My name does not show on the page but if you check the page source I am listed in there.
Looks like Webshots uses a script that rips data from various sites and embeds it in their pages so that a search for my name brings up results pointing to their pages offering competing images.
Any thoughts on how to handle this?
Guy
Posted by Richard Wong on January 22, 2007 at 6:41 PM
I've always wondered what all that is. I've seen my website as a "sponsored result" on other pages as well and I know I have never paid for search listings. Plus now I'm getting 700+ spam messages to my email account a day saying "Mailer daemon". Probably trying to crash my website I bet. stupid hackers.
Legal or ethical, I don't know. But I bet you could put an immediate end to it if right away you put a watermark on that particular photo saying "Webshots is a Scam!" See how quickly they remove the link!
Thanks guys!
Hank - it's not an image. They copied text off my site and embedded it in their HTML under the guise of "sponsored site". I never sponsored anything and they don't provide a link back to me. It just makes their page pop up among other results when someone is searching for my name or site.
Guy
Posted by Steve Foss on January 22, 2007 at 10:47 PM
Slick tactic. They're not breaking any law I'm aware of. Not that I'm an expert, but I've been looking at that very thing and I haven't found any caselaw on it. Maybe one of the NPN legal beagle members might know.
Richard, on the spammy thing, if your Web site offers a direct e-mail link to contact you, that makes it easy for spammers to borrow your e-mail for sending their messages. It's happening to us. To counteract that, you need to provide a form for people to fill out under the "contact us" link on your site. That's what we're in the process of doing.
Posted by Fred Stearns on January 22, 2007 at 11:10 PM
Guy,
I found this a couple of weeks ago. I was also listed as a sponsored site. I have registered with WebShots, but have never posted anything on their site. My name also did not show on the web page, but a link without a picture was posted to my ISP. I cannot tell what is going on or how I can contact the right person at WebShots. I found this by typing in my name (first last) into Google and finding some links pointing to WebShots. I clicked on the link just to see what would happen, since the link to my site was incomplete. It delivered me to somewhere in WebShots, I cannot remember where though I might have gotten 404'ed. Interestingly, the email address I have received the most Spam at does not appear in the web pages on my ISP.
Steve, do you have a reference for that "Contact Us" form and how to use it?
Posted by Richard Wong on January 22, 2007 at 11:33 PM
Thanks for the idea Steve. I hadn't thought of that. It got so bad a few months ago I coudln't update my website anymore because the spam took up all my disk space allocation. It took me a few weeks to realize why I cuoldn't update though. So I had to purchase 50mb more space when it came time to renew.
Posted by John Zinn on January 22, 2007 at 11:38 PM
Guy, don't you have a copyright on the text and images on your website. I am not sure how their copy of the text or url for your website is considered fair use when the "links" point right back to their site.
Posted by Jesse Speer on January 23, 2007 at 12:25 AM
Boneheads. Solidifies my opinion of this website. I just found my name as well. I'd be on a rampage tonight, if the URL using my name was showing up higher than the current #174 in Google. Pretty devious, but virtually harmless - in my case. Do they rank higher with your websites - others?
Well, at least you can report the violation ...
http://community.webshots.com/html/violation.htm
Guy,
I am not an Attorney but a former geek!!! I would send an email request to cease and desist with a delivery and read receipt requested. All web site images and CODE are covered by the copyright at the bottom of your site and is also covered by intellectual copy rights do to the fact you either created it or had it created and therefore yours. I would also tell them that they ARE breaking Federal law by stealing bandwidth it is federal if they are in another state. I use to work for an ISP and have had to deal with this before. Look them up on WHOIS and copy and save screen shot and also print it, same for complete web page, and corresponding code. And inform them you have done all this and that they have 24 hours to either apply proper rights and permission with links to your site and compensation for the use of said images, or have all references removed. And you reserve the right to seek any and all International and or Federal criminal and civil litigation, court cost, attorney's fees, and expenses and to seek compensation for lost bandwidth and lost revenue for illegal use of copyrighted material.
Just my bathroom attorney's two cents worth.
Posted by Steve Foss on January 23, 2007 at 1:09 AM
Hey guys, I don't know how to build the "contact us" form myself. I just know it needs to be done and is getting done. By my Web guru. So check with your Web geek on how to make it happen. It won't kiss all spammers goodbye, but it'll make it a lot harder for them to use you for their shnit, and likely they'll move on to easier victims after that.
Posted by Kah Kit Yoong on January 23, 2007 at 2:28 AM
What about this one http://www.aaanetserv.com/turismo/liguria/cinqueterre.html
I googled my name and found my photos turning up on various websites including one to advertise the Canon 5D! And these are the ones that at least credit me with the picture. All taken from my shots at photo.net My associate Winnie Ho thinks I should not use the name of the location to prevent people finding such photos.
Posted by Mark Meyer on January 23, 2007 at 4:04 AM
Guy,
I just learned that I too have sponsored results on webshots. This is a little weird and I guess I don't understand why they are doing this. Maybe, like you said, they are trying to scrape away google hits from people searching for you, but I can't imagine this being very successful. I also can't imagine that there is anything illegal about this technique in and of itself. If I mention your name on my website google will eventually find it and there isn't much you can do about it. The thing that is disconcerting and probably violating your rights is the false indication that you are somehow sponsoring this site. I'm not a lawyer, but this would seem to fall squarely under the the appropriation privacy tort; the same principle that requires model releases. When you use someone's likeness (or in this case name) for trade and advertising you need their permission. I really don't like seeing my website listed under their sponsored links and it REALLY ticks me off that they don't at least do me the courtesy of sending some traffic my way. This is rather slimey.
I'd like to chime in on this issue. I didn't understand at first what was going on. I pulled up the Webshots site and searched for "guy tal" to no avail. But, then I did figure out to look in the source code and, voila!
Frankly, I don't know if this is illegal - I'm not a lawyer and don't know these issues.
But, this situation does FEEL immoral/wrong/scummy. While I don't know how to create these "sponsored site" ads, I could do something very similar with my website and insert something like "ansel adams" (with all apologies to Mr. Adams and his heirs and estate) into the keywords for my website. That would direct searches towards my website and I would feel quite dirty about it (although, I did insert the word "sex" into my keywords, at the suggestion of a friend, with the same basic intent - driving traffic). In due course, I expect that Mr. Adams estate would be after me with a cease & desist order/restraining order or something like that.
In this case, I'll only speculate that Webshots is trying to drive traffic to its site and they're betting that it's worth the risk of doing so before they're caught. They'll take a slap on the wrist from Mr. Tal, or cease & desist if he hires a lawyer, and they'll make more money from the effort than they'll have to spend defending themselves.
Maybe one day I could be so famous... But, at the moment, I'm glad that I'm not!
Tim, I am consulting with a lawyer (I have a couple in the family though they do not specialize in intellectual rights but they are researching it). Once i have a better grip on my rights, I will have them draft a letter to Webshots and their service provider, possibly followed by a lawsuit if they don't remedy the situation. They are using copyrighted material (text directly taken from my web site) so I'm confident there's some case there.
Guy
Posted by Dan Borzynski on January 23, 2007 at 4:31 PM
Hmm, I did a little research on my name and I seem to have at least three sites doing that to me. None of them are Webshots, but Coppermine (I think that is them) seems to be the least disrespectable of the bunch. Fortunately, my name comes up a lot higher on the search engines.
This may be legal, but it certainly is not ethical.
I did discover that there is another newly active photographer with my last name. That is something I never expected to see. It is a fairly rare last name - I'll have to e-mail him.
Posted by Jim Goldstein on January 24, 2007 at 12:16 AM
There are several precedents where code and text have been protected via copyright laws. I'd say you have a very good leg to stand on to hold them accountable. I'll be staying tuned to see developments on this.
Posted by Jim Goldstein on January 24, 2007 at 11:42 PM
Webshots replied to a blog post I made about this. They're claiming it is a Yahoo! Overture feature, but it still doesn't explain why the links don't go through.
Posted by Walter Rowe on January 25, 2007 at 6:12 PM
Guy Tal writes:
Tim, I am consulting with a lawyer (I have a couple in the family though they do not specialize in intellectual rights but they are researching it). Once i have a better grip on my rights, I will have them draft a letter to Webshots and their service provider, possibly followed by a lawsuit if they don't remedy the situation. They are using copyrighted material (text directly taken from my web site) so I'm confident there's some case there.
Actually, if you place your mouse just before the "s" in "sponsored results", hold down your mouse button, and select everything in that row that follows that text, and cut-n-paste it into a text window, you will see your name. Apparently the table column is too narrow for you to see it.
I imagine they are placing Yahoo ads on their pages, and your name comes up in a Yahoo search with the same search terms you used on WebShots. I bet Yahoo is giving them click-through revenue when people visit sites that show up in those "sponsored results" region. Those results are sponsored by Yahoo.
So no one is really stealing your stuff. They are just producing your web site from Yahoo!'s search database and WebShots is making a few pennies for every time someone visits your web site using that link. If you owned stock in WebShots, you could have all your friends use that search to visit your web site :-)
Also, I imagine that it isn't really hosted at WebShots. If you look at the URL, the WebShots search engine looks to be a CGI application so it is probably generating dynamic HTML. When you view the source of that page, it looks like any static HTML page, but is was generated on the fly from the search CGI. They probably aren't breaking any laws.
Posted by Jim Goldstein on January 25, 2007 at 7:40 PM
The second round of feedback received is that they have a bug in how Overture dynamic ads are being displayed. When there are no sponsored links Overture feeds natural search results. All the URLs for natural search results are broken. I'm not sure if this is an Overture bug or an implementation error on Webshots side.
Posted by Jim Goldstein on January 26, 2007 at 2:05 AM
This is on my site, but I thought I'd post it directly here:
(Keep this in mind if you see your site or site content posted on another site. I learned something new about Yahoo! Overture)
"The reason provided for the unexplained “sponsored ad” behavior…
1. Yahoo! (Overture) sponsored ads will display natural search results when there are a lack of paid advertisers.
2. Webshots code did not support linking these types of ads in all instances breaking the link to the referenced site.
Note: At the time of this post Webshots code has yet to be updated, but will be shortly to address this concern along with other scheduled updates."
Posted by Richard Wong on January 26, 2007 at 3:53 PM
Thanks for clearing it up Jim. In that case I want my url to be plastered everywhere by overture. It's free afterall. Btw, who searches for the term "scenic scenic scenic"?
Thanks for your help on this, Jim, and for the great feedback from everyone.
I'm still questioning the legality of pasting of copyrighted information into another site when I have never given that permission to Overture.
At least it sounds like this is more of a silly oversight than a deliberate attempt to hijack hits.
Guy
Posted by Jim Goldstein on January 26, 2007 at 4:51 PM
There are a lot of lawsuits out there about your concern Guy. Most at them revolve around search engines pulling search information from online newspapers and magazine with subsciber based & restricted content. I'm no lawyer, but my interpretation of the articles I've read on the subject is that if content is on a public web site its in the public domain and open to search query. The exception is if you can show that the search results break down your model of revenue generation. The debate about subscriber/password protected content is still being argued.
For the most part though search engines offer more benefit than harm. Your best bet is to control the text relayed by configuring site description in the meta tags of your web site. As it stands you have title and keywords set but not the description. The default behavior of search engines is then to make a best guess on description based on the content it finds on the index page of your site if there is no description meta tag.
Posted by Basil Greber on January 27, 2007 at 6:04 AM
Steve - about the contact form. I'm no HTML guru by any means, but I had such a form a while ago, and I still had to embedd my e-mail in the source code. So basically that form would allow people to type their message into the corresponding field, but if they hit the submit button, an e-mail would be created and sent to the e-mail address I provided in the source code. So it's not quite hidden.
Maybe some newer techniques have come up in the mean time, I don't know.
About fishing for hits... try embedding "Kate Moss" or "Pamela Anderson" into the meta tags (I think it's the meta tags...), and see how many hits your site gets afterwards... LOL
Jim, given that the use of my copyrighted material is used to bring up a site selling landscape prints (i.e. in direct competition to mine) I think the revenue case is pretty obvious, no?
Guy
Posted by Jim Goldstein on January 27, 2007 at 8:40 PM
Guy the problem is Yahoo doesn't appear to filter competitive information in their Overture paid ads. Your beef would be with Yahoo not Webshots. I'm not sure they could filter competitive site information. They'd likely have to kill the natural search feature if a strong legal case were made. Let me know what you end up pursuing with that. I'd be interested to follow it.
hallo-- am vry out of the techie world, but when I saw this I went over to webshots to see what happened when I dumped your name in and came up with you listed as member-- so check it
and I was just off somewhere else and got this alert of yahoo being sued serious monoey for doing what yu describe here-- so check the article out an see what you can do or if there's some way to change the suit into class action because it seems tht if Google can get sued in this manner , I don't know why Yahoo can't.
here's bald link
Google Watch
http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content/yahoo/
yahoo sued for illegal use
http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content/yahoo/yahoo_sued_for_10m_for_illegal_image_use.html
http://tinyurl.com/2ws3z5
and if you read the small print over there at Webshots, webshots uses all the content on the site to promote itself and
hmmm-- I'd check it out again because by their on terms they are liable for what is being used on that site-- go read their terms of service. they say they can disseminate through their partners as CNET, but not the other way around.
Discussion
29 repliesTake a look at this page:
http://www.webshots.com/search?query=Scenic+scenic+scenic
My name does not show on the page but if you check the page source I am listed in there.
Looks like Webshots uses a script that rips data from various sites and embeds it in their pages so that a search for my name brings up results pointing to their pages offering competing images.
Any thoughts on how to handle this?
Guy
Hank - it's not an image. They copied text off my site and embedded it in their HTML under the guise of "sponsored site". I never sponsored anything and they don't provide a link back to me. It just makes their page pop up among other results when someone is searching for my name or site.
Guy
Richard, on the spammy thing, if your Web site offers a direct e-mail link to contact you, that makes it easy for spammers to borrow your e-mail for sending their messages. It's happening to us. To counteract that, you need to provide a form for people to fill out under the "contact us" link on your site. That's what we're in the process of doing.
I found this a couple of weeks ago. I was also listed as a sponsored site. I have registered with WebShots, but have never posted anything on their site. My name also did not show on the web page, but a link without a picture was posted to my ISP. I cannot tell what is going on or how I can contact the right person at WebShots. I found this by typing in my name (first last) into Google and finding some links pointing to WebShots. I clicked on the link just to see what would happen, since the link to my site was incomplete. It delivered me to somewhere in WebShots, I cannot remember where though I might have gotten 404'ed. Interestingly, the email address I have received the most Spam at does not appear in the web pages on my ISP.
Steve, do you have a reference for that "Contact Us" form and how to use it?
Well, at least you can report the violation ...
http://community.webshots.com/html/violation.htm
I am not an Attorney but a former geek!!!
Just my bathroom attorney's two cents worth.
I googled my name and found my photos turning up on various websites including one to advertise the Canon 5D! And these are the ones that at least credit me with the picture. All taken from my shots at photo.net My associate Winnie Ho thinks I should not use the name of the location to prevent people finding such photos.
I just learned that I too have sponsored results on webshots. This is a little weird and I guess I don't understand why they are doing this. Maybe, like you said, they are trying to scrape away google hits from people searching for you, but I can't imagine this being very successful. I also can't imagine that there is anything illegal about this technique in and of itself. If I mention your name on my website google will eventually find it and there isn't much you can do about it. The thing that is disconcerting and probably violating your rights is the false indication that you are somehow sponsoring this site. I'm not a lawyer, but this would seem to fall squarely under the the appropriation privacy tort; the same principle that requires model releases. When you use someone's likeness (or in this case name) for trade and advertising you need their permission. I really don't like seeing my website listed under their sponsored links and it REALLY ticks me off that they don't at least do me the courtesy of sending some traffic my way. This is rather slimey.
I'd like to chime in on this issue. I didn't understand at first what was going on. I pulled up the Webshots site and searched for "guy tal" to no avail. But, then I did figure out to look in the source code and, voila!
Frankly, I don't know if this is illegal - I'm not a lawyer and don't know these issues.
But, this situation does FEEL immoral/wrong/scummy. While I don't know how to create these "sponsored site" ads, I could do something very similar with my website and insert something like "ansel adams" (with all apologies to Mr. Adams and his heirs and estate) into the keywords for my website. That would direct searches towards my website and I would feel quite dirty about it (although, I did insert the word "sex" into my keywords, at the suggestion of a friend, with the same basic intent - driving traffic). In due course, I expect that Mr. Adams estate would be after me with a cease & desist order/restraining order or something like that.
In this case, I'll only speculate that Webshots is trying to drive traffic to its site and they're betting that it's worth the risk of doing so before they're caught. They'll take a slap on the wrist from Mr. Tal, or cease & desist if he hires a lawyer, and they'll make more money from the effort than they'll have to spend defending themselves.
Maybe one day I could be so famous... But, at the moment, I'm glad that I'm not!
Tim!
Tim, I am consulting with a lawyer (I have a couple in the family though they do not specialize in intellectual rights but they are researching it). Once i have a better grip on my rights, I will have them draft a letter to Webshots and their service provider, possibly followed by a lawsuit if they don't remedy the situation. They are using copyrighted material (text directly taken from my web site) so I'm confident there's some case there.
Guy
This may be legal, but it certainly is not ethical.
I did discover that there is another newly active photographer with my last name. That is something I never expected to see. It is a fairly rare last name - I'll have to e-mail him.
see the entry and the webshots response here
I imagine they are placing Yahoo ads on their pages, and your name comes up in a Yahoo search with the same search terms you used on WebShots. I bet Yahoo is giving them click-through revenue when people visit sites that show up in those "sponsored results" region. Those results are sponsored by Yahoo.
So no one is really stealing your stuff. They are just producing your web site from Yahoo!'s search database and WebShots is making a few pennies for every time someone visits your web site using that link. If you owned stock in WebShots, you could have all your friends use that search to visit your web site :-)
Also, I imagine that it isn't really hosted at WebShots. If you look at the URL, the WebShots search engine looks to be a CGI application so it is probably generating dynamic HTML. When you view the source of that page, it looks like any static HTML page, but is was generated on the fly from the search CGI. They probably aren't breaking any laws.
(Keep this in mind if you see your site or site content posted on another site. I learned something new about Yahoo! Overture)
"The reason provided for the unexplained “sponsored ad” behavior…
1. Yahoo! (Overture) sponsored ads will display natural search results when there are a lack of paid advertisers.
2. Webshots code did not support linking these types of ads in all instances breaking the link to the referenced site.
Note: At the time of this post Webshots code has yet to be updated, but will be shortly to address this concern along with other scheduled updates."
Full entry on my site
Original post with Webshots feedback
I'm still questioning the legality of pasting of copyrighted information into another site when I have never given that permission to Overture.
At least it sounds like this is more of a silly oversight than a deliberate attempt to hijack hits.
Guy
For the most part though search engines offer more benefit than harm. Your best bet is to control the text relayed by configuring site description in the meta tags of your web site. As it stands you have title and keywords set but not the description. The default behavior of search engines is then to make a best guess on description based on the content it finds on the index page of your site if there is no description meta tag.
Maybe some newer techniques have come up in the mean time, I don't know.
About fishing for hits... try embedding "Kate Moss" or "Pamela Anderson" into the meta tags (I think it's the meta tags...), and see how many hits your site gets afterwards... LOL
Basil
Guy
and I was just off somewhere else and got this alert of yahoo being sued serious monoey for doing what yu describe here-- so check the article out an see what you can do or if there's some way to change the suit into class action because it seems tht if Google can get sued in this manner , I don't know why Yahoo can't.
here's bald link
Google Watch
http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content/yahoo/
yahoo sued for illegal use
http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content/yahoo/yahoo_sued_for_10m_for_illegal_image_use.html
http://tinyurl.com/2ws3z5
and if you read the small print over there at Webshots, webshots uses all the content on the site to promote itself and
webshots copyright violation statement
http://community.webshots.com/html/violation.htm
hmmm-- I'd check it out again because by their on terms they are liable for what is being used on that site-- go read their terms of service. they say they can disseminate through their partners as CNET, but not the other way around.
That's actually not me on Webshots. There's a couple of other people out there with the same name.
Guy