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Data obtained from the Stack Exchange API is cc-wiki licensed.

This license explicitly encourages the user of the API to copy, redistribute, remix and transform the data obtained from the API for any purpose, provided that appropriate credit is given and that the cc-wiki license remains.

If data obtained via the API was used to build a new website that displays tens of thousands of unaltered questions and answers reformatted for easier browsing, and if one of those questions contains a link to a copyrighted image, then would the user of the API be liable for displaying that image link on the new website?

To be clear, the data obtained from the API contains just a link to an image hosted on stack.imgur.com. The image was uploaded there by a Stack Overflow user who did not have a license to do so. That user is clearly liable; I'm asking whether the user of the API is liable. The data that they obtained via the API may contain hundreds of thousands of image links, any of which may violate copyright, and this places a burden on them to verify all image links for potential copyright violations before sharing and remixing the data.

In light of the top answer below, I've discovered a way to make easy money. Behold!

Copyright Infringing Poem

If the following poem is republished anywhere other than on law.stackexchange.com then I will demand $1000 in damages.

The Sausage
by Jason Hutchens

Oh mighty sausage, how juicy and sweet
The delicious smell of your sizzling meat
kranzky
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2 Answers2

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Yes, he's liable.

A Partial Copy of a Fair Use is not necessarily Fair Use

Content that is used with Fair Use on Stack Exchange isn't necessarily used with Fair Use in the website that uses the data from SE. If, for example, someone discusses a poem, that is Fair use. But ripping the poem to another page and ditching the discussion no longer discusses the poem and thus is no longer covered under Fair Use.

You can't license what you don't own.

If someone includes a work that they have no rights to use in their answer or question, that does not transfer any rights into Creative Commons. In fact, you can't put a license on anything that you don't have rights to. Copying any content that someone else published as a copyright infringer doesn't make it ok - you just become a copyright infringer too!

jwodder
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Trish
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Not necessarily.

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has:—

  1. The copyright in a work is infringed by a person who, without the licence of the copyright owner,
    (a) possesses in the course of a business,
    (b) sells or lets for hire, or offers or exposes for sale or hire,
    (c) in the course of a business exhibits in public or distributes, or
    (d) distributes otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright,
    an article which is, and which he knows or has reason to believe is, an infringing copy of the work.

Subsection (d) would appear to apply to the circumstances described ("Copyright is infringed by distributing an infringing copy"), which means that if there is no reason to believe it is an infringing copy, that is an available defence.

That defence will probably only be rarely available, though.

Andrew Leach
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