about emoji, and about how people communicate with them:
Exploring why and how emojis are born, and the different ways in which people use them, this book highlights the diversity of emoji speak. Presenting the results of empirical investigations with participants of British, Belgian, Chinese, French, Japanese, Jordanian, Korean, Singaporean, and Spanish backgrounds, it raises important questions around the complexity of emoji use.
Though emojis have become ubiquitous, their interpretation can be more challenging. What is humorous in one region, for example, might be considered inappropriate or insulting in another. Whilst emoji use can speed up our communication, we might also question whether they convey our emotions sufficiently. Moreover, far from belonging to the youth, people of all ages now use emoji speak, prompting Kiaer to consider the future of our communication in an increasingly digital world.
Sounds interesting enough, but as Goldman highlights with an image from the book, Kiaer was apparently unable to actually show examples of many of the emoji she was discussing due to copyright fears. While companies like Twitter and Google have offered up their own emoji sets under open licenses, not all of them have, and some of the specifics about the variations in how different companies represent different emoji apparently were key to the book.
So, for those, Kiaer actually hired an artist, Loli Kim, to draw similar emoji!
The page reads as follows (with paragraph breaks added for readability):
Notes on Images of Emojis
Social media spaces are almost entirely copyright free. They do not follow the same rules as the offline world. For example, on Twitter you can retweet any tweet and add your own opinion. On Instagram, you can share any post and add stickers or text. On TikTok, you can even ‘duet’ a video to add your own video next to a pre-existing one. As much as each platform has its own rules and regulations, people are able to use and change existing material as they wish. Thinking about copyright brings to light barriers that exist between the online and offline worlds. You can use any emoji in your texts, tweets, posts and videos, but if you want to use them in the offline world, you may encounter a plethora of copyright issues.
In writing this book, I have learnt that online and offline exist upon two very different foundations. I originally planned to have plenty of images of emojis, stickers, and other multi-modal resources featured throughout this book, but I have been unable to for copyright reasons. In this moment, I realized how difficult it is to move emojis from the online world into the offline world.
Even though I am writing this book about emojis and their significance in our lives, I cannot use images of them in even an academic book. Were I writing a tweet or Instagram post, however, I would likely have no problem. Throughout this book, I stress that emoji speak in online spaces is a grassroots movement in which there are no linguistic authorities and corporations have little power to influence which emojis we use. Comparatively, in offline spaces, big corporations take ownership of our emoji speak, much like linguistic authorities dictate how we should write and speak properly.
This sounds like something out of a science fiction story, but it is an important fact of which to be aware. While the boundaries between our online and offline words may be blurring, barriers do still exist between them. For this reason, I have had to use an artist’s interpretation of the images that I originally had in mind for this book. Links to the original images have been provided as endnotes, in case readers would like to see them.
Just… incredible. Now, my first reaction to this is that using the emoji and stickers and whatnot in the book seems like a very clear fair use situation. But… that requires a publisher willing to take up the fight (and an insurance company behind the publisher willing to finance that fight). And, that often doesn’t happen. Publishers are notoriously averse to supporting fair use, because they don’t want to get sued.
But, really, this just ends up highlighting (once again) the absolute ridiculousness of copyright in the modern world. No one in their right mind would think that a book about emoji is somehow harming the market for whatever emoji or stickers the professor wished to include. Yet, due to the nature of copyright, here we are. With an academic book about emoji that can’t even include the emoji being spoken about.
Filed Under: copyright, emoji, emoji speak, fair use, jieun kiaer, publishing
Comments on “Academic Book About Emojis Can’t Include The Emojis It Talks About Because Of Copyright”
Copyright is no longer about protecting intellectual property from plagiarism. It’s about publishers with deep pockets using their money to purchase the power of imprimatur. No piece of information, fragment of text, or work of art shall appear without their blessing.
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It was always about protecting the right of the publisher to CENSOR and control what can and cannot be “shown” to the public.
All for the sake of profit.
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No, it was about rent seeking behavior.
The entire point of copywrite law, just as it is with patents, is to officially recognize: a set amount of acceptable rent-seeking behavior.
Over time and with spending money being considered a form of free speech combined with coronations having first amendment rights, the acceptable amount went up.
This is a straightforward “predicted by Adam Smith” phenomenon.
A private company damaging it’s environment via rent seeking behavior is it’s own gross thing, not censorship.
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I was referring to the history of copyright.
The act preceeding the Statute of Anne was the one I was specifically referring to.
Before the Stationer’s Company chose to be rent-seeking absolutists, there was a legitimate lack of literate people before the invention of the printing press.
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Only with reference to Latin, which was the languages of science and literature. Most people could read and write their own language well enough for everyday use. Try running any business without being able to keep records.
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…and we’re not copying receipts and ledgers except on a kingdom level. Or laws. Or legal documents.
We’re talking the important stuff, like… oh yeah, the fucking Bible and the science stuff.
Keep in mind that I’m referring to Medieval Europe. Ancient empires varied on the issue of making copies of everything ever. Amd medieval Islam and the Middle East apparently had no problems preserving and making copies of the science stuff.
Seems like overabundance of caution to me. Emoji already have less protection and these have open licenses.
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It might be but when you’re risking legal fights and potentially ruinous legal fees and fines unless you’ve got money to burn playing it safe is the sensible way to go.
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I mean, I guess? Hard to imagine a case not being tossed immediately since the license terms are extremely clear.
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You put way too much in the copyright regime.
The DMCA alone is rife with Hollywood avuses and worse
And you’re trusting that?
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Authors don’t get to make that call, unfortunately. Unless you want to self publish and have nobody read your work.
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The difference between online and physical book is that the site that lets you self publish risks a DMCA notice, while a publisher risks the court case.
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Publisher’s legal offices are basically always in lawsuit-avoidance mode. If they think they might get sued for something, even if they might win the case, they’re gonna say no.
©️ is 🐂 💩
And that just shows how far things have already devolved.
Even if a book about emoji WERE harming the market for whatever emoji or stickers the professor wished to include, copyright is not there to prevent markets from being harmed. It’s supposed to be promoting science and the useful arts — which is exactly what this book is attempting to do.
Emojis are essentially font typefaces. I just checked, and there’s quite a few popular books about typefaces.
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In the USA, typefaces cannot be copyrighted. (Font files are sometimes copyrightable, because they may essentially be computer programs to generate typefaces.) Quoting Wikipedia:
That raises a question: are emoji “symbolic characters” under this definition, or “pictoral […or…] graphic work”? They’re certainly not “text”. But non-textual characters such as the manicule and other “dingbats” go back hundreds of years, so maybe there’s already case law.
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Likely depends on the exact designs – the ones shown on the book cover in the article (or ones built into Windows) are likely creative enough to be copyrighted as they aren’t purely utilitarian in function – closer to icons than typefaces.
Obviously the idea of a smiley face isn’t copyrightable but the individual designs made by each company would be.
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That’s not so clear. There are all kinds of ways someone might make a fancy letter “A”, but as long as it’s meant as part of a typeface rather than a work of art, it cannot be copyrighted (in the USA). It’s still considered utilitarian.
One difference between icons and fonts is that people don’t use icons generically within text, whereas (per the premise of this book) people do use emoji that way. Maybe the ones on the cover can be copyrighted, because nobody is typing an emoji into a message and getting those exact images. But the ones built into smartphones? They’re meant for people to put in their messages, in all kinds of contexts, which certainly brings them closer to “typeface”
They turned them into a movie, of course they are going to go batshit about it.
Copyright and permissions
This should not have been an issue. You write to the rights holder and ask permission. You send them the text where you want to use their image, you indicate the size in words of the ms., where and when it will be published, by whom and in what format(s). You state that you will include their permission and copyright on the copyright and/or acknowledgement pages. Usually, for academic/scholarly work there is no fee; sometimes there is a token fee.
This is not new. It’s standard practice for books.
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Who gets the right to literally “:)”?
Do they get a cut every time someone sends a WhatsApp message?
Not sure why the author frames this as an online/offline copyright difference.
Ignoring the issue of fair-use or the commercial nature of the book.
The copyright issue is down to how they are being used not that the author wants to use them offline.
For example if the book was an ebook or an online article (assuming they are embedding third party emoji images instead of relying on the readers system to generate them) they still would have needed to obtain the same permissions they sought for the physical book.
The only reason users of Social Media don’t need to license emoji’s is because the platform already has a license for them. (or own them).
Same with retweets or embedding instagram posts – that isn’t infringing because the licensing terms of the platform allow those actions (they are also linking to content not copying) – but it would be infringement to make a copy of a tweet/instagram and post that elsewhere.
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The difference is whether the publisher receives a DMCA notice or is sued in court.
Deja vu all over again
Reminds me of my daughter’s experience with her art school textbook back in 2012
https://www.techdirt.com/2012/09/17/university-requires-students-to-pay-180-art-history-text-that-has-no-photos-due-to-copyright-problems/
Even if all the emojis were subject to copyright protection, which is unclear, wouldn’t this fall classically under the doctrine of fair use? I understand the notion of not wanting to risk financial ruin by being dragged into an infringement lawsuit but I find the author’s absolutist analysis (i.e., that use of emoji’s offline is simply not allowed) is legally flawed and misleading.
indemnification agreements sux
Maybe 10-20 years ago, the author would have gone ahead and said “it’s fair use, sue us”. But now publishers require authors sign indemnification agreements that state the author (not publisher) is responsible for all legal costs and settlement fees the publisher might encounter with the material.
Which means the author isn’t booking the lawyer or deciding whether to fight or settle, the publisher is– but the publisher has no incentive to not just capitulate because the author is one that pays the costs.
If you’re a writer, strike out the indemnification clause before signing (or, if they push back, have it capped at the amount they paid you). That they’ve become standard is terrible.
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Also make sure you’ve never agreed, and won’t agree, to indemnify them in any other context. Just about every web service wants full indemnification from its users, which would include paying for their expensive legal teams. So look out if you’re ever signing up to buy an e-book (or anything else), logging in to an author portal, etc.—even from another company, because one could buy another.
So..... the obvious conclusion should be...
“But, really, this just ends up highlighting (once again) the absolute ridiculousness of copyright in the modern world.”
This implies that copyright used to be non-“ridiculous” in the previous, analog world, but that now, it’s “gone too far.” You can’t solve a problem unless you strike at the root. The problem is copyright law and all forms of IP law, per se. The problem is not some particular “ridiculous” consequence. All copyright law consequences are unjust and “ridiculous,” we are just used to some of them. The problem is copyright law. The solution is to abolish it, not to complain about conspicuously outrageous consequences or effects.
There is nothing good about copyright or indeed any form of IP. It is all completely evil and destructive. Unless we recognize this and call for its total and immediate and complete abolition, we are focusing on the wrong problem.
🤔
Isn’t the technique of creation base part of Unicode. And Unicode is a semi-open standard. Forget fair use, just use the Unicode images?
What am I missing in this?