Has anyone heard of this vi.sualize.us? From what I can glean it is a site that encourages people to right click on images they like and post them to their page. OK, but there is some funky signature in the lower right corner of the image I can't fully make out. There is some nonsense about "this image MAY be copyrighted" under the image, but my name and copyright nowhere to be seen.
Thoughts if what, if anything, I should do?
Pam
Posted by Jim Bullard on February 25, 2009 at 8:45 AM
I haven't encountered vi.sualize before but they appear to have gotten your image from Stumble Upon which encourages people to create links to pages they like so that Stumble Upon can then refer others to those sites. I was not aware that Stumble Upon was storing copies of images on it's own server which is what the header of the page infers.
I once ran onto a site which was marketing resources for sermons to ministers and had a large collection of 'inspirational' images that the site owner had 'collected' without bothering to note where he got them and was "sharing" with the notation "if any of these images are here in violation of the author's copyright, just contact me and I will remove your image(s)'. After determining that none of mine were there I emailed him anyway informing him that under US copyright law all were copyrighted and if he did not have permission to post them the entire gallery should be removed. It took some time but after checking back several times I noted he did remove them.
Put your copyright notice in the picture and make sure you are adding all appropriate identifying data to the EXIF & IPTC info. I copied that image to my desktop to check those fields using Photoshop's info function and all were blank. I don't know if you posted data to those fields and it was stripped out or if it was never there but it is important that you fill in that data to protect yourself against illegal reproduction.
Jim Bullard
Posted by Dan Borzynski on February 25, 2009 at 10:54 AM
I just spent some time looking at images there and they are going to be running into some serious problems soon. In the animals section, one image had Getty's info on it, a second was either Getty, Corbis or AP (I've seen it recently but didn't pay attention to where it came from) and a third I've seen before but I can't remember where.
Posted by Jim Bullard on February 25, 2009 at 11:28 AM
I looked too and found some that if you right click and look at "properties" some tell the original source. Pam's photo however shows the source as StumbleUpon via joejet.com which is another "social bookmarking" site. Basically the members "bookmark" things they like on the web and bookmarking site hotlinks or copies the image so that it then appears on that site. JoeJet.com even has photos clearly marked as LIFE magazine images.
Posted by Jim Bullard on February 25, 2009 at 11:42 AM
Okay, I captured Pam's photo from vi.sualise.us, blew it up to 200% and upped the contrast radically. Someone has branded it as belonging to "webpark.??" I can't make out the two characters after the dot because they are over a bright area that is almost the same tone.
Jim Bullard
Posted by Phillip Noll on February 25, 2009 at 11:54 AM
I seem to remember that using "Save For Web" in Photoshop strips out all metadata?? If so, I would recommend against using that function. Hopefully someone with more knowledge can let us know if that is the case and if it is the same in Lightroom.
Posted by Jim Bullard on February 25, 2009 at 12:01 PM
Not true Phillip. I just tried it and the data is still there.
Jim Bullard
Posted by Jim Sabiston on February 25, 2009 at 2:54 PM
I recently discovered this phenomenon when my web traffic spiked. I tracked the source to stumbleupon, vi.sualize, reddit, mixx.com and a few similar sites. It seems once one picks up an image of interest, it can kind of go viral amongst the photosharing sites. In my case a particular image was picked up:
Notice that the link goes back to the original Flickr page (my own - from before I discovered NPN and which I still use on occasion) and gives proper credit and copyright notices. This might be a result of Flickr being the source. These days I put the copyright statement and my name right in the image, as Jim Bullard suggested. Much safer and not subject to stripping.
The image quality is not printable and my hit count on this image is over 50,000, so my exposure and page traffic go up. As long as proper credit is given, no biggie for me. The trick is figuring out how to turn it into a marketing tool, if that is your interest. I should mention that my sales rate on my page has not increased along with the hit count. Apparently most viewers are of the short-attentionspan-tirekicker variety.
Posted by Jim Bullard on February 25, 2009 at 3:11 PM
One disadvantage of the transparent GIF method of stopping piracy is that the image is still copyable via screen capture and copying via screen capture does not pick up any EXIF/IPTC data, just the pixels. Consequently it is important to have your copyright visible on the photo itself if you are posting it to the web. I'm been told by some folks that mine are too large and bold, that the copyright should blend with the image, but that makes it too easy to paste something more bold over it. I vote for making the notice clear to everyone who looks at it. Copyright notice is not the place to be timid.
If you figure out how to get tire kickers to buy Jim, please let the rest of us in on your secret.
Jim Bullard
Posted by John Klotz on February 25, 2009 at 3:15 PM
Bottom Line - if it is on the net it is good as stolen copyright or not. my two cents.
John
Posted by Jim Sabiston on February 25, 2009 at 4:28 PM
"If you figure out how to get tire kickers to buy Jim, please let the rest of us in on your secret. Jim Bullard "
Will do! Can you imagine the disaster of receiving 50,000 individual image sales!?
Posted by Pam Colander on February 25, 2009 at 6:57 PM
The source where mine seem to be getting right clicked on is One Exposure. My self search revealed that two of my images from there were available for viewing on stumble upon and vi.sualize.us. The thing that bugs me is that I can't seem to trace it back to anything that has my name on it plus that WEBPARK or whatever in the right corner. They certainly couldn't print anything from it either. While I agree having a large-ish copyright is smart, I wonder why some of the top photogs, ie Marc Adamus, don't have anything on their posts. Maybe he has one of those tracking programs on his stuff.
Hi Pam, all the comments are excellent and informitive too, but I think you know the reality here and John Klotz makes it fairly clear. If I'm not mistaken I think the last tracing event I saw took the person to a lady using the images to make & sell greeting cards. The right click photos probably worked just fine for that no doubt, although the images were hijacked for the most part. I found one of my images on a site in Turkey the other day. Sadly it's just part of the net usage no different then having to defend ourselves from on line viruses and Trojan Horses. Not much fun, it's just there.
Posted by Mike DiVita on February 26, 2009 at 2:14 AM
A question for those who have found images copied onto other sites, how did you find them? I can see doing a web search but if the metadata has been stripped out, then what? I can't imaging spending hours or days scouring all of these sites to find a photo.
Jim, regarding Save for Web stripping out metadata, my experience with CS2 and CS3 is that it does strip it out. I haven't verified how CS4 works. Which version are you using?
Jim wrote: "Someone has branded it as belonging to "webpark.??" I can't make out the two characters after the dot."
I think the characters after the dot are I + T = "...webpark.it..." That could be "park it" as in "park the car here" with more hidden in the light pixels to the right, or it could be Italy...
Pam, am I understanding you correctly? --that the image originally had your name and copyright sign on it? If that's the case, these people are doing something illegal by removing them, and whoever is keeping the photo on their server are, too. It seems to me that you should contact them, not by e-mail but something more verifiable, and tell them the image is yours. That way you're covered with regard to the thinking behind the Orphan Act. But unless someone is making money off your image, I don't think this situation is very sinister. But (again, watch the logic turn) Photobucket recently re-wrote their terms and conditions so that images posted there, unless specifically designated as private, are now liable to be used by the owners of Photobucket for commercial gain. I.e., a person put up some pictures last year, and the terms and conditions said the pictures were private, etc., and now, because of fiat, nothing more, the same images can be put on a Photobucket mug or tee shirt and generate revenue for Photobucket, and apparently this is not illegal.
There's no way, really, to protect your images or anything else that is (self-evidently, we would agree) clearly your private intellectual property, unless you have a legal staff that will do the work for you at no extra expense to you.
If you look at the card catalog of the Library of Congress, you'll find a book I wrote published by Borgo Press. My contract was with Starmont House, Starmont published the book, and I have never, ever signed away rights to Borgo. I've never heard from Borgo Press about their publishing the book. I'm sure there is some paper somewhere that could explain why I never received a cent from Borgo, how Borgo is affiliated thisandthatway with Starmont, etc., etc. What it comes down to is: it is not worth it to me to fuss about this. A colleague had to sue a publisher because he delivered the contracted manuscript on time and they did not publish it and did not (therefore) pay him. I think he got them to publish his book, but I think his legal expenses exceeded the royalties.
So I think that we have to rely on Getty, Corbis, and other corporate entities who have the legal staff to take action on things like this. Yes, democracy, law, private ownership, etc. (these are reasons you should contact them), but for you actually to take action would cost you much more than any financial benefit you would realize (this is a reason you shouldn't spend more time on it).
Alas.
Posted by David Bostedo on February 26, 2009 at 9:46 AM
...how did you find them?
Mike - I don't know how these were found, but finding images isn't easy, as you noted. Too many websites that are always changing. There are a couple of services trying to change that, though. One is TinEye. It tries to index web images so it can compare all of them to a reference image. You give it an image to look for and it tries to find it. Granted, you'd still have to feed your images in one at a time, but it works to some extent. I would imagine that at some point there may be sites offering image hunting services.
Posted by Jim Bullard on February 26, 2009 at 10:09 AM
Mike, I did a "save for web" using CS3 and the copyright data was present after. To be sure I just tried it again starting with a layered PSD file that had data in almost all fields (Title, Description, Keywords, etc.) including the copyright data. I flattened and resized it then used "save for web". What happened this time was that it did dump everything except the copyright data which was still there so I stand partially corrected. I don't use CS3s "save for web" function to create my web images and the image in the earlier experiment I tried had only copyright attached so I had no other Metadata to lose, thus my error in concluding that it did not remove data. :-P
I generally use Lightroom to create my web size images and had noticed that in the Lightroom export dialog there is a checkbox to "Minimize metadata". I have never checked that box and all the data is attached to the file that the export function creates. I tried looking to see if there was a similar option in CS3s preferences to minimize or retain Metadata when saving for the web but I cannot find one. I don't know if there is one in CS4. I haven't upgraded yet either.
Based on these experiments I think we should petition Adobe for the option to retain the Metadata in the "save for web" function and in the interim those of us who have Lightroom should use its export function to resize for the web. Alternatively you could create an action to do your resizing for the web that ends with a "save as" rather than "save for web". My own workflow for web images is to export to the size I want into a folder on my desktop. I then open each file in CS3 to add my copyright and tweak the sharpening, then simply flatten or merge the text layer and save it, not "save for web", since I have already set my image and compression parameters in the Lightroom export process. You can add a watermark in Lightroom's export process but I find the result rather klutzy looking.
I have CS2 and it strips the data upon web save. How I found my image was kind of weird. I was following up on a search for the title name of a waterfall. During the research of the title name of the waterfall, which I have on about three web locations as an image, it pulled up a site in Turkey that displayed my image. So, more by chance and luck then really tracking down any highjackers on my part per se. The image was a thumbnail sized image.
Posted by Wim Reyns on February 26, 2009 at 2:57 PM
To be honest i stopped caring about this, as long as they leave my copyright and website note intact, i'm fine
I see it as free publicity, in fact in the near future i will change my copyright note to reflect that they are allowed to use my images for posting on other websites if they keep my info intact and make a link back to my site.
free web publicity ! and the sizes they are using are worthless for print anyway.
Just my opinion though
Wim.
Posted by Pam Colander on February 27, 2009 at 12:45 AM
I sent an e-mail to the webmaster of vi.sualize.us saying I really didn't mind my images being there, but I *did* mind very much the added text in the lower right corner of the image. Plus voiced my displeasure regarding "whoever" took it upon themself to rename the image. Should get a reply soon.
Rosemarie, if One Exposure is the source the images did not have my name and copyright *on* the image but was listed beneath them.
Discussion
19 replieshttp://vi.sualize.us/view/7ae5b332fd2f1bf77583c6a57dac31bc/
Has anyone heard of this vi.sualize.us? From what I can glean it is a site that encourages people to right click on images they like and post them to their page. OK, but there is some funky signature in the lower right corner of the image I can't fully make out. There is some nonsense about "this image MAY be copyrighted" under the image, but my name and copyright nowhere to be seen.
Thoughts if what, if anything, I should do?
Pam
I have gotten into the habit of putting a © James Bullard on the face of all my images that get posted to the web because of the proliferation "image sharing" sites that seem to strip out any identifying information and cover themselves by saying the images are for 'personal use' making some vague reference to copyrights without identifying the original copyright holder.
I once ran onto a site which was marketing resources for sermons to ministers and had a large collection of 'inspirational' images that the site owner had 'collected' without bothering to note where he got them and was "sharing" with the notation "if any of these images are here in violation of the author's copyright, just contact me and I will remove your image(s)'. After determining that none of mine were there I emailed him anyway informing him that under US copyright law all were copyrighted and if he did not have permission to post them the entire gallery should be removed. It took some time but after checking back several times I noted he did remove them.
Put your copyright notice in the picture and make sure you are adding all appropriate identifying data to the EXIF & IPTC info. I copied that image to my desktop to check those fields using Photoshop's info function and all were blank. I don't know if you posted data to those fields and it was stripped out or if it was never there but it is important that you fill in that data to protect yourself against illegal reproduction.
Jim Bullard
Jim Bullard
Jim Bullard
http://vi.sualize.us/view/0c577ff6d52b12fdbc660c88935c3711/
Notice that the link goes back to the original Flickr page (my own - from before I discovered NPN and which I still use on occasion) and gives proper credit and copyright notices. This might be a result of Flickr being the source. These days I put the copyright statement and my name right in the image, as Jim Bullard suggested. Much safer and not subject to stripping.
The image quality is not printable and my hit count on this image is over 50,000, so my exposure and page traffic go up. As long as proper credit is given, no biggie for me. The trick is figuring out how to turn it into a marketing tool, if that is your interest. I should mention that my sales rate on my page has not increased along with the hit count. Apparently most viewers are of the short-attentionspan-tirekicker variety.
If you figure out how to get tire kickers to buy Jim, please let the rest of us in on your secret.
Jim Bullard
John
Will do! Can you imagine the disaster of receiving 50,000 individual image sales!?
John Klotz...very true.
Jim, regarding Save for Web stripping out metadata, my experience with CS2 and CS3 is that it does strip it out. I haven't verified how CS4 works. Which version are you using?
Mike
I think the characters after the dot are I + T = "...webpark.it..." That could be "park it" as in "park the car here" with more hidden in the light pixels to the right, or it could be Italy...
Pam, am I understanding you correctly? --that the image originally had your name and copyright sign on it? If that's the case, these people are doing something illegal by removing them, and whoever is keeping the photo on their server are, too. It seems to me that you should contact them, not by e-mail but something more verifiable, and tell them the image is yours. That way you're covered with regard to the thinking behind the Orphan Act. But unless someone is making money off your image, I don't think this situation is very sinister. But (again, watch the logic turn) Photobucket recently re-wrote their terms and conditions so that images posted there, unless specifically designated as private, are now liable to be used by the owners of Photobucket for commercial gain. I.e., a person put up some pictures last year, and the terms and conditions said the pictures were private, etc., and now, because of fiat, nothing more, the same images can be put on a Photobucket mug or tee shirt and generate revenue for Photobucket, and apparently this is not illegal.
There's no way, really, to protect your images or anything else that is (self-evidently, we would agree) clearly your private intellectual property, unless you have a legal staff that will do the work for you at no extra expense to you.
If you look at the card catalog of the Library of Congress, you'll find a book I wrote published by Borgo Press. My contract was with Starmont House, Starmont published the book, and I have never, ever signed away rights to Borgo. I've never heard from Borgo Press about their publishing the book. I'm sure there is some paper somewhere that could explain why I never received a cent from Borgo, how Borgo is affiliated thisandthatway with Starmont, etc., etc. What it comes down to is: it is not worth it to me to fuss about this. A colleague had to sue a publisher because he delivered the contracted manuscript on time and they did not publish it and did not (therefore) pay him. I think he got them to publish his book, but I think his legal expenses exceeded the royalties.
So I think that we have to rely on Getty, Corbis, and other corporate entities who have the legal staff to take action on things like this. Yes, democracy, law, private ownership, etc. (these are reasons you should contact them), but for you actually to take action would cost you much more than any financial benefit you would realize (this is a reason you shouldn't spend more time on it).
Alas.
Mike - I don't know how these were found, but finding images isn't easy, as you noted. Too many websites that are always changing. There are a couple of services trying to change that, though. One is TinEye. It tries to index web images so it can compare all of them to a reference image. You give it an image to look for and it tries to find it. Granted, you'd still have to feed your images in one at a time, but it works to some extent. I would imagine that at some point there may be sites offering image hunting services.
I generally use Lightroom to create my web size images and had noticed that in the Lightroom export dialog there is a checkbox to "Minimize metadata". I have never checked that box and all the data is attached to the file that the export function creates. I tried looking to see if there was a similar option in CS3s preferences to minimize or retain Metadata when saving for the web but I cannot find one. I don't know if there is one in CS4. I haven't upgraded yet either.
Based on these experiments I think we should petition Adobe for the option to retain the Metadata in the "save for web" function and in the interim those of us who have Lightroom should use its export function to resize for the web. Alternatively you could create an action to do your resizing for the web that ends with a "save as" rather than "save for web". My own workflow for web images is to export to the size I want into a folder on my desktop. I then open each file in CS3 to add my copyright and tweak the sharpening, then simply flatten or merge the text layer and save it, not "save for web", since I have already set my image and compression parameters in the Lightroom export process. You can add a watermark in Lightroom's export process but I find the result rather klutzy looking.
Jim Bullard
I see it as free publicity, in fact in the near future i will change my copyright note to reflect that they are allowed to use my images for posting on other websites if they keep my info intact and make a link back to my site.
free web publicity ! and the sizes they are using are worthless for print anyway.
Just my opinion though
Wim.
Rosemarie, if One Exposure is the source the images did not have my name and copyright *on* the image but was listed beneath them.