Academic Book About Emojis Can’t Include The Emojis It Talks About Because Of Copyright

An academic book about emojis that can't include emojis? That's ironic and frustrating. Makes me sad that we live in a world where copyright hinders education and discussion 🙈

Here is a Tl;Dr for the ones who don't want to click the link:

Oxford professor Jieun Kiaer published an academic book called "Emoji Speak: Communications and Behaviours on Social Media," exploring how emojis are used across different cultures and ages, and considering their future in digital communication.

Although the book discusses emojis in detail, Kiaer was unable to include actual images of many emojis due to copyright concerns, despite the fact that these symbols are ubiquitous in social media spaces, which are almost entirely copyright-free.

Instead of using actual emojis, Kiaer hired an artist, Loli Kim, to draw similar representations, illustrating the barriers that exist between the online and offline worlds concerning copyright.

The inability to use emojis in the book, even in an academic context, highlights the complications and absurdity of modern copyright laws, which some argue could have constituted a fair use situation.

Some time ago I read about a similar situation with copyright preventing use of pictures of 70+ year old paintings in a doctoral dissertation. The dissertation was all about analyzing those paintings so the situation was sort of ridiculous.

Even worse, the owner of the paintings (the artist's heirs) had given their permission for the use, but the the high quality photographs of the paintings were owned by institution that requested thousands of euros for their use. While 100% lawful and I understand cultural institutions also need money, the whole situation felt really wrong and against common sense and decency.

I understand requesting money from a commercial project, but for and academic dissertation that's not fair. Same goes for emoji's that are anyways used by millions of people every day. No one is going to profit directly from a dissertation anyways.It's just stupid and should be changed.

Of course I assume the scientist contacted the lawyers who know the copyright laws better than me, but shouldn't this be under fair use as providing commentary? It's not like it's just an album of emojis, it's a book that describes them in great detail, which is transformative.

"Freedom of speech"

lol

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