Policy: Including external images from copyrighted (sometimes unknown to us) documents

Question

To make it for record/reference, It's somewhat related to unlicensed fonts

In the following Q the OP linked a pdf document(All rights reserved by Author, but freely available via university handle) and asked how the graphs in thesis are made in page 23 etc...

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/128620/how-are-the-graphs-in-this-thesis-produced

Including the external images (atleast some examples) would be the first reaction to make by any editor since the OP is first time user(1 rep) and got severe downvotes due to his language and third person conversation involved. Basically I have tried my best to recover the newbie's Q to be more readable and clear. Finally I have removed the figures as per @JosephWright suggestion for a benefit of doubt.

Should we worry about copyright(sometimes unknown to us) of images while including external images ?

Case 1: Copyright is known to us(but document is freely available over university dissertation website) similar to the first time OP's Q linked here

As freely available over university dissertation website to benefit students/readers, Is it OK to copy and include 1 or 2 figures for eg: to demo purpose only without claiming any commercial/academic benefit ?

Case2: Copyright is unknown to us(since part of copyrighted document attached in link by OP)

As copyright is unknown to us(since part of copyrighted document attached in link by OP), Is it ok to copy and include 1 or 2 figures for eg: to demo purpose only without claiming any commercial/academic benefit ?

Case3: Any one who have experienced can add here

Based on this we shall include some good pointers to help editors in below metaQ

First post questions: Good reviewing practice

Answer 1

I'm not a lawyer, and copyright laws differ from country to country, but in the U.S., copyright does not need to be asserted: it exists the moment you produce the work. So in reality there is no such thing as "unknown copyright"; the safest assumption is that it belongs to the author or has been transferred to someone else. That said, it seems to me that posting an image from a document as an example of something would definitely fall under the US interpretation of "fair use", in my opinion.

The following is a quotation from the U.S. Copyright office on how fair use is interpreted in the U.S.

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

Source: U.S. Copyright Office

As with all legal questions, and since the site is international in scope, we must be careful not to assume that the laws in one country apply in another. However since the Stackexchange network is based in the U.S., I would assume that U.S. copyright laws are applicable.