"This is a non-profit gallery dedicated to finding and archiving media with superior aesthetics. Inclusion in this gallery is intended to have a non-detrimental, promotional effect for both the artist and the subject. For resizing, cropping, or removal requests, copyright owners should use the Contact link on the upper right. " That is the comment I saw under the photos. Does this mean they think they can display anyone's photos without permission????
Alice, yes, that is pretty much what they think they are saying. It is still a breech of copyright.
I also just read on another forum that they pulled a lot of images from the NANPA website, and now NANPA is pursuing this. They at least have the clout and lawyers to be taken seriously.
This is another unfortunate consequence of the "fungibility of bits," a term I swipe from Steven Levy's book, "The Perfect Thing...." which is about the iPod phenomenon. I wondered what that big deal was. I don't have an iPod, so I read a book (typical digital Luddite behavior). It's a good book that describes issues and ideas that are applicable to the iPod, of course, but also to other digital information exchanges. The author is an Apple fanboy, but that's ok, I was too once.
It may be unethical and illegal, but posting an image on the web means surrendering control of those bits. If you're smart, you keep most of the original bits in your control.
Under each photo is "Get Item URL's". When you click on that you get the following along with the code or sites to go to to get the photos for yourself :
"Quick URLs
Through this page you can quickly get formatted URLs for this item.
These can be used to post the item/image in forums and HTML pages by copying the code in the boxes below and pasting it into your application/browser. "
Pete, I'm betting the owner of the site would never translate it that way, not because they're dishonest, but simply because they don't understand that that's what they did. I'm not going to argue that the site shouldn't be shut down (or at least be required to get approval) but I think this is probably just another case of the need to educate people that what they are doing actually is wrong.
Let me use music as an example. I know plenty of people (myself included) who freely traded music with their friends on tapes/CDs. Technically illegal, but at such a small scale that most people treated it like speeding - illegal, but no big deal and no one cares if it's not excessive (I realize that's a judgement call, bear with me). Once it became easy to trade with thousands of others (if not millions) this behavior continued. Now however, the scale did make it a big deal, and people did care. It took a lot of news reports, lawsuits, etc to convince people that this was actually illegal, and to term it theft.
I think the same thing applies here. I remember many, many websites who used to post something like "feel free to use/link to any images posted here". Some would at least ask for credit, but basically everything was fair game. If you took someone's image, copyrighted or not, it was fair game - no big deal. Now that technology/websites/image quality have progressed, it is a big deal, and people do care. Hopefully it will take a lot less cajoling, media coverage, lawsuits, etc. for people to also term this as theft.
And hopefully I'm correct and the person running that site isn't really that inconsiderate/immoral/negative term of your choice...
I really stink at all this computer stuff, nothing new in that. But it would be cool if someone would come up with a program that you could add to your photo on your web site or maby even if you post it to a site like this that would eat the dickins out of their site if they sniched your work. Kind of like that rattlesnake in my camera bag on the front seat of the truck with the doors locked.
Look at the DMCA - the Digital Millennium Copyright Act - which has teeth. You can use it on this lot:
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This piece of legislation places an obligation on the user of an image on the web to observe copyright, this includes website owners, web service providers, and also the search engines that link to a site eg Google.
I recently discovered a blatant use of one of my images, scanned out of a book and used to sell music on a web site. The picture was used over 300 times. I emailed the site owner using several different addresses she has, and was ignored and eventually placed in her stop list so my emails got bounced back. It was obvious she did not want to play ball. Cost of legal action started at $2000 and would have spiralled.
Although I am in the UK, and the offending site is in the USA, I invoked the DMCA, wrote to the offenders hosting service and Google, sending sufficient proof of my claim. Google are obliged to remove ALL web links to offending site pages and will only reinstate them if the user proves they have the right to use the contested image.
The hosting service contacted the offender within two weeks and demanded that she send them written confirmation of her right to use the images or they would shut her site down. She removed the images immediately.
Google then followed it up and would have severed ALL search engine links and references to her pages but she had already removed the images.
Do I get compensated for my time and effort. No. But I did give someone in another country who was stealing from me a fright.
The DMCA is a controversial piece of legislation as it is open to serious abuse, and has been hotly debated with regard to its serious 'freedom of speech' implications. There's a lot of stuff on the web about it and a search on DMCA will turn up plenty.
For a pile of info from the US Gov:
www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
See also the anti-DMCA and EFF sites for another view:
Oh geez. Who cares. These are 600 pixel images. They aren't using them to sell a product and they are publishing them anywhere except online. This happens to me every week at least, and I haven't had to ever take someone to court over it. Why? Because they aren't using them commercially. If they were, they open themselves up to being sued or getting their website shut down as John mentions. Bottom line: If you post photos online they are not safe. Period. But I don't give it a second thought because the publicity I get each year online makes me thousands in contracts.
Yes, technically this is indeed a violation of copyright. But practically speaking, do any of you actually lose any income from it? The website seems to be pretty honest that they are merely showcasing some of the better photos on the web. If they attributed those photos to me, I probably wouldnt mind. Using David's shades of grey analogy, is this *really* the same thing as someone taking your photo and passing it off as their own for fame, wealth and riches?
I realize that by allowing this, we are setting a precedent, and the whole "it is the principle of the thing" argument. Fair enough. Just wanted to put out a flip side as well.
A side note - what I do to make sure I get attributions for all such usage - I have my signature and website on the photo. That way, sites like this are actually marketing my work. Win-win.
The basic problem here with not pursuing a copyright infringement is this: You see an unauthorized of your photo on the web and decide not to pursue the issue, especially since you do not judge the matter to be worth the time or (lack of) money. Maybe this happens a couple of times. Okay, that is understandable on the surface.
Several months or years later, a major breach of copyright occurs and that IS worth your time and money to pursue. What you have previously done is established a pattern of not defending your copyright, even though you were well aware of infringements. This very greatly weakens your position. If you are lucky, any awards you *may* get will most likely be far below what you could have received.
For those of you have have discovered and went after copyright violations, keep all records of your actions as documentation. Having a proven record of defending the copyright will make your position a lot stronger.
>>"Several months or years later, a major breach of copyright occurs and that IS worth your time and money to pursue. What you have previously done is established a pattern of not defending your copyright, even though you were well aware of infringements. This very greatly weakens your position."
I disagree, Dan. There is a major and indisputable line between commercial and non-commercial use. Nobody would give a second thought to pursuing such petty, non-commercial use of images in court, but the second someone trys to make money off your images it becomes an entirely different story that is fundementally unrelated to non-commercial infringment. It's simply impossible to go around pursuing every minor infringment of copyright if the violators intent is not for personal financial gain. If I did that, it would consume every bit of my time.
While the two types of use, commrecial vs. non-commercial, differ; Dan is correct, in that if one does not at least 'minimally' pursue infringements, the court may view the pattern of behavior as negligence on the part of the plaintiff. If that occurs, the case could be thrown out or compensation could be reduced.
While chasing down infringers is a pain in the arse, a quick letter stating your case to the offender is documentation that you made a good faith effort. If one decides to sue for a major infringement, your counsel will ask for everything you have done to deal with infringements in the past. These douments will then be made available to the counsel for the defendant as part of the discovery process. The better you handle such issues, the better stand you will have when the 'big one' comes down the pike.
I think that if someone is using your image on their site no matter what the premise eg. to show beautiful works of art that they are probably ultimately trying to build up their site to make a buck on advertising etc. Even if the are not using your photo 'commercially'. Therfore they should have permission.
Rick T
I doubt very much that any previous cases of non-commercial image theft would even be admissible in court if they do not directly pertain to the case at hand. If this previous and unrelated information is admissible, why isn't it in all other branches of the law? Do you think if someone is assualted once in their life and they don't report it, and later they are severely beaten to the point of injury at another time and try to sue, the court would take into account their previous inaction?? Of course not.
And even if such information was admissible and had some bearing on the case, the law is the law. International copyright laws don't take into account how YOU handled anything. And lastly, there might not even be a way to prove in court that you actually even knew about these previous cases of copyright violation. There must be a lot I don't know about right now.
There is absolutely nothing here that could possibly cause me to be the least bit worried that I do not have the right legally force someone to stop using images for commercial purpuses without permission.
Interesting discussion. I popped into that site to see what the hubbub was about, (like Mark H, I couldn't find any of my images there... )
What I found interesting is that even though they've taken these images without permission (in some cases anyways) and I can't see what financial gain they derive from them, but... they offer a url link to the image for [anyone who wants it, allowing them to post or link that image to [their web page, for whatever purpose they wish.
Now, whoever might do this could then be using the image for ANY purpose, comercial or otherwise. While I tend to agree with Marc's slant on most of this subject, I wouldn't however like the idea of anyone thinking they can link to and use the image for whatever they want. No way I know of to track that kind of use/abuse.
Also, would that type of unauthorized use of an image put the photographer at risk for infringement on "image rights" the photographer may have sold to someone legitimately and some unauthorized use may conflict with?
Marc - two points here. First, I am not suggesting that you give up your life to hunt down any and all copyright violations of your work. Only pursue those you know about.
Second. have you consulted with your intellectual property lawyer regarding your viewpoint? You might want to before dismissing mine. It came from somewhere.
My how we change . At one time if this was posted up, it would be "Who's got a gun".
So OK, lets say they need a break and maybe that are not doing any real harm by downloading images and adding them to their own site, naaa thats not that bad huh.
Ok, so now comes along another very friendly site and does the same................except..........this time its an adult porn site that likes to splash nature images on the front page with the guys and girls. Naaa, they are not doing any real harm are they
So do you really want them to STEAL your images. Yes I know most don't, but for the few that say, its not that bad, well..........................
BTW, when I complained to this guy about it, he threatened in a very nice way to add a few of my images to the other stolen ones. My sites are now down for awhile.
Dan, yes. I've talked with a friend of mine in Portland who is well versed on the subject. Not in great specifics though. I probably should consult an intellectual property specialist at some point.
Discussion
24 replieshttp://www.yui-life.com/gallery/main.php
I saw images from Kenneth Kwan, Marc Adamus and Eric Fredine.
Kent in SD
I also just read on another forum that they pulled a lot of images from the NANPA website, and now NANPA is pursuing this. They at least have the clout and lawyers to be taken seriously.
This is another unfortunate consequence of the "fungibility of bits," a term I swipe from Steven Levy's book, "The Perfect Thing...." which is about the iPod phenomenon. I wondered what that big deal was. I don't have an iPod, so I read a book (typical digital Luddite behavior). It's a good book that describes issues and ideas that are applicable to the iPod, of course, but also to other digital information exchanges. The author is an Apple fanboy, but that's ok, I was too once.
It may be unethical and illegal, but posting an image on the web means surrendering control of those bits. If you're smart, you keep most of the original bits in your control.
Pete D.
"Quick URLs
Through this page you can quickly get formatted URLs for this item.
These can be used to post the item/image in forums and HTML pages by copying the code in the boxes below and pasting it into your application/browser. "
Pete D.
Let me use music as an example. I know plenty of people (myself included) who freely traded music with their friends on tapes/CDs. Technically illegal, but at such a small scale that most people treated it like speeding - illegal, but no big deal and no one cares if it's not excessive (I realize that's a judgement call, bear with me). Once it became easy to trade with thousands of others (if not millions) this behavior continued. Now however, the scale did make it a big deal, and people did care. It took a lot of news reports, lawsuits, etc to convince people that this was actually illegal, and to term it theft.
I think the same thing applies here. I remember many, many websites who used to post something like "feel free to use/link to any images posted here". Some would at least ask for credit, but basically everything was fair game. If you took someone's image, copyrighted or not, it was fair game - no big deal. Now that technology/websites/image quality have progressed, it is a big deal, and people do care. Hopefully it will take a lot less cajoling, media coverage, lawsuits, etc. for people to also term this as theft.
And hopefully I'm correct and the person running that site isn't really that inconsiderate/immoral/negative term of your choice...
yui-life.com Private Registrant yui-life.com@proxy.dreamhost.com
DreamHost Web Hosting
417 Associated Rd #324
Brea, CA 92821
US
+1.2139471032
This piece of legislation places an obligation on the user of an image on the web to observe copyright, this includes website owners, web service providers, and also the search engines that link to a site eg Google.
I recently discovered a blatant use of one of my images, scanned out of a book and used to sell music on a web site. The picture was used over 300 times. I emailed the site owner using several different addresses she has, and was ignored and eventually placed in her stop list so my emails got bounced back. It was obvious she did not want to play ball. Cost of legal action started at $2000 and would have spiralled.
Although I am in the UK, and the offending site is in the USA, I invoked the DMCA, wrote to the offenders hosting service and Google, sending sufficient proof of my claim. Google are obliged to remove ALL web links to offending site pages and will only reinstate them if the user proves they have the right to use the contested image.
The hosting service contacted the offender within two weeks and demanded that she send them written confirmation of her right to use the images or they would shut her site down. She removed the images immediately.
Google then followed it up and would have severed ALL search engine links and references to her pages but she had already removed the images.
Do I get compensated for my time and effort. No. But I did give someone in another country who was stealing from me a fright.
The DMCA is a controversial piece of legislation as it is open to serious abuse, and has been hotly debated with regard to its serious 'freedom of speech' implications. There's a lot of stuff on the web about it and a search on DMCA will turn up plenty.
For a pile of info from the US Gov:
www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
See also the anti-DMCA and EFF sites for another view:
http://www.anti-dmca.org/
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20030102_dmca_unintended_consequences.html
You can read Google's obligations to you here:
www.google.com/dmca.html
It is a serious piece of legislation, with implications for all of us.
Mark H:
Yes, technically this is indeed a violation of copyright. But practically speaking, do any of you actually lose any income from it? The website seems to be pretty honest that they are merely showcasing some of the better photos on the web. If they attributed those photos to me, I probably wouldnt mind. Using David's shades of grey analogy, is this *really* the same thing as someone taking your photo and passing it off as their own for fame, wealth and riches?
I realize that by allowing this, we are setting a precedent, and the whole "it is the principle of the thing" argument. Fair enough. Just wanted to put out a flip side as well.
A side note - what I do to make sure I get attributions for all such usage - I have my signature and website on the photo. That way, sites like this are actually marketing my work. Win-win.
Vandit
Several months or years later, a major breach of copyright occurs and that IS worth your time and money to pursue. What you have previously done is established a pattern of not defending your copyright, even though you were well aware of infringements. This very greatly weakens your position. If you are lucky, any awards you *may* get will most likely be far below what you could have received.
For those of you have have discovered and went after copyright violations, keep all records of your actions as documentation. Having a proven record of defending the copyright will make your position a lot stronger.
Fair, no. The way it works, yes.
I disagree, Dan. There is a major and indisputable line between commercial and non-commercial use. Nobody would give a second thought to pursuing such petty, non-commercial use of images in court, but the second someone trys to make money off your images it becomes an entirely different story that is fundementally unrelated to non-commercial infringment. It's simply impossible to go around pursuing every minor infringment of copyright if the violators intent is not for personal financial gain. If I did that, it would consume every bit of my time.
While chasing down infringers is a pain in the arse, a quick letter stating your case to the offender is documentation that you made a good faith effort. If one decides to sue for a major infringement, your counsel will ask for everything you have done to deal with infringements in the past. These douments will then be made available to the counsel for the defendant as part of the discovery process. The better you handle such issues, the better stand you will have when the 'big one' comes down the pike.
-PB
Rick T
And even if such information was admissible and had some bearing on the case, the law is the law. International copyright laws don't take into account how YOU handled anything. And lastly, there might not even be a way to prove in court that you actually even knew about these previous cases of copyright violation. There must be a lot I don't know about right now.
There is absolutely nothing here that could possibly cause me to be the least bit worried that I do not have the right legally force someone to stop using images for commercial purpuses without permission.
What I found interesting is that even though they've taken these images without permission (in some cases anyways) and I can't see what financial gain they derive from them, but... they offer a url link to the image for [anyone who wants it, allowing them to post or link that image to [their web page, for whatever purpose they wish.
Now, whoever might do this could then be using the image for ANY purpose, comercial or otherwise. While I tend to agree with Marc's slant on most of this subject, I wouldn't however like the idea of anyone thinking they can link to and use the image for whatever they want. No way I know of to track that kind of use/abuse.
Also, would that type of unauthorized use of an image put the photographer at risk for infringement on "image rights" the photographer may have sold to someone legitimately and some unauthorized use may conflict with?
Just a thought!
Craig
Second. have you consulted with your intellectual property lawyer regarding your viewpoint? You might want to before dismissing mine. It came from somewhere.
So OK, lets say they need a break and maybe that are not doing any real harm by downloading images and adding them to their own site, naaa thats not that bad huh.
Ok, so now comes along another very friendly site and does the same................except..........this time its an adult porn site that likes to splash nature images on the front page with the guys and girls. Naaa, they are not doing any real harm are they
So do you really want them to STEAL your images. Yes I know most don't, but for the few that say, its not that bad, well..........................
BTW, when I complained to this guy about it, he threatened in a very nice way to add a few of my images to the other stolen ones. My sites are now down for awhile.
Danny.