Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Steal my content please, Part II

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Havagan — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 10:22:57 -0000

You figure that the pro photographers would be using a program like Photoshop and could just create their own watermark on the photos they post to Flickr. It smells like offloading of responsiblity to say "Flickr should have done what I could easily do."

None of this addresses the underlying copyright/use. Since we're discussing a single photo sharing service, we're ignoring how many other ways a photo is distributed online. Arguing about services isn't addressing the core need: the contradictions in legislation.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Hans Doddema — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:00:02 -0000

How does this work on Zoomr? There's a copy-paste function for photos to blogs, I didn't see any licensing mentioned along?

Wasn't Zooomr also working on some microstock marketplace thing? Something like this may work for Flickr to help photographers concerned about their photos ending up somewhere without attribution and/or revenue share.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Nathan Weinberg — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:55:53 -0000

I'm using Bloglines, and since you turned off the the feature, the problem's stopped happening. Must be something in the way Wordpress changes the comment number that changes the new feed item state, and Bloglines much be too sensitive to it. Feedburner has a similar feature, but its never triggered a bug on this scale (50 new items every hour).

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Mickael — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:53:40 -0000

I think the problem lies with the content producers as well

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Derrick — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:32:43 -0000

@33 Well I'd have to agree, your photos are average quality at best. I wouldn't say they suck. If you were a professional photographer, why did it take you so long to figure out how to use the ISO settings on your new camera? Should have been second nature. If you were that good you'd still be making money. The random shot of Reagan? Well, like they say..a broken clock is right twice a day.

As for dismissing Mike's criticism because he hasn't shown his photos....well I guess we should dismiss any future criticisms you have of any product or service, since you've never developed one

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

dan — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:40:27 -0000

That is exactly why I use smugmug, if I don't want someone to use it, it gets watermarked, and no right click save as, but 90% of my pictures I don't care, but I do want attribution. Hey to each their own, but I agree that the problem is flickr.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

nowe samochody — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:36:58 -0000

I agree with author.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Chuck Olsen — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 06:13:52 -0000

I'm glad Thomas Hawk weighed in here.
That pretty much clears the air.

I pilfer Google Images like crazy for some episodes of Vlog Santa, usually not paying any attention where they come from, since I consider it an artistic/editorial use.

Where it gets tricky though - I'm hosting videos on Revver, so there is potential for ad income. Granted, I've never offset the amount of time, etc. so it's at best "hobby income."

Likewise, if this video promotes Richter Scales, cd sales, other paid work, etc. than the video is really serving as a marketing tool.

Damn these gray areas.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Robert Scoble — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 04:20:40 -0000

Tech For Novices: what should I promote? Lots of my pro photographer friends are on SmugMug and I like their service better than any other I've tried so far.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Tech For Novices — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 04:11:32 -0000

Dear Sir

So you are promoting Smugmug ?

Tech For Novices

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

topgold — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 03:47:00 -0000

I know several professional photographers who electronically tag their images with Digimarc. Then they merely invoice the places where the images appear. It's a simple work process and more than pays the cost of Digimarc services.

People will always lift images without attribution because they don't understand copyright. If it right-clicks and saves, there's no issue, right?

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Robert Scoble — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 03:05:35 -0000

Nathan: I just turned it off. What reader are you using? I'm using Google Reader and I'm not seeing that behavior.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Nathan Weinberg — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:55:08 -0000

Robert! The link that lists the number of comments on your posts is KILLING my RSS reader. I get 50 new items every hour, or rather the same items appearing as new over and over again. If this is a feature you turned on, get rid of it! If it's a new Wordpress.com feature, tell Matt it's driving your readers nuts!

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Robert Scoble — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:30:30 -0000

Mike: I once made my living as a photographer. My photo of Ronald Reagan is still hanging in Silicon Valley's Republican Headquarters. I've probably been shooting before you were born. I notice you don't offer up your own photography so we can see how sucky you are. That speaks volumes. Also, at least part of my salary comes from doing the Photowalking show: http://www.podtech.net/home...

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Mike — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:05:49 -0000

You have to make your living as a photographer to be considered anything above average. Getting "paid" for photos you'd gladly give away for free only means you suckered some dumbass.

Flickr is where you belong. That's why they love you.

Mike

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Robert Scoble — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:10:22 -0000

Mike: you're just jealous that I've been paid for my photography and that I have more "favorite" ratings over on http://www.flickr.com/photo... than you do.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Mike — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:40:53 -0000

Scoble,

Your photographs should be free, they suck. Horrible photography will never be worth anything. Same goes for the writing on blogs. Worthless. If you make money at it it's only because real writers are still working the print thing till it's dead but when they switch over you will be out of a job.

Get over it. You're just a place holder.

Mike

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

andy754 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:57:10 -0000

It's strange how so many photo "sharing" sites seem to enable pirating photos. It's not just that they make pirating easy, but that they don't even aid the viewer in legally using the photo if they want to.

As a photographer, I found this troubling some time ago and helped co-found www.photrade.com to try to tie together photo sharing to photo selling so that photographers have a simple one-stop system that allows them all the benefits the web has to offer. Why should photo selling be a separate site from photo sharing?

We're in a private invite-only beta right now (as we've bootstrapped the business and can't afford more servers) but I would love to give people a tour and show them how we plan to help photographers.

My apologies if this comes across as spam, just wanted to share the knowledge with a group of folks who sound like they care about this issue as much as I do.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

JP Daigle — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:52:15 -0000

Am I missing something in the smugmug interface? I opened up Scoble's gallery (then a few other random galleries), brought up a few pictures, and unlike Flickr, I can't see any licensing information on any of the pictures. I can't find a way to search for creative-commons licensed pictures either. OK, so it offers optional watermarking, but it doesn't answer the basic licensing questions unless the info's hidden somewhere I haven't noticed.

Flickr may not make it super-obvious, but at least it's there on each photo page.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Louis — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:30:13 -0000

don't most DSLRs have the ability to place your name ok the picture when taken? Hard to dispute in that case

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

PXLated — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:07:22 -0000

In the past, before all the blogs and such, the biggest copyright infringers I've ever seen/known have been (probably still are) Powerpoint mavens...sales people and speakers. How many presentations have you seen with images? Bet very, very few have ever gotten permission or even thought about it. I've always warned my clients that they need to rein in all infringment or they're going to get burnt and as Robert mentioned, the damages are treble whatever the creator thinks they're worth.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Shun — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:14:29 -0000

Problem is, Flickr makes it trivially easy to infringe copyright. "I just need to right-click on this image, here..." Not to kick Flickr in the groin, because I believe that they are probably the innocent party, but seriously, without that capability, this would be a non-issue.

Another possibility is that the image was "stolen" by someone else, left unattributed, and Richter Scales came by the third-party web-site, saw that it was unattributed, and just grabbed the image. Who knew?

The web was created to allow, and indeed encourage, information redundancy. That means that there are going to be lots of copies of the same thing floating around all over the place. If this somehow does not fit into your business model...well, I don't know what to tell you. It's going to happen, regardless of any one person, or country's intent.

One thing I'm baffled by: how much money did Richter Scales get for producing their parody? I know they got over a million hits, but did they actually get paid anything? Does Hartwell deserve even 1/100th of whatever putative rewards came their way?

This is having such a negative Streisand Effect...I just don't see this going over well. I bet Lawrence Lessig is just burning to get in on this.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Chris Brennan — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:36:17 -0000

@Dave: How does this scale: You have no right to use an image without permission.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

davemc500hats — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:28:26 -0000

@neil: your repeated use of the word 'should' isn't helpful, and doesn't scale. you *should* drive 55 miles per hour too, but if 90% of humanity is driving 65-70 and the other 10% is going even faster, how do you apply the legal penalty in any reasonable fashion?

in general, lawyers are a means of last resort, not a primary solution. artists "should" probably be hiring web marketing consultants to promote their work, not lawyers to "protect" it by threatening to sue people.

to paraphrase your last point: if you hire a lawyer instead of a marketer / salesperson, don't whine when you get lawsuits & expenses instead of customers & revenue.

Re: Steal my content please, Part II

Neil — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:51:57 -0000

"Most human beings skip over that kind of text because it’s legaleze"

Most human beings don't want to use my photographs for their own purposes, either. If you want to use somebody else's work, you should do due diligence to find the licensing terms.

If you want to use somebody else's work and the licensing isn't clear, then you should contact them to discuss terms rather than stealing it. Full stop.

If you use somebody else's work without doing these things, don't whine when their lawyers contact you.