Using Internet Sourced Photos

Last week I got a bit of a snotty communication from a company who have bought the rights to a few of my photos for their business. In short, blogger in Asia downloaded one of these photos to illustrate a plant that they were looking for. They got same "snotty" email too. Said blogger was very good - removed it and sent an email to new rights holder explaining my non-involvement.

For what is very much pin money this caused me a fair bit of grief, and so I offered a friendly word on this thread...................

http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/...64-suggestions-ideas-please-3.html#post504888

..................which has turned into a bit of a discussion, so I have started a thread here for all to join in.

I personally couldn't care less who uses my photos, but am now all too aware that there are those who do. I'm only starting this thread to encourage discussion, and not as an attack on anyone. Having now been on the receiving end of it I would like to know your thoughts.................

I really wasn't being petty, just trying to share..........

Doesn't work - it just brings the image up in a new window without reference to the original site or crediting the photographer.

I don't, but others do!

As it doesn't bother me, why ruin a good image?

If anyone can offer a tutorial on this it would be good.

PIPA/SOPA type bills are needed. They do need to be better drafted, but the consequences of not legislating are dire for musicians and independent film making.

Dim - I quoted you as I feel you do make fair points regarding the overall discussion.

 

You can disable right clicking if you control the webspace your displaying the photo on only or if the admin at the webspace has disabled it, but then that is not foolproof. Anything you view on the internet is downloaded to your pc so you can view it. Because you are reading these words here, the photo below of the gate is now on your pc in a folder called "temporay internet files", even though I have semi protected it for example purposes...right click it and save it (permisson granted by myself to do so), then open it up on your machine.



The Photo has been sliced and added here in a way to make it look whole when it's actually two halfs of the photo...just another way to stop the copy and pasters..but only temporarily.

Another way around your situation would be when actually taking the photograph, simply take another shot, the same shot. Now you have two, one to sell and one to keep/use as you see fit. Then to prove this when you have downloaded it to your machine, whatever you do after that ensure you always use the "Save As" command to preserve the Exif info on the Photo. The exif info stores the time the photo was taken, the shot number, exposure etc etc. So your first photo may have been taken at 11.45.05am and the second may be 11.45.08am. Two completely different shots.

However the best way is to never sell the intellectual rights at all, allow them use for a payment if you wish, but never sell copyright to your own work. You could even let them use it for free if you wish, so long as you both agree on how it will be used and that it's still your photo.

I've sold very few photo's, but I own every single one I have ever taken

Steve...

 

Thanks Steve!

To be honest, I'm not bothered about people using my photos. But I am interested in getting to the bottom of a situation such as somebody posting a photo that they do not own that has no permissions given. My understanding at the moment is that the rights holder must be credited in text (with link if applicable) and not in stored info attached to the image.

I too find the whole thing a wee bit petty, but it caused me a fair bit of work for what was pin money this weekend!

 

as mentioned, this debate has been raging on several forums that I frequent .... including hifi forums and conspiracy forums

one such case involves a legal firm in the USA called Righthaven .... they tried to sue godlikeproductions and sent threatening letters .... it was deduced that fair use policy allows one on a forum to copy and paste up to 50% of the article as long as you do not alter it in any way .... and you have to provide the link to the original source

the owner of godlikeproductions started his own thread as regards fair use policy on the forums in the following link: (if swearing offends you, dont open the link, as free speech is encouraged on that site) ... 5 pages of discussion .... very interesting, especially for the owners on this site

The Righthaven copyright lawsuit legal loophole and how to protect yourself from being sued... SPREAD THE WORD TO ALL WEBSITES!!

as to linking photos, the same applies ... richtclick on the photo, and you will get the properties section which tells you the exact location where the photo was found on the public domain (interenet) .... you are allowed to use the photo on a forum, but may not use it for commercial gain

herewith a quick example:



herewith more info on Righthaven

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righthaven

 

No one should post others photo's end of story, BUT everyone does it anyway, it's so widespread it's impossible to police or stop. It's only really in situations like yours where the new rights owners can cause a bit of a niggle.

What I would have done is gone back to the company I had sold the rights to and said "I sold it to you, it's your problem as it's no longer my property" and perhaps "If you want me to deal with it, please find my attached invoice"

As far is the law is/or would be concerned, the company that bought the shot owns it outright...you have no part in it and it's up to them to prove that you have any part in it at all. It's for them to do the leg work.

Submit an invoice to them for the work you did this weekend..a small nominal ammount and see what they say to that.

Steve...

 

Guilty as charged as they say .... i think we have all copied and pasted some one elses work with out thought but we shouldnt do it with out asking !
a friend of mine is a pro photographer and he gave me this link as something to think about

This Photograph Is Not Free

it did make me feel guilty :o

 

here is another thread from godlikeproductions explaining additional legalities as regards copyright on forums and blogs

Important Information To Help Webmasters Protect Themselves From Being Sued in Todays World... I.E.. Righthaven / Attributor

snip:

It's important to understand that users who post other peoples copyrighted material to your site for the purposes of education / discussion have no legal right to grant you a license to use this material. The user has a legal right to post such material in your discussion forum for the purposes of discussion / education under "fair use" but has no authority to grant you the right to republish such material outside of their original posting or seek legal remedy against others who might use that material elsewhere since the user does not own the rights to the material they are posting in the first place concerning copy / pasting of portions of copyrighted 3rd party articles on your site.

 

Maybe if you sell the rights to an image, either have a disclaimer saying that you are selling the 'non-exclusive rights', so that someone else can quite legitimately also buy the rights to use that image. Otherwise just license the images under one of the open source licenses. You can then still profit from the image by selling exclusive rights to the image at a much higher resolution. Then just don't put the higher quality image online on a public area of the site.

As for preventing right click, absolutely pointless I'm afraid. You don't much tech knowledge at all to very quickly bypass such protection. Even if the perpetrator doesn't know about disabling javascript, or viewing the page source and extracting the url out <img src= part, or looking in their temporary internet files, most people know about the print screen button, and even if they dont (and now were going into small percentages), most people know how to take a photo of their screen. Of course you don't need to worry about those people. The ones you need to be concerned about are the ones that would take the image to use on their website, and if they have a website you can be pretty sure they know many ways to get round the right click prevention.

 

Thanks for the replies!

Interesting links too.

I still don't care who downloads my photos, but then this is not how I make my living. As far as selling any more for pin money - I can't be @rsed with the hassle now!

Received a phone call from my stepson who took all the files that I have sold into work today to give to the developer geeks, who ran them through a program that they are developing for this purpose - it came up with two postings that I had not edited! As they estimate a 60% hit rate at the moment it means that there is probably one left out there now (tough!). The aim for this program is that it should be on the market within two years at a price that is affordable to pro photographers. What kind of computer power is required to run what is basically a search engine for images?

 

if i were a photographer, making a living from my photos, I would rather let a site like the bigstock photo or similar handle the sales/royalies on my work .... and pay them a commison

if you just paste them on the internet, hoping people will pay for it, it's the same as leaving your wallet on the pub counter on a friday night with your whole months wages ..... while you go to the toilet ....someone will nick it ....

Stock Photos & Vector Art - Royalty-Free Stock Images | BIGSTOCK

 

True - but that doesn't make it right?
Whilst it was not what I would call a nightmare for me, it was a wake up call. And when stepson told me about this program I will admit that I laughed my @ss off! Can you imagine how smug he was when he called me earlier!!!!
I think that the important thing is to attribute the photos to the site by way of text, or embed.

 

I only post low resolution representative samples of my Photo's online they never exceed 800pixels in size and filesize hardly ever exceeds 250kbs in size.

Now if someone wants to copy that and print it, they wont get a decent printed article from that size, but if the pay for it they will get a full size high resolution of the same shot which will be around 4000 pixels and 50MB in size...thats 49mb extra information going into the photograph so one can guess how much better the bought version will be printed.

Most photographers think and feel the same way, and therefore happily show their photo's online to showcase their work.

If someone nicks (ahem) borrows one of my shots for a screensaver, wallpaper, I'm flattered and happy with that. I'll happily sell at a decent rate as long as I know the use (and have given away for free use to charities).

Steve...