Mike Masnick, Techdirt ; Academic Book About Emojis Can’t Include The Emojis It Talks About Because Of Copyright
"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...
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."
