Flickr THIEF beware!

[Alison]

Just thought I would warn you guys about this. Especially if your images are public over there.

I just did a search for my name on flickr!
I'm not even sure where this person got my pic from but thank goodness
they were too dim to remove my name!!!
I feel sick!!!
http://flickr.com/search/?q=Alison%20Greenwood&w=all

I have filed a complaint in yahoo.

I have since found these galleries too...

They even give credit to the photographer, which is something I guess, but, I still don't think they had permission to copy or post the images from the photographers concerned.
http://flickr.com/photos/76861508@N00/page10/

And this one...
http://flickr.com/photos/khanhdung_pooh/59024392/

Look through these galleries to see if you see any of your work and please do a search on your name to see if it comes up with anything.

[Tyson L. Sparks]

Holy cow, could it be they are a bunch o perverts? Everyone should leave a nasty comment.

[Alison]

Thanks guys

[Axle]

Damn, that sucks. Yeah, I'd be pretty ticked off if people started using certain photos of mine without permission.

Most of my photos are covered under CC licenses allowing others to use 'em just not for commercial purposes (or change them in any way).

But there are certain sets, mostly my wedding and portrait stuff I keep All Rights Reserved.

[Xia_Ke]

This pisses me off on 2 levels. First and most obvious is some POS stealing other people's work. Secondly now Ali doesn't have any pics for me to look at :cryin:

[Alison]

This pisses me off on 2 levels. First and most obvious is some POS stealing other people's work. Secondly now Ali doesn't have any pics for me to look at :cryin:

LOL sorry Aaron. You know me it's only for a while til I cool off. I don't actually think they can access my pictures unless I accept them as a friend. So that picture has more than likely been stolen from somewhere else.
My gallery needed a spring clean anyway.

[steelerdirtfreak]

That is just wrong.

I just can't understand someone stealing photos like that.
Besides the moral, ethical, and legal aspects of it, it seems just plain stupid to steal a photo and then post it on the same public social sharing site they swiped it from.
Thieves truly are morons...

[Xia_Ke]

No, the way you had your gallery set-up before, I could only access it when logged in. So, they must have snagged the photo from elsewhere. Not that that is any less disheartening Now if you'll please excuse me, I'm going to go and try to will a snow storm your way to speed up the cooling process

[freygr]

I hope Flickr takes action. They should have the information in there logs as to the Identity of the person. If they refuse to take action then let the lawyers give flickr a go.

[Asylum Steve]

Alison, I know this is tramatic for you, but you should take a look at the site agreement for flickr. What these members are doing is simply collecting images they find good or interesting (definitely a compliment to your work) and arranging them in personal galleries. Nothing more.

It doesn't seem they are claiming to be the creator of the work, and it may be well within the web site rules to do this.

On a more general level, you post pics on the interent and this is bound to happen.

IMO, if someone is not profiting illegally from my work, and especially if they give me photo credit, this kind of thing would not bother me in the least.

As Photo John says, free advertising...

[mattbikeboy]

Alison, I know this is tramatic for you, but you should take a look at the site agreement for flickr. What these members are doing is simply collecting images they find good or interesting (defintiely a compliment to your work) and arranging them in personal galleries. Nothing more.

It doesn't seem they are claiming to be the creator of the work, and it may be well within the web site rules to do this.

On a more general level, you post pics on the interent and this is bound to happen.

IMO, if someone is not profiting illegally from my work, and especially if they give me photo credit, this kind of thing would not bother me in the least.

As Photo John says, free advertising...

I agree. It looks like these people are posting photos that they like. I don't think they even know that it is wrong. My wife is an English Professor and she gets lots of students borrowing stuff from the web for their writing assignments -- they don't understand what plagiarism is. If you look through their posted photos you can tell which ones they lifted and which snapshots they took themselves. I bet they are HS or University students and they are probably stashing the images for their Myspace or Facebook pages (also look at the user names -- the pooh one in particular -- very juvenile).

I'm by no means condoning the behavior -- but I really don't think they understand.

mbb

[Frog]

I'm by no means condoning the behavior -- but I really don't think they understand.

mbb

They don't understand because society has raised a bunch of brats that don't know what it means to WORK for what you get and there is no such thing as the word ENOUGH as in I have enough and don't need more. They think 'want' and 'need' are synonymous.
It is fortunate for us that not all are that way but unfortunate that a significant percentage is!
Dang! Here I go on one of my rants again.

[Asylum Steve]

My wife is an English Professor and she gets lots of students borrowing stuff from the web for their writing assignments -- they don't understand what plagiarism is...

That's the thing (and it's a discussion too involved to get into here). Both plagarisim and copyright infringement are usually determined by usage.

In a nutshell, fair use says one can use other's work, such as quoting articles or dialogue from tv or movies in a written piece, or tearing photos or ads out of a magazine and putting them up on a bulletin board.

To me, this is the online equivalent...

[jgredline]

Alison, I know this is tramatic for you, but you should take a look at the site agreement for flickr. What these members are doing is simply collecting images they find good or interesting (defintiely a compliment to your work) and arranging them in personal galleries. Nothing more.

It doesn't seem they are claiming to be the creator of the work, and it may be well within the web site rules to do this.

On a more general level, you post pics on the interent and this is bound to happen.

IMO, if someone is not profiting illegally from my work, and especially if they give me photo credit, this kind of thing would not bother me in the least.

As Photo John says, free advertising...

I completely agree and what a great compliment was paid to you.

[Alison]

I completely agree and what a great compliment was paid to you.

Yes I had very mixed emotions about the situation. But I'm not sure I regard it as a compliment in that particular gallery that my child appeared in y'know?
Some of their gallery is just disgusting.

I embed my name into the copyright notice in the EXIF data, all nice and sneeky and no one every suspects it.

Yes, that's what I do now. Roger told me about that so I have him to thank!
However, when copied from some sites, the exif gets completely stripped.
______________________________

UPDATE on my stolen photograph...

Flickr had a few people reporting my photograph, as well as me.
And thank you to all who were commenting on my picture like mad too.
I never asked anyone else to report it or comment, but, it was lovely to see them doing that for me. Can you feel the love lol

Anyway, I just tried to access the link to my picture and it's gone! It's been replaced by THIS message, "The photo you were looking for has been deleted." Yay! :thumbsup:

Thanks for being here for me guys

[readingr]

Yes I had very mixed emotions about the situation. But I'm not sure I regard it as a compliment in that particular gallery that my child appeared in y'know?
Some of their gallery is just disgusting.



Yes, that's what I do now. Roger told me about that so I have him to thank!
However, when copied from some sites, the exif gets completely stripped.
______________________________

UPDATE on my stolen photograph...

Flickr had a few people reporting my photograph, as well as me.
And thank you to all who were commenting on my picture like mad too.
I never asked anyone else to report it or comment, but, it was lovely to see them doing that for me. Can you feel the love lol

Anyway, I just tried to access the link to my picture and it's gone! It's been replaced by THIS message, "The photo you were looking for has been deleted." Yay! :thumbsup:

Thanks for being here for me guys

Alison,

Glad its sort of resolved.

Steps I take to try and stop this sort of thing, other than taking photo's no one else wants

1. Copyright the face of the image
2. Add Copyright to EXIF
3. Resize to 640 x 640
4. Set ppi to 72
5. My web site has some code to stop the right click so that you cannot save the image.

These steps are not guaranteed to stop the determined but will discourage most people.

Anyone who wants the code let me know.

Roger

[Overbeyond]

Yes I had very mixed emotions about the situation. But I'm not sure I regard it as a compliment in that particular gallery that my child appeared in y'know?
Some of their gallery is just disgusting.



Yes, that's what I do now. Roger told me about that so I have him to thank!
However, when copied from some sites, the exif gets completely stripped.
______________________________

UPDATE on my stolen photograph...

Flickr had a few people reporting my photograph, as well as me.
And thank you to all who were commenting on my picture like mad too.
I never asked anyone else to report it or comment, but, it was lovely to see them doing that for me. Can you feel the love lol

Anyway, I just tried to access the link to my picture and it's gone! It's been replaced by THIS message, "The photo you were looking for has been deleted." Yay! :thumbsup:

Thanks for being here for me guys

Allison; I have very strong feelings on this. I would never post an image of my three daughters on the internet in the first place. In doing so you have absolutely no control or knowledge as to where the pics of your loved ones will end up. Photographs are the raw materials for people, with certain hang ups and problems, to create their perfect model.

[CLKunst]

Allison; I have very strong feelings on this. I would never post an image of my three daughters on the internet in the first place. In doing so you have absolutely no control or knowledge as to where the pics of your loved ones will end up. Photographs are the raw materials for people, with certain hang ups and problems, to create their perfect model.

Agreed, I almost never post pictures of my kids and certainly never any client work, with the exception of promotional material type images like I do for my bands. That's meant to be out there. There's a lot of crazy things that go on here in the cyber universe and it's something to be aware of.

[Alison]

5. My web site has some code to stop the right click so that you cannot save the image.
Roger

Me too Roger. Well, all except the 72 dpi bit. And my keyboard has a wonderful "print screen" button. Nice of them to put that on keyboards hey?
I don't think there is a way of stopping this. You just have to take the steps we are taking.

I would never post an image of my three daughters on the internet in the first place.

Not easy when you are a portrait photographer and you want your work displayed BEFORE you can get clients.

[Overbeyond]

Me too Roger. Well, all except the 72 dpi bit. And my keyboard has a wonderful "print screen" button. Nice of them to put that on keyboards hey?
I don't think there is a way of stopping this. You just have to take the steps we are taking.



Not easy when you are a portrait photographer and you want your work displayed BEFORE you can get clients.

.

Hmmmm.. Well you make your choices Allison

[PrevailingConditions]

I just came across this thread (I hate it when works gets in the way of my hobbies ). There are a lot of interesting comments here, but from a technical perspective there isn't a lot that can really be done and the law is extremely murky.

Adding your copyright onto the image itself is usually your best defense, but it has to be done in such a way that you cannot eliminate it easily. I would also agree that you should never post anything of significant size so that a thief couldn't do anything useful once they have it. I recall seeing something where a company was stealing images and selling prints without compensating the photographers.

Embedding watermarks will usually fail when converted from one format to another and back again (jpg -> tiff -> jpg). Compression algorithms (especially jpg) is intended to eliminate information that isn't relevant to human visual perception. Watermarks typically fall into this category so they get eliminated when compressed. The stronger they are, the more impact they have on the image quality.

Many sites will keep the exif information on the full size copy, but don't propagate it to the smaller sizes that are frequently used for display. It's also extremely easy to strip EXIF information from a shot.

Flickr has an option to not allow image downloads, but there are plenty of Greasemonkey scripts that allow circumvention with a simple click.

You also have the notion of derivative works. There was someone else on Flickr a while back that was taking other's pictures and "enhancing them" which they considered derivative work. Some would argue that this is within the realm of fair use. How about those that go to the same spot where some famous shots are taken and try to duplicate the famous shot? Is that infringement?

I realize that this sounds pretty pessimistic, but I'm afraid there isn't an easy, foolproof way to prevent these sorts of things from happening. It sucks, but that's pretty much the state of the "art". :mad2:

PC

[adina]

Not easy when you are a portrait photographer and you want your work displayed BEFORE you can get clients.

Coming from that direction....

I did it as well, in fact, used to be a week didn't go by when you didn't see my kids on this site. Were they lifted? Maybe. Do I care? Well, the thought of my kids images floating around who knows where is a little unsettling. But that was before "business" when I was learning and sharing my results. I've learned tons and tons here, and wouldn't have if I was afraid someone was going to steal my photos.

HOWEVER....how many clients do you get from flickr? If it's something that upsets you, is it worth the risk? I know where my clients come from and 99% of them only find me online (website/blog) AFTER they've heard about me someplace else.

In general, anything you put online is fair game. Is it right? No, but it's fact.

The fear of what MIGHT happen shouldn't make your decisions. What kind of life is that? So you weigh the choices. You want clients. You don't want your photos lifted. Well...if not putting images out there for potential clients to see is going to cost you those potential clients, is preventing that guy from having them in his flickr site worth that? On the other hand, say you knew your photos were being used for unsavory business. Knowing that, would you ignore it because you are getting clients?

Choices, choices, and more choices. That's what life is.


adina

btw....yeah, I've had photos stolen, scanned, you name it. It sucks. And I was angry. But for every butthead, there's a dozen really great people.

[GB1]

Alison -

As much as I understand your wanting to protect your work, I think it's understood that anything we photogs post on the internet could very easily be reposted by someone else. I agree with Steve in that it appears they're just collecting 'best' photos that they find, with due credit given to the original photographer.

I've wondered how to protect one's work on the internet from real theft - someone copying and claiming your work as theirs?? A digital watermark seems the only way to ultimately prove it's yours, but Digimarc is too expensive (if you've seen their prices, I'm sure you'll agree!). If anyone has an answer, please shout.

G

[Axle]

I've wondered how to protect one's work on the internet from real theft - someone copying and claiming your work as theirs?? A digital watermark seems the only way to ultimately prove it's yours, but Digimarc is too expensive (if you've seen their prices, I'm sure you'll agree!). If anyone has an answer, please shout.

G

I embed my name into the copyright notice in the EXIF data, all nice and sneeky and no one every suspects it.

[jorger101]

Hello Alison:

This gives me a great deal of concern since I posted some of my images to flickr. I have no problem if someone else gives me the credit for my pictures, but it is very likely that someone in the web may still someone else's work and claim it to be theirs. We should all put our heads together and come up with a solution that protects us from that happening.