In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter to me much, but one of my photos that was lifted from this site has been copied to blogs all over the world. In fact, if I was a photographer that sold my work it might even be a nice way to get my name out there. If I had a nickel for every time it was used it might be also nice. I would imagine this is happening to many of us.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on December 28, 2011 at 12:50 PM
Charlie, what a beautiful image, no wonder it went viral! The diffused light is infectious, and obviously the timing of getting that little guy at that moment was spot on.
Funny how an image can get "snagged" and shot around the planet like that... I had a desert sunrise image catch somebody's eye somewhere on 500px and it got 9,000 views in about an hour. Then it drops off like a rock, lol!
Posted by Howard Cheek on December 28, 2011 at 12:52 PM
Your gecko sure gets around Charlie, great publicity..Even if you don't try to sell, it's a great affirmation of your work.
Happy New Year to you & your gecko
Posted by Bruce King on December 28, 2011 at 1:19 PM
Paul and Howard seem to be saying it's a good thing but it sounds to me like the image was stolen. You don't seem to be bothered too much by it but I would be just a little ticked off. Not sure what could be done about it though.
Posted by Jim Bullard on December 28, 2011 at 1:39 PM
If it was lifted from NPN they had to work at it, a screen capture would get it but not a right click & "save". I'm with Bruce in that I don't regard people taking my images and posting them elsewhere without even asking as a good thing. It turns up on those sites because they kept the title and your credit line but I wonder how many others have just lifted the photo without identifying it, perhaps even claiming credit themselves. It's an excellent photo and, whether it bothers you or not, it isn't a good thing when so many people feel free to take your work without even asking. Not good for you and not good for other photographers & artists when a large segment of the audience feels it's okay to appropriate others work just because they like it.
Posted by Jim Sabiston on December 28, 2011 at 1:59 PM
Welcome to the digital web! Anything - and I mean anything - you put out there in digital form is as good as free public property. Period. Ask the music business how that works.That may not be right, but it is real.
The good news is that most, if not all, seem to be giving appropriate credit. This was done with an image of mine that I never posted to NPN, but had on Flickr: http://www.essentiallightphotography.com/#fauna/15
A friend found it and called it too my attention. The image was finally removed from the persons page after I made a nuisance of myself. Flickr offered no help at all - even with clear evidence that the guy's entire page was similar stolen content. There will always be the oddball that claims it as their own, so it is important that size and resolution be kept low enough that that is not practical for most purposes. Not much you can do beyond that if you want to show your work in the digital public forum.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on December 28, 2011 at 3:19 PM
Paul and Howard seem to be saying it's a good thing but it sounds to me like the image was stolen.
Good point Bruce, but I wasn't really saying good OR bad. The fact is that people grab images they like all over the web (obviously, lol) and it just happens. If we don't want that we do need to display them on sites that protect as best as possible (also obvious!). But there is a good side in a way: the image is getting circulated all over the place, totally free marketing, as long as there's some sort of connection back to the source. Hmmmm, you know what? We all need to watermark our images with our website so the world knows where it came from!
Posted by Jim DeWitt on December 28, 2011 at 5:05 PM
Charlie -
It's flattering, and it's hard to argue a single one of these unapproved uses cost you a sale, but your experience persuaded me that it is time to watermark my images.
I hate to do it; it disfigures the shot. But if I am going to get free publicity, it's going to be me writing the advertising copy.
It's just a different perspective I guess. I posted this shot once about two years ago here on NPN. After that I pretty much forgot about it. For all purposes it would've never been seen again by anyone, except that this happened. I guess I'm glad that other people are still able to enjoy it. I can understand that folks that do this for a living might feel differently. Still, there might be a way to use something like this to your advantage.
Here's a little thought experiment (directed towards those who think like Bruce)...
Let's take the side that it's wrong for people to "steal" your image by posting it somewhere else on the web without asking your permission (and not claiming it as their own, and perhaps even giving credit), in particular if they are making money off of that somewhere else.
Now let's consider some internet company that does this for a living - they collect content from all over the web, organize it, and make it available for people to view. Furthermore they post advertisements next to the content to make money. Many such organizations exist, one is called Google. Would you consider sending Google an email to ask them to stop posting your content? Probably not. Why? Because without Google, no one on the internet would know who you are.
Just some food for thought...
Watermarking can be done in an unobtrusive way, and it guarantees that wherever that picture ends up, people will know who's it is. It's a smart thing to do.
Charlie - that's awesome, congrats on the free advertising, and it's a beautiful image!
Posted by Jim Bullard on December 29, 2011 at 1:09 PM
Some of the sites where Charlie's image was posted are running ads. I see a lot of these sites. They grabs other people's work assemble a site that gets traffic because of the other people's work and get money for ad space based on the traffic created. They are making money off your work while doing your the favor of giving you "exposure". Odds are the people who visit that site will never visit yours and odds are even less that you will sell any prints or reproduction rights as a result.
The worst example I ever ran onto was a minister who was selling canned sermons to other ministers and had collected photos from all over the web for them to use in their church bulletins. He hadn't bothered to credit any of the photographers and "covered" himself with a notice saying that if you found your image there and objected he would take it down. I wrote to him and told him that he was not only in violation of copyright law but I questioned how he, as a minister, could justify the morality of stealing the work of others. He eventually took them all down.
Jim - "Some of the sites where Charlie's image was posted are running ads. I see a lot of these sites. They grabs other people's work assemble a site that gets traffic because of the other people's work and get money for ad space based on the traffic created. They are making money off your work while doing your the favor of giving you "exposure"."
That's exactly Google's business model.. think about it.
Posted by Jim Bullard on December 30, 2011 at 9:58 AM
Floris, I have a blog on Google's Blogspot. I put lots of photos on it. I also have albums on Picasaweb. There are no ads on my blog. I could put some on it if I chose to use Adsense. I didn't. If I did choose to use Adsense I would get part of the revenue but frankly my audience is so small it wouldn't generate any income. The only "ads" are a link to my Blurb book (I put it there) and a couple of links to photographer's ebooks (that I put there), photographers whose work I admire. Google makes nothing off any of those. Google has never in all the years I've used it taken any of my images and posted them elsewhere without my permission. I have a hard time seeing how they have made even a dime off my work.
So no, I don't think that Google's business model does compare at all with what those people are doing.
Jim, I'm not talking about blogspot or picasa, I'm talking about google.com. Go to google.com and type something in. Everything you see listed is someone else's content. Often times you will find advertisements on the right side. That is how google makes money. Go to google and do an image search. All of those images are other peoples images. They never asked anyone if they could post any of that content in the search results. And yet they do, and they make billions of dollars from the resulting advertisement revenue, and yet everyone loves and uses google (me included).
Posted by Jim Bullard on December 30, 2011 at 10:59 PM
Of course that's what happens when you type something in. It's a search engine. If it didn't find your stuff, no one would ever find it and putting it on the web would be pointless. Google is a huge directory. They don't charge you to list you in that directory. They don't charge you to use the directory to find things. It's like the phone book. You got your number listed in the phone book and the phone company sent you a free copy so you could look up other people and businesses. The phone company pays for it (they can't work for free any more than you can) by charging advertisers. The phone book's advertising was the Yellow Pages. A search engine that helps people find your work where you put it up on the web is not at all like someone who takes other people's photos without asking, creates their own site with them and uses the stolen work to draw traffic to their pages so they can sell ad space. Yahoo, Ask, Bing, they are all search engines. They all pay their bills the same way. It isn't unique to Google but Google is generally a better search engine than the others. If there were no search engines the only people who would ever see you photos on the web would be those you gave the URL. Picasa lets you do that BTW. You can have galleries visible only to you, only to people you give the URL to, or the general public. Only the last category will show up on search engines.
Discussion
14 repliesLINK
Funny how an image can get "snagged" and shot around the planet like that... I had a desert sunrise image catch somebody's eye somewhere on 500px and it got 9,000 views in about an hour. Then it drops off like a rock, lol!
Happy New Year to you & your gecko
The good news is that most, if not all, seem to be giving appropriate credit. This was done with an image of mine that I never posted to NPN, but had on Flickr: http://www.essentiallightphotography.com/#fauna/15
A friend found it and called it too my attention. The image was finally removed from the persons page after I made a nuisance of myself. Flickr offered no help at all - even with clear evidence that the guy's entire page was similar stolen content. There will always be the oddball that claims it as their own, so it is important that size and resolution be kept low enough that that is not practical for most purposes. Not much you can do beyond that if you want to show your work in the digital public forum.
Good point Bruce, but I wasn't really saying good OR bad. The fact is that people grab images they like all over the web (obviously, lol) and it just happens. If we don't want that we do need to display them on sites that protect as best as possible (also obvious!). But there is a good side in a way: the image is getting circulated all over the place, totally free marketing, as long as there's some sort of connection back to the source. Hmmmm, you know what? We all need to watermark our images with our website so the world knows where it came from!
It's flattering, and it's hard to argue a single one of these unapproved uses cost you a sale, but your experience persuaded me that it is time to watermark my images.
I hate to do it; it disfigures the shot. But if I am going to get free publicity, it's going to be me writing the advertising copy.
Jim
Let's take the side that it's wrong for people to "steal" your image by posting it somewhere else on the web without asking your permission (and not claiming it as their own, and perhaps even giving credit), in particular if they are making money off of that somewhere else.
Now let's consider some internet company that does this for a living - they collect content from all over the web, organize it, and make it available for people to view. Furthermore they post advertisements next to the content to make money. Many such organizations exist, one is called Google. Would you consider sending Google an email to ask them to stop posting your content? Probably not. Why? Because without Google, no one on the internet would know who you are.
Just some food for thought...
Watermarking can be done in an unobtrusive way, and it guarantees that wherever that picture ends up, people will know who's it is. It's a smart thing to do.
Charlie - that's awesome, congrats on the free advertising, and it's a beautiful image!
The worst example I ever ran onto was a minister who was selling canned sermons to other ministers and had collected photos from all over the web for them to use in their church bulletins. He hadn't bothered to credit any of the photographers and "covered" himself with a notice saying that if you found your image there and objected he would take it down. I wrote to him and told him that he was not only in violation of copyright law but I questioned how he, as a minister, could justify the morality of stealing the work of others. He eventually took them all down.
That's exactly Google's business model.. think about it.
So no, I don't think that Google's business model does compare at all with what those people are doing.