"Commercial use would be reselling the rights to the photography." Yes, but is commercial use limited only to reselling the copyrights? I don't know about the news reporting aspect..... Anyone out there in the Steemit world have legal experience with intellectual property?
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Commercial use is not limited to reselling. For instance, if I display copyrighted material on my web page to draw an audience and then sell advertising on my page and profit therefrom, I have made commercial use of the copyrighted material even though I didn't resell it.
"...I have made commercial use of the copyrighted material even though I didn't resell it."
Exactly. Infringement can occur even if a business is using an image as a display. A grocery store once got in trouble for this very thing because they Googled images that ended up being used on their big window display. They didn't resell the image, but it could be argued that their window display resulted in sales, profiting the store.
The news angle seems a bit....eh. While, yes, news outlets used the material to report a story, the poster here is not a news outlet. They're an individual reaping benefits from posting such content. I personally believe that any profits earned should be split evenly among ALL the creators of the content, no matter if any one of them takes up the majority of the post.
Example: Say you use 10 photos in your blog post, each one by a different person. Even if your post is mostly text that you yourself have written, if you make $1,100 then I think fair would mean that each contributor gets an even share. Each person would get $100, including the writer of the post.
Fair use should also = fair gains.
I guarantee you that those news outlets got permission first. Most newspapers, magazines, and news websites have compliance editors whos job is just taking care of stuff like that.