Visual Search Engine Tracks Stolen Images

Barence writes "A new visual search engine could help photographers keep track of their photographs whenever, and wherever, they appear on the internet. The TinEye search engine allows users to search by uploading a picture rather than typing in a keyword. It then conducts a pixel-by-pixel search across the internet, flagging all instances of that image even if it's been cropped, merged or digitally altered in some way. It's not just for copyright enforcement though; 'it's being used by researchers who need to find where an image came from to provide attribution, even people who are trying to find out who people are in old photos.' It's currently in beta, but you can try it out."

Comments

Kind of Misleading on the Old Photo Identification

[eldavojohn]

"it's being used by researchers who need to find where an image came from to provide attribution, even people who are trying to find out who people are in old photos."

This may be nitpicking but I read the FAQ and it does not, in fact, claim to be able to accomplish this unless that exact same 'old photo' is posted elsewhere on the internet:

Can TinEye find alterations of a query image?

Yes. As long as they are alterations of the same query image, TinEye can find them and include them in your search results.

Note that search results are ordered by 'relevance' (i.e. how well the result images match your query image), so image alterations are typically found at the end of your search results.

How does TinEye work?

TinEye uses sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms to find your image on the web without the use of metadata or watermarks.

TinEye instantly analyzes your query image to create a compact digital signature or 'fingerprint' for it. TinEye searches for your image on the web by comparing its fingerprint to the fingerprint of every single other image in the TinEye search index.

So this example they list of the soldier must rely on the fact that the website contained the same exact image that the people had of the old soldier they were looking for. I can't expect it to take any image of Person A and return every single image (past & present) of that person. That's ridiculous.

I would expect that to work out very infrequently as I'm not aware of any huge digitized databases of old photos or even newspaper microfiche. Hell, I have postage stamp-sized photos of my grandparents with people who nobody knows who they are. I don't think this tool could help me.

I think everybody understands...

[Anonymous Coward]

that the real purpose for this is to find the rest of sets ;)

Re:I think everybody understands...

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

It might be better if it were able to find approximate matches, or face match & find. Still, you've gotta start somewhere ;)

Re:I think everybody understands...

[Tink2000]

Mod parent up +1 "read my mind".

Re:I think everybody understands...

[Tophe]

I was thinking the same thing too, and would have modded it up if it wasn't AC. ;)

Re:I think everybody understands...

[Stonent1]

These are not the vaginas you are looking for.. Move along.. Move along..

Re:I think everybody understands...

[JoCat]

That's exactly why I signed up for the beta. Turns out, it's explicitly forbidden in their terms of use. Makes you wonder exactly what they're recording when you search for something.

Re:I think everybody understands...

[Purity Of Essence]

I'm not sure if nervous laughter counts as Funny, but this is Insightful as all get out.

Embedded Codes

[s31523]

Images can also have an embedded code, i.e. steganography, which could possibly be used to speed up searching. This would allow the web crawler to know exactly which part of the image to look at to determine if it matches the key the crawler is looking for, rather than a brute force pixel by pixel search.

Re:Embedded Codes

[x2A]

"rather than a brute force pixel by pixel search"

They're blatently not pixel by pixel comparisons... look at the tech, don't listen to the woman! If it was pixel based then an image saved using two different implementations of jpeg wouldn't match up. It's probably more likely that a map of lines, shapes, patterns etc in the image is built up, and then they are what's compared. This means images that are different sizes, have different light/colouring (such as a high quality scan vs poor quality) and colour depths, but are of the same thing, can still yield results.

Err... or is that not what you meant by pixel by pixel search?

Re:Embedded Codes

[Shade of Pyrrhus]

This would only work if they copied the original completely. Of course it would speed things up, but that's assuming they haven't modified the image. Once they re-save that image, all the extra data you added in there with steganography is no longer there. I guess that's the important part of this project - that an image can be modified from the original and still be detected.

Re:Embedded Codes

[clone53421]

Well, they don't actually do a pixel-by-pixel search... they index them and create digital fingerprints, then it does a pixel-by-pixel on your "search query" image and compares its fingerprint with the fingerprints in the database. Pretty neat.

Re:Embedded Codes

[WWWWolf]

One small beef though: Most steganography/watermarking I've seen focuses on the artist using the software to add a hidden mark in the image, and then verifying that the hidden mark also exists in an alleged rip-off.

It says nothing about entity doing metadata cataloguing automatically extracting the marks and putting the decoded marks in an easy-to-query database. You know, making the data searchable. Even if that's data that is supposed to be hidden, you know, to ward against this "watermark tampering" thing that's listed in Image Plagiarism for Dummies, page 3.

Now, what makes you think that steganography/watermarking vendors would willingly share the methods they use to hide the marks?

Further, the history has shown that both steganography and watermarking markets are full of products that are utter and pure snake oil. Telling apart the real thing and snake oil is sometimes difficult in computer security in general, and on this field in particular. The products that are being used might not lend themselves to be accurate detection to begin with...

Re:Embedded Codes

[mikael]

There is an image processing technicuq called the Feature vector.

This can be anything from a color histogram to a compressed FFT of the image. MPEG-7 files have texture descriptors built in.

A color histogram may not be of much use if someone alters the overall appearance of the image (color to monochrome or sepia tone). Silhouettes might not work if parts of the image are cropped or composited with another image. Monochrome texture segmentation and classification may be the only method that would work.

Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[apathy maybe]

The least significant bit of each pixel. Oh, and now it appears that this tool doesn't work. (At least, I would suggest it isn't that good, I could be wrong. The article appears to suggest that it is that good, if you can take a photo on your phone of a painting, and then find an article on that painting...)

Oh well, I guess people still haven't learnt that the old ways of copyright are only hanging on through inertia.

Oh, and queue the predictable (and correct) responses about how you can't "steal" digital images. To steal a photo or a picture, you would have to take a physical copy belonging to someone, and deprive someone else of that physical copy, without their permission. (And the word "steal" doesn't appear to appear in the article, added to provoke page views I guess.)

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Dannybolabo]

Oh, and queue the predictable (and correct) responses about how you can't "steal" digital images. To steal a photo or a picture, you would have to take a physical copy belonging to someone, and deprive someone else of that physical copy, without their permission.

Where would you like them to line up?

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Tim C]

Directly under his post I guess, assuming you're using a threaded or chronological view of posts.

(But yes, you beat me to it)

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Jack9]

Oh well, I guess people still haven't learnt that the old ways of copyright are only hanging on through inertia.

This.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[StrawberryFrog]

Oh, and queue the predictable (and correct) responses about how you can't "steal" digital images.

Pedantically, you are correct, but you that's about as far as it goes.

You can pass off someone else's work as your own. You can deprive them of income, and make income off images that you do not have permission to use. Is that better phrasing?

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[4D6963]

The least significant bit of each pixel. Oh, and now it appears that this tool doesn't work.

Yeah, how about you just watch the video on their website before suggesting that what they do would be as retarded as comparing the values of each pixel. It's surely closer to cross correlation, meaning it's nothing like comparing pixel values but more like correlating the image's space-frequency components.

By the way, does anyone have any clue what information they store and compare? They obviously don't cross correlate your search image with every image in their index every time you search, so what could they possibly store that would allow them to correlate images?

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[samkass]

Oh, and queue the predictable (and incorrect) responses about how you can't "steal" digital images. To steal a photo or a picture, you would have to take a physical copy belonging to someone, and deprive someone else of that physical copy, without their permission according to SlashDot, but not the English dictionary.

Pet Peeve of mine: That's not the definition of "steal". It's only the SlashDot conventional wisdom. It's really not that hard to look up words on the internet. Here's a link to a dictionary.

Steal:
1 a: to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully

Appropriate:
  3 : to take or make use of without authority or right

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[gfxguy]

People who violate copyright don't understand the "theft of labor" part, but it doesn't really matter as we know they are hiding behind excuse that simply because they are the greed ones who don't want to pay someone else for their work.

Oh, sure... we'll get the "try before you buy" types complaining, but how does that apply to a photograph?

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[x2A]

The linked page doesn't say anything about 'steal/stolen'... neither does the lil intro video clip on the linked page. Looks like slashdot headline that talks about that. Equivalent would be to describe the Google search engine as a tool for tracking people who have stolen text from your website... it's hardly an all round view of what the thing does, is meant for, or is mostly used for (which is obviously porn).

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[mea37]

Let me get this straight.

A post leads with "I did X and it defeated the tool".

The author then quickly qualifies that he/she didn't do X, but is just guessing (in contradiction to the claims of those familiar with the tool) that maybe this would defeat the tool.

And that draws moderation as "insightful".

Guess the bar's pretty low today.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[clone53421]

According to the FAQ, it's still able to identify pictures that have been colour adjusted, cropped, and even sometimes if it has been slightly rotated or had text added (or missing).

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just kind of curious, why is it that if I make a chair, I can only sell the chair once, but if I write a novel, I can sell it repeatedly? I only did the work to write the novel once.

Copyright is making people fabulously wealthy because we've all bought in to the idea that you can sell the same bits forever. The artificial constructs in place to allow entertainers to become exorbitantly rich need to go, we're all just being duped. I say, you get paid for your work *once*, not twenty million times.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[clone53421]

Theft of labour? No, I can't say I do understand that... you still have your labour, and you still have the product of it. I just have a copy.

I might have gotten it for "free", but it didn't cost you anything, either. You're exactly the same after I copy it as you were before: you did x amount of work and you have a copyable product as a result.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[clone53421]

The point is, to "steal" something you have to take it, or appropriate it (i.e. make use of it). The original owner no longer has it (or has use of it). Copying isn't stealing.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[gardyloo]

It's surely closer to cross correlation, meaning it's nothing like comparing pixel values but more like correlating the image's space-frequency components.

It almost certainly just IS cross-correlation, with a little algorithm to find the correlation maximum somewhere near the middle of the picture. This, of course, is simply another way of comparing pixel values. It's probably much, much faster, because so many established FFT algorithms exist for very fast multiplication-and-add operations, but it's essentially just pixel comparison.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Anonymous Coward]

An author is a designer, not a builder.

If you design a chair, you get a cut from every copy of that chair that is sold. Someone who buys the chair pays for design, material, and labor. Someone who steals a chair pays for none of that.

If you "design" (i.e. write) a novel, you get a cut of every copy of that novel that is sold. Someone who buys the novel pays for design (writing), material, and labor. Someone who steals a copy pays for none of that.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

is sparrrrtaaaaaaa?

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[ScentCone]

you still have the product of it

Not if the product of your labor is only valuable when it is consumed during a certain window of time, or put to use in a certain way. Many such labors are like airline seats. Once the opportunity to sell it passes, it's gone. When someone else runs off with your work and distributes it outside of any arrangement with you, they are eroding the value of the work. Your take on things betrays a very disconnected, uninformed understanding of the way that a photograph can carry a value immediately, in the near term, and over a longer period of time. Lacking that understanding, and not even understanding what the product in question actually IS (which is, much of the time, a service, not an artifact), you are in no position to preach on this.

Of course, you're not preaching, really. You're just trying to establish a little flimsy moral cover so that you don't feel bad about ripping off the people who produce the entertainment you want.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[clone53421]

I'm not talking about irreplaceable commodities (airline seat). I'm talking about easily copied digital media. Way to mis-apply my argument though.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[ScentCone]

I'm not talking about irreplaceable commodities (airline seat). I'm talking about easily copied digital media. Way to mis-apply my argument though.

No, YOU'RE missing the point. Twice, now. The labor that a photographer puts into certain sorts of work, and the market for it, IS irreplaceable. It passes with time. When you rip off that work and distribute it, you are stealing the opportunity that the photographer has created by performing that labor. The photographer, for example, spends a lot of money and time to get physically in front of something that she wants to photograph, and for which she is gambling that she can find an audience who will meet her terms when she offers a price for the service she is providing. When you rip off that photographer, you're ripping off a piece of the irreplaceable - often very fleeting - market she has created with her labor and risk. That you can't even see how the simple airline seat analogy applies confirms my take on your lack of worldliness, and reminds me that you're probably not someone who creates things - including opportunities - for a living.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[4D6963]

Uh huh, right, but how do they avoid cross correlating the search image against their whole database every time?

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[gardyloo]

They probably don't avoid it. On the order of 10^5 cross-correlations can be done on medium-res pictures per second with a fast machine, especially one with dedicated video hardware. They might drastically narrow their search space by having a library of perhaps 100 "basis set" or "canonical" pictures (faces, cityscapes, mountainscapes, ocean photos, animals, etc.) with varying colors and features which stand out, and do the first set of correlations with those. Depending on which of the basis set the target image correlates best with, they can then quickly narrow down the next set of correlations.

    You can probably tell I'm totally guessing. But I'm working on a somewhat similar project myself, and that's our first step.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about identity theft and espionage? They're both forms of stealing.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[4D6963]

Interesting. So you would evolve through a tree by cross-correlation? If I can formulate my own guess, I'd say that they probably don't put pictures in groups defined by what they represent but by the result of their own cross correlation. That would make sense.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[gfxguy]

Well said.

So I can go at 4:00 in the morning to a specific spot that I found after days of looking for the best place to take a photo and set up my camera (which cost thousands of dollars for the best results, which was an investment into a business selling art that some people might find enjoyable) so that I get the perfect sunrise shot, and someone wants to copy it because, hey, I still have the original, so it's all good!

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[E IS mC(Square)]

Sure, you can sell ONE chair only ONCE. But you can sell MANY chairs from the same design MANY TIMES, can't you?

While I can "build" many books from the original one in matter of seconds, it takes a lot of time for you to build many chairs just like the first one, and it's your problem, not mine.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[lgarner]

Re-read the definition of "appropriate": "... or make use of without authority or right".

Which part of copying for your own use does not include making use of the work? There's nothing in there about the original owner no longer possessing the work.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Nerdposeur]

So I can go at 4:00 in the morning to a specific spot that I found after days of looking for the best place to take a photo and set up my camera (which cost thousands of dollars for the best results, which was an investment into a business selling art that some people might find enjoyable) so that I get the perfect sunrise shot, and someone wants to copy it because, hey, I still have the original, so it's all good!

Yes. And your "fans" who don't care to pay for your work are helping to convince you not to invest in creating that work anymore, since it obviously doesn't pay.

I don't understand why pirates don't understand this concept. People who spend money making things for you to consume need to get that money back. Otherwise they can't make any more things. How hard is that to grasp?

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[gfxguy]

I don't normally respond to ACs, but I think there is a genuine misunderstanding about this.

I'm just kind of curious, why is it that if I make a chair, I can only sell the chair once, but if I write a novel, I can sell it repeatedly? I only did the work to write the novel once.

Yes, there is a difference, but it's a moot point - both works required your time and labor to create, the book obviously takes a LOT longer to create, yet a book, a paperback, sells for a tiny fraction of the cost of a well crafted, hand-made chair.

Copyright only makes fabulously wealthy (by and large) those artists who have created compelling material... enough so that many people are willing to purchase, at a fraction of the cost it took to make the original product, the work of the artist. They're buying labor and talent and skill, which is the same thing you're buying when you buy a hand-made chair (I'd hope, anyway, as hand-made furniture tends to be quite expensive).

So how do you propose an author get paid for his book just once? You going to push it on the publishing company? A guy spends a year writing a book and you want one person to pay him $100k or more and then give it away to everyone else?

No, you're paying for the labor, skill, and talent... and people who put more effort, skill, and talent into their creations are rightfully awarded with more than those who put little effort into their work.

I'm not arguing the system is great... publishers keep the lion's share of profits, which is wrong. Copyrights simply last too long, which is wrong. But the fundamental idea of copyright is well founded and well thought out.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[mi]

The linked page doesn't say anything about 'steal/stolen'...

All the better — Slashdot's mainstream is finally realizing, that, indeed, copying may be equivalent to stealing, even if no tangible property changes hands.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pet Peeve of mine: That's not the definition of "steal". It's only the SlashDot conventional wisdom. It's really not that hard to look up words on the internet. Here's a link to a dictionary [m-w.com].

One big point to make, in situations like this, no posts but those like yours are referring to the english language, so how would an english dictionary (site) have any relevance?

Legal language is very different from plain old English, both grammatically, and in the definitions of specific words. There is a reason people call it legalese, since it really is closer to its own language than it is to English, despite some words being based on similar yet different english words.

"Steal" does not mean the same thing in English than it does in Legalese.
In posts such as these, clearly we are talking about crimes (or lack of crime) thus legalese is all that matters, not the english language.

According to http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/s074.htm

STEAL - the wrongful or willful taking of money or property belonging to someone else with intent to deprive the owner of its use or benefit either temporarily or permanently. No particular type of movement or carrying away is required.

Any appreciable change in the location of the property with the necessary willful intent constitutes a stealing whether or not there is any actual removal of it from the owner's premises.

This term imports, ex vi termini, nearly the same as larceny; but in common parlance, it does not always import a felony; as, for example, you stole an acre of my land.

In slander cases, it seems that the term stealing takes its complexion from the subject-matter to which it is applied, and will be considered as intended of a felonious stealing, if a felony could have been committed of such subject-matter.

Which is the only definition of Steal that matters here.

You will note that this definition still supports the parent posters point (In the 2nd quoted paragraph), even if he/she came to that point by an incorrect means/dictionary.

Typically the english definition (apparently until recently, as now it does match more) specifically excludes any instance where property has not exchanged hands (and thus copyright infringement can't be stealing according to English) yet the legal definition does include that now.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Endo13]

In the digital age, that argument just doesn't hold water any more. The writing of the novel now can easily be the building of it as well. Whether or not you get a hard copy published more or less depends on how large you want your distribution to be.

So, what's your argument going to be once we have true 3D printing available in every house? No, it's not going to happen in the next 5 years, but it's coming, eventually. So what happens then when someone is able to buy a chair, have it scanned into the printer, and have a new one printed out for the equivalent of $.25 worth of plastic in a minute or two?

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Endo13]

Yes, there is a difference, but it's a moot point - both works required your time and labor to create, the book obviously takes a LOT longer to create, yet a book, a paperback, sells for a tiny fraction of the cost of a well crafted, hand-made chair.

You focus on the one completely irrelevant part of the discussion: the time spent creating the book vs. the chair. It's completely irrelevant because "book" is not essential to this discussion. You can replace "book" with any other copyrighted creation, including one that took about 1 minute to "create".

Copyright only makes fabulously wealthy (by and large) those artists who have created compelling material... enough so that many people are willing to purchase, at a fraction of the cost it took to make the original product, the work of the artist. They're buying labor and talent and skill, which is the same thing you're buying when you buy a hand-made chair (I'd hope, anyway, as hand-made furniture tends to be quite expensive).

Not really, not any more. These days advertising and exposure has a lot more to do with it than how "compelling" the material is.

No, you're paying for the labor, skill, and talent... and people who put more effort, skill, and talent into their creations are rightfully awarded with more than those who put little effort into their work.

No, you're paying for the advertising. For an example, there's lots of bands out there who are better than the majority of "popular" bands and have put in a lot more time and effort - they simply haven't been able to get the right exposure.

I'm not arguing the system is great... publishers keep the lion's share of profits, which is wrong. Copyrights simply last too long, which is wrong. But the fundamental idea of copyright is well founded and well thought out.

Something I think every sane, rational individual would agree with.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[x2A]

No! There's a million arguments that completely miss the point that prove otherwise! Doesn't matter if you're "depriving on a permanent bases" the creators rights to control copy/distribution of the creation, as long as they get to keep the original copy of the creation, nothing is removed... *cough*

Anyway, what have the slashdot masses got to do with the actual article?

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[XcepticZP]

You are right, the processing requirements will grow incredibly fast. Unless they can come up with some sort of easily comparable "hash" that doesn't depend too much on image size they are doomed to fail. But as I see it, this sort of technology is just too impractical at this stage. And I seriously doubt that this little startup company has enough processing capacity to handle being in the real world.

Another possible way to reduce the problem is to reduce all images in the database and uploaded to be of a small, generic size, such as 100x100 pixels. Ok, that might produce a lot of false-positives, but then again, it might just leave you sorting out 50pictures instead of the impractical 2-3, or even more impractical 5billion.

You could also remove colour from the photographs, thereby reducing the processing power needed. But this would depend on whether or not their algorithm compares colour.

Some sort of grouping that can easily reduce the problem space. An example of this is searching only words beginning with a if the word you are comparing starts with an a.

But odds are these guys have already thought of the same things I have. And who can blame them, they're going to need all the help they can get.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Khelder]

Oh, and queue the predictable (and incorrect) responses about how you can't "steal" digital images. To steal a photo or a picture, you would have to take a physical copy belonging to someone, and deprive someone else of that physical copy, without their permission according to SlashDot, but not the English dictionary.

Pet Peeve of mine: That's not the definition of "steal". It's only the SlashDot conventional wisdom. It's really not that hard to look up words on the internet. Here's a link to a dictionary.

Steal:
1 a: to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully

Appropriate:

  3 : to take or make use of without authority or right

As you've pointed out, stealing isn't always about physical
posession, but copyright advocates (e.g, *IAA) frequently conflate
this type of stealing with #3 (i.e., using without authority or
right).

However, the top definition of steal is about physical
posession and I think is obviously what most people mean by "steal" in
most contexts. So although while using "steal" to refer to copyright
infringement may be technically correct, it is misleading, at best.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[SpinyNorman]

Seems to work too!

I tried it on a pic and it came back not with the original but one where my search image had been:

1) Changed from sepia to B/W, AND
2) Had the central oval shaped region retained, and the rest replaced with some photoshopped frame.

I was impressed.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[clone53421]

You can't make use of it because you don't have it. You have a copy, which you can make use of without interfering with the ability of the original owner to make use of the original.

People like to make a big issue of it by saying someone "stole" it, but it's not really stealing. It's copying. You could steal the original author's credit (because that's something that can't be shared) however, unless you're claiming to have created the MP3 you downloaded, the original author retains the credit for the music.

To illustrate further the notion of stealing credit vs. copying, take this example. If you wrote a great newspaper column and I ripped it off and put my name on it, I've stolen your credit. I haven't stolen the article, per se; you still have that: I stole the credit, because we can't both have written it. However, if I scan the article and e-mail it to my friend saying "hey, this is a great article written by ______, you ought to read it", I haven't stolen anything from you. You can bitch and moan about how they got to read the article without buying your paper, but that's not stealing from you. Now that doesn't mean I could publish your article verbatim in my paper (or blog), because that would be public, but I should be able to use it personally.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[clone53421]

Um, my POINT is that you haven't lost a damned thing. You can complain about loss of income, but you haven't lost it because you didn't have it, and you just theoretically suppose you'd have gotten it if someone hadn't got a copy of your work for free.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[SpinyNorman]

The article appears to suggest that it is that good, if you can take a photo on your phone of a painting, and then find an article on that painting...

If you read their FAQ, it says it's not designed to work for that type of thing - it's for searching for instances & lightly photoshopped variations of specific pictures, not searching for pictures with similar content. i.e. if you searched for a picture of a tree it'd return any instances of that specific picture, not other pictures of that tree or pictures of other trees.

It seems to be meant more as a copyright protection tool than a semantic search tool, and seems to do what it claims very well from what I've tested.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[clone53421]

Fine. Don't create anything if it's so unprofitable. Except that it apparently is, because enough people buy it. In other words your entire argument hinges on the idea that "if everyone did X, everything would grind to a halt". Well, that idea holds true in many, many cases, but it doesn't mean X is bad, wrong, or unethical.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[ScentCone]

but you haven't lost it because you didn't have it

So, it's up to you - the person who wants to be entertained with the work of an artist - to decide when and how that person's work should be published? YOU get to decide that a professional photographer's contemporary portrait of someone who is suddenly important in current events - a portrait that the photographer had to fly 2000 miles to take, hauling along two assistants and tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment - is or isn't something that the artist should have to give to you for free? The artist makes a gamble and invests in producing something. You want it. The artist says, "Sure, how about $10," and you say... "nah, I want it but not that badly" ... so you take it anyway?

Such a photograph may only have the value that the photographer is banking on when it can be marketed with exclusive commercial publishing rights. You wish to make a nice little entertainment slave out of that arist, and dictate to them when you think they should work for free. I'm curious, have you ever sat across the table from someone who spent years in the studio working on a film or a recording, looked them in the eye, and said, "Wow, I really respect your talent and all the work you've done ... but I'd really like to make sure that neither I nor any of my friends has to pay for being entertained, so I'm going to just go ahead and rip you off, OK? Oh, and PLEASE keep up the great work - I can't wait for the sequel!"

Or do you only want entertainment from people you don't respect as artists, so that you feel more comfortable ripping them off?

Or, is that you feel you're in the best position to decide when and how they should sell their work, and you know perfectly well when they've made enough money selling to other people who like them, and so - just by coincidence! - by the time you want to rip off their work, they just happen to have already made enough money already, and so they're not missing anything.

Are you really such an intellectual coward that you're willing to say you want that artist to work for you as a little slave of yours? Or is that you prefer that the other people, who DO agree to the artist's terms when acquiring their work, should be your slaves, and THEY get to pay the artist to work for your entertainment? Just trying to get a bead on who exactly it is that you think owes you the free ride, and who you think should meet the artist's requirements on your behalf.

I know, high school will start back up in a few weeks, and you'll have less time to nurture that acute sense of entitlement you've been working on all summer. But at least come clean and lay out the details of how you can simultaneously like an artist enough to want to be entertained by the work of their mind while - directly or indirectly - lying to them, and being a leech.

Of course, you have one more option. If you don't like the fact that an artist wants money in exchange for amusing you... walk away. Grow a spine, and commit to only having the people that want to give you their work at no charge provide you with your entertainment.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[clone53421]

Nobody said anybody had to work for free. In fact, if there's no money to be made, quit producing. Go ahead, "teach me a lesson" or whatever it is you're trying to prove. If there's no entertainment, I certainly won't be crying, I'll just find other ways to entertain myself.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[ScentCone]

Nobody said anybody had to work for free

Well, nobody but you, of course. You're saying that it's OK to rip off work that happens to be stored or distributed digitally. If the sale of that work to paying customers is how an artist makes a living, how is your approval of everybody ripping it off NOT the same as those people wanting that work for free?

Admit it: you think artists should be paid, but just not by you. You're a leech that expects that artist to amuse you at no cost to you, and only on your terms.

if there's no money to be made, quit producing

There is money to be made. The artist sets the price, and some number of people consider it fair enough to meet. That's between the arist and the people who choose to pay. You want to have that arist's work, but remove choice from the equation. You want authority over how an arist publishes their work, rather than just leaving it between them and their actual customers.

Admit it: you don't have the fortitude to put up or shut up. You don't LIKE enough of the art produced by people who do it as hobbies and give it away. So instead you simply suck off of other people's work. If you don't care whether or not there's any entertainment, why are you ripping off the people who don't want to give you their work for free? Because you're a hypocrit, that's why.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[gfxguy]

You can replace "book" with any other copyrighted creation, including one that took about 1 minute to "create".

No, you can't, because nobody is going to pay any significant amount for something that took you 1 minute to create; even an artistic photograph takes longer - and it takes a lot of knowledge and skill to get it right.

So the problem is that someone spends time learning how to use the equipment, spends significant amounts on the equipment, then uses their skill and talent to take a shot, and you want to just copy it willy-nilly because it was only a press of a button.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[clone53421]

Well, nobody but you, of course.

I didn't say it either.

Admit it: you think artists should be paid, but just not by you.

That's not my opinion, that's reality. Apparently. Again, as I said before: if you're not making money, just stop. I won't miss you.

There is money to be made.

There you go.

You think I'm a hypocrite? Use 'em however you please, just don't say you took them, and if you share them then give me the credit for taking them. Compliments would be nice but aren't absolutely necessary.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[4D6963]

Yeah I really think they've ironed all of it out and came up with something much more efficient than you'd imagine. And they didn't get Slashdotted, and they're pretty responsive, so I wouldn't worry about their fate a bit. They seem pretty big already.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[nasch]

They're buying labor and talent and skill, which is the same thing you're buying when you buy a hand-made chair (I'd hope, anyway, as hand-made furniture tends to be quite expensive).

No, they're buying a book. They don't (or, economically, shouldn't) care about labor, talent, time, or skill, only about the book. I personally couldn't care less if a book took 10 years to write or 10 weeks, only if it's a good book and worth the price I paid to have it. I also don't care if the author is really good or just got lucky once (although that may come into play if I decide to buy something else by that author).

No, you're paying for the labor, skill, and talent... and people who put more effort, skill, and talent into their creations are rightfully awarded with more than those who put little effort into their work.

No, people who create things that consumers are willing to pay for are rewarded. That is all. Nobody is entitled to payment for their efforts just because it was a lot of work.

I'm not arguing the system is great... publishers keep the lion's share of profits, which is wrong. Copyrights simply last too long, which is wrong. But the fundamental idea of copyright is well founded and well thought out.

The purpose of copyright is not to make sure people make money from their art, it's to make sure there's art (speaking broadly - literature, artwork, music, etc). And I cannot believe we wouldn't have plenty of art without copyright. Certainly what you say about the flaws of the system is correct, but do we even need copyright at all? Maybe, but it should be very limited.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[ScentCone]

just don't say you took them, and if you share them then give me the credit for taking them. Compliments would be nice but aren't absolutely necessary

Come, now. There's a reason you're not too worried about the commercial value of those images being dliuted through piracy. That doesn't detract from their value to you, or any pleasure you might get out of knowing that someone else has enjoyed them. But you didn't invest hundreds of hours in the planning, execution, and post-production of those images, pay for models (or go through the trouble of getting releases written and signed), or deal with location property releases, or pay liability insurance on your set in case someone gets hit with a falling piece of lighting gear, or really anything like that at all. You took some images for your own enjoyment, and that's what those are (no, I haven't had a chance to look at every one of them beyond thumbnail size - it's a busy afternoon).

Produce an image that costs you several thousand dollars to create, and see how you feel when a mid-res proof of it is ripped off fron your portfolio, and a stock licensing house refuses to carry it because it's been compromised. All it takes is some graphic artist working with a comped proof to decide he doesn't think you should have control of your image, and it's all over. You're advocating that as the norm, not the painful exception.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[nasch]

It's really interesting how the pragmatic/economic discussion and the moral/legal discussion collide. You can argue as strenuously as you want that it's wrong to take copyrighted works for free, and at the end of the day it just doesn't matter. And you probably know this already. Once something is released digitally, it's gone, out of your control. You can choose to hate the people who distribute it without your permission. You can also choose whether to continue with your business model or find a new one. These are two orthogonal decisions. Finding a new business model doesn't mean admitting the file sharers are right. Yelling about how the file sharers are wrong doesn't do anything to get you more revenue.

I'm not trying to single you out, I don't even know if your income has anything to do with intellectual property. Just substitute "artist" for "you" I guess.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[clone53421]

Hey, you have every right to want credit given. I'd probably be a little ticked off if somebody posted my pics without at least mentioning that they weren't the photographer (i.e. maybe they didn't know who I was, but at least don't act like they're original). However, as long as you're getting adequately reimbursed for your time and effort -- which apparently you are -- you need to realise that people who pirate stuff instead of buying it usually wouldn't have bought it otherwise. Again, if you're not happy with the amount of piracy, quit producing. You'll hurt your legitimate customers far worse than you'll hurt the pirates, though, and in the end somebody else will step up and fill the gap that you left.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[ScentCone]

Hey, you have every right to want credit given. I'd probably be a little ticked off if somebody posted my pics without at least mentioning that they weren't the photographer

But what I'm referring to - specifically - is when the act of pirating the image actually destroys the marketability of the image. An image that a stock agency would pay for, but which they no longer will pay for because it has found its way into circulation by being "shared" by people with no right to distribute it. I would still have the original file, but the seat on the airplane is now gone, permanently. This may not seem plausible to you, but it's in the nature of commercial work that serves narrowly focused audiences. And the more narrowly focused the audience, the more that pirated works quickly circulate within such a space, thereby further diminishing the value of the work put into creating it for prospective paying customers that might want to communicate to that same audience using the power of that image.

People who rip such images off steal marketability from the artist. Simple as that. Real consequences.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[clone53421]

I guess I just don't see how, in a commercial setting where it's distributed publicly and money is made off the result, ripping off copyrighted images doesn't have consequences. If people are using it for their wallpaper or showing their friend a cool picture then, IMHO, it shouldn't be their ass if they're caught. However, how can a commercial enterprise risk the legal liability?

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[gfxguy]

[i]Nobody is entitled to payment for their efforts just because it was a lot of work.[/i]

I never said anyone is entitled for payment... but neither is anyone entitled to benefit from someone else's work without paying. If you don't agree to the terms of the deal, you're free to walk away, you're not entitled to just take it because you don't like the terms.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Trogre]

Hmmmm, yes I see what you're saying - the error that crept into the dictionary needs to be fixed to correctly reflect the law.

Good point.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Endo13]

No, you can't, because nobody is going to pay any significant amount for something that took you 1 minute to create

Yes yes, everyone who read my post you were going to say exactly that. I hoped you wouldn't, because that claim is so absurd all it does is make you look stupid. There's plenty of examples of 1-minute creations done by non-professionals that made boatloads of cash.

even an artistic photograph takes longer - and it takes a lot of knowledge and skill to get it right.

And you know what? It takes even MORE knowledge and skill to build a high-quality handmade chair and get it right. And the actual labor is a lot more than a simple press of a button. And when it's all said and done, you get to sell it exactly once.

But you know what the real irony here is? You can't even go to university to buy the knowledge to do that kind of work. It only comes from years of experience. And that's a lot more than 4 years.

By the same token, a much less-skilled person can be doing top-notch "artistic photographs" with a lot less experience. Not to say it takes none; it just takes a whole lot less.

So the problem is that someone spends time learning how to use the equipment, spends significant amounts on the equipment, then uses their skill and talent to take a shot, and you want to just copy it willy-nilly because it was only a press of a button.

See that's what people like you don't get. Most labor that produces things of practical value takes a hell of a lot more skill, talent and equipment to produce than copyrighted works. An "artistic photographer" can easily get started for $3,000-$5,000. (And don't tell me I don't know - my sister IS one.) A band can also get sufficient equipment to get started for a similar amount of money. A book author needs even less (a $500 PC will usually be enough). Meanwhile, the electrician who starts his own business the same way to get paid about $20-$50 per hour doing real physical work? Yeah, just to get started he needs to buy a truck, tools, license, and the list goes on. His ticket to get started? At least $10,000, and that truck ain't gonna last you very long. The furniture builder? Well, you have no clue what goes into that so let me give you an idea: it creates a lot of dust, so you have to have a way to get rid of that. Not gonna do it in your house. So first item on the list: big shed to build your furniture in. Start at about $10K for something just big enough for yourself - assuming of course that you already have some land to put it on. But now you still need to buy the lathe, the sanders, the saws... looking at about $10,000-$20,000 minimum here. Let's see, how about a farmer... you'll probably want at least several hundred grand to start there on a small scale.

Do I really need to go on?

Quit spouting hot air about subjects you know little to nothing about.

Artists do deserve to be compensated for their work. Right now, many don't (or can't) get any compensation at all for their work, while many others are so vastly over-compensated it's way beyond ludicrous.

In both practical value and time and effort spent in creation, the handmade chair is far more valuable than any artistic photograph ever made. But guess which is more likely to make more money in the long run?

So no. The "time and effort spent" argument is complete bullshit.

In today's world, in order to balance out compensation for copyrighted works with other work produced by people, copyright would have to be limited to a maximum of 2 years after initial publication.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[gfxguy]

No, it's not complete bullshit, it just depends where you put your values...

I'm not claiming a photograph is worth as much or more than a hand made chair, I'm saying it's not up to you to decide the terms of it's purchase. If it's not worth it to you, nobody is forcing you to buy it - you don't gain the right to just take it.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Endo13]

No, it's not complete bullshit, it just depends where you put your values...

You really need to spend a little more time thinking these things through before you post.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[gfxguy]

Yes, I see, that's a compelling counter argument.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[nasch]

Right. My only point is that the amount of effort that went into the copyrighted work has nothing to do with that. It's just an emotionally tempting red herring. Don't get me wrong, it's quite relevant to the artist - but not to the consumer, and therefore not to the transaction.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Anonymous Coward]

But you're not taking. You're creating a copy for yourself.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they are not.

I would not mind identity "theft" as long as it has no negative impact on me. For example if a kid would use my identity in order to obtain alcohol. Now if someone would take my money out of my account claiming to be me, this clearly would be stealing as I would no longer have that money. As this seems to be the primary purpose of identity "theft" I am fine with the word theft.

Concerning espionage: no, this is not stealing. It is espionage, you know?
Most of the time it is very similar or the exact same thing as copying copyrighted material. In most cases the original owner still owns the meterial that got copied and can still make use of it. Only that the competitor can now do so as well. Of course you can argue that this is a bad thing but it is not stealing.

Now if your army captured some foreign rocket scientist e.g. Wernher von Braun, this is what I would consider to be "theft" as the opponent can no longer make use of that "ressource".

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[mdwh2]

Pedantically, you are correct, but you that's about as far as it goes.

"Pedantically" as in "Using the words in their correct manner"?

You can pass off someone else's work as your own. You can deprive them of income, and make income off images that you do not have permission to use. Is that better phrasing?

Sure, all those are fine. But people who refer to copyright infringement as stealing do not use such phrasing, and furthermore, they typically refer to any illegal copying, not just those cases.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll help you out here, since your reading comprehension is a little off.

Steal:
1 a: to take or appropriate...

Appropriate:
3 to take or make use...

I notice you picked the third (and least relevant) definition of 'Appropriate' and intentionally leave out the first, or most relevant one. From your own link for Appropriate:

1 : to take exclusive possession of

So what the dictionary is telling you is that the primary meaning of the word steal indicates actual taking of property, and in some cases can alternately be used to refer to using something you're not supposed to- again with the implication that you had to take it to use it.
Now I will agree that in many cases the word 'steal' is used to refer to actions not involving actual theft, for example "He stole my idea". Although you will commonly hear the word used this way, the correct word for that activity is plagiarism, not theft. Simply because you hear people use a word in a particular manner does not make it grammatically correct.
Dictionaries are not intended to be a de facto reference on the correct usage of a word, they also are intended to show common use of words even when grammatically incorrect.

In any case, you are confusing common language with legal terminology. Legally making a copy is not 'theft', it is copyright infringement, since nothing was actually taken.

Re:Funny thing, but I just shifted a bit a pixel.

[gfxguy]

But in this case, "X" is bad, wrong, and unethical.

Besides, I never said it was unprofitable or that I couldn't still profit while people stole the fruits of my labor since there are generally enough decent people who will meet my terms if they desire my product.

The problem here is if that you don't agree to my terms you don't automatically get the "right" to just take it anyway.

This has nothing to do with easy to copy versus not easy to copy goods; I'm not talking about the product itself, I'm talking about the labor required to make the original. These types of transactions should be treated differently, as everyone has pointed out, because they are different... a comparison is moot; the fact is that it still takes time, skill, a money to make the original and the artist is entitled to request compensation for it if you want a copy. If you don't want a copy or you don't agree to the compensation, then don't buy it - you have no right to just take it anyway.

This is not like stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving family, there's no moral high ground to be had infringing on someone's copyright, you can't possibly argue your way through it - you can merely state you don't like the terms, that doesn't mean you aren't obligated to live by them. If you want everything to be open source, then that's great, and there's plenty of artists willing to give their labor away for free. I've uploaded plenty of fruits of my own labor to sites for people to use for free, including code and images. But that doesn't mean I have to make everything I do available for free, or that another person needs to be compelled to make their work available for free. It's just not up to you to decide.

Unfortunately...

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

That sounds like a great idea... from here --> forward (for those who start the steganography). Of course, being able to search without embedding extra stuff is more useful... still, more speed is better.

Re:Kind of Misleading on the Old Photo Identificat

[Speare]

"it's being used by researchers who need to find where an image came from to provide attribution, even people who are trying to find out who people are in old photos."

I think in this context, it's pretty obvious that the software's not trying to discover who people are, or who shot the photograph. It's the researchers who use this tool. If you have one website without attribution or other names, and you search for other pages, you might find a different page that has the same image along with more information.

Interesting for the big boys...

[cerberusss]

Interesting for the big boys, but not so much for the amateur or even professional freelance photographer.

What are you going to do if someone ripped your pics from Flickr and claims them? Exactly -- not much.

Re:Interesting for the big boys...

[Trent Hawkins]

It is useful for perhaps the smallest-guys.
People who draw fan art for example are almost always victimized by theft, people submit stolen work in to fan art databases or even enter them in to contests. This is quite useful to find out if anyone is stealing your work and you can go and complain to the Admins and get the thief banned.

Re:Interesting for the big boys...

[Harin_Teb]

Send them a cease and desist letter, and then sue them, just like the big boys?

Presumably if your someone who actually cares enough to check and see if someone is copying your photo, your also someone who cared enough to have it documented when / where you took it, or at the very least that you actually took it. Or as applied to art... you have the original copy.

seems like its not a difficult case to win...

Re:Interesting for the big boys...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not interesting? Try to search after a boob, for example...

Re:Interesting for the big boys...

[cerberusss]

Yeah and get a whole lot of melons :-)

Re:Interesting for the big boys...

[x2A]

Yeah I hadn't thought of it that way before, but you're right, f**k it, lets shut the internet down and stop developing any technologies that can't be used to stop people ripping your pics from flickr. You're so right that there's no one else in the world who's interested in developing image recognition algorithms for anything other than protecting their snaps on flickr.

gugh

Re:Interesting for the big boys...

[JCSoRocks]

I was thinking the same thing. I'd say it's worth the cost of a piece of paper and a postage stamp to do it. You can get a boilerplate cease and desist and just reuse it as necessary. If you're trying to build a portfolio it's good to make sure that your photos are seen only in *your* portfolio.

I spend a lot of time cruising Flickr for good looking landscapes that I can use for slideshow backgrounds. When you spend a lot of time looking for the same style of image it doesn't take long to find people ripping off other people's images... which can be frustrating when you're trying to ask for permission to use it.

Re:Interesting for the big boys...

[g0dsp33d]

I thought sort of the same thing. I have a few images up on a amateur photography site where they sell the images for you. I think this would be a neat way to see where they are being used, provided they were bought for online use.

Re:Interesting for the big boys...

[Jozef Nagy]

Interesting for the big boys, but not so much for the amateur or even professional freelance photographer.

How does this NOT help the small photographers? It's exactly those guys who don't have the resources to find people using their content.

What are you going to do if someone ripped your pics from Flickr and claims them? Exactly -- not much.

Are you saying then when someone steals your image you have no recourse available? With this site you can find who's using it. What you do about it is up to you. And content owners do have recourse. They can contact whoever's using their content and let them know they're in trouble, then offer to work out a solution.

For example, a small food service business asks a printing company to make them a menu. The printing company steals images and uses them. The business owner doesn't know anything about this. Now, if the content owner finds out he can contact the printing company and demand either back payment or that they cease using the image. As a copyright owner the photographer can also send legal threats. Most of these are clear cut cases. And if the only place your images are online are on your portfolio sites, then thieves have no excuse by saying "Well, we tried to identify the owner, but couldn't".

Re:Interesting for the big boys...

[Anonymous Coward]

if your someone
your also someone

"you're".

What would be really cool

[sveard]

What would be really cool is if you could upload a transparent 1x1 pixel image and it returns every image on the internet

Yes

Re:What would be really cool

[Opportunist]

What would be even cooler is if you could search for transparent 1x1 pixels.

Re:What would be really cool

[clone53421]

When I was a kid, we didn't have image search engines! We had to make our OWN transparent 1x1 pixel images! Kids these days...

Re:What would be really cool

[that IT girl]

I thought the exact same thing >:)

Re:What would be really cool

[Ukab the Great]

Given the number of pages that were designed using the 1 x 1 transparent gif workaround, it might end up returning the entire Internet itself.

Re:What would be really cool

[ConceptJunkie]

When I was a kid, we didn't even have pixels, transparent or otherwise. We had to "draw" transparent dots on little pieces of paper with pen knives.

Re:What would be really cool

[clone53421]

You must be older than me. I've definitely made a few transparent pixels in my time...

Re:What would be really cool

[enoz]

Is that like typing 'google' into Google?

Logo hunting

[MosesJones]

So to test it out I grabbed a couple of logos (AIG, Slashdot, Bluesquare, Nike swoosh) and found that what it will do is find scaled down images or ones of lower quality but it won't handle significant colour shifts. So AIG for instance have a blue logo but sponsor Manchester United where their logo is displayed on a red background, the Nike swoosh I tested had a white background and all I got was basic black on white swoosh elements.

Now with photos this is less of an issue as major colour shifts are unusual but it does mean that for commercial and design art its not really as applicable.

Re:Logo hunting

[clone53421]

Hmm, that's actually pretty interesting, I wonder if they could make a colour-insensitive search that worked off the outlines? It would serve a significantly different purpose but still be useful, I think.

For that matter, I wonder if it would totally miss if someone ripped off a colour image but grayscaled it because it looked neater that way...

Re:Logo hunting

[phorm]

Now with photos this is less of an issue as major colour shifts are unusual

Of course, if you wanted to hide from a tool such as this, you could probably do so by shifting the colors a miniscule amount (say, on an RGB image, adding one point of red, green, and blue), which in most cases would hardly alter the image, but likely make it drop off the radar.

I'd imagine that you could do the same thing by altering even just a few pixels this way as well.

Re:Logo hunting

[RemyBR]

Tried with some photos I've taken, and that were published in some mainstream press sites from my country (Brazil). The engine couldn't find any of them, even when I searched for the exact same picture. Don't know if their coverage is that good (yet).

Re:Logo hunting

[SpinyNorman]

Nope - you can crop all but the central region of a photo, change it from sepia to B/W and place it on a new background and it'll still find it. How do I know? - I tried it, and also read their FAQ.

I'm guessing that currently color shifts match as long as the luminance information doesn't change too much, but their FAQ doesn't specifically say how they match and eliminate match candidates.

Given their target market, they're not going to want to make matching too forgiving (i.e get too many false positives), but presumably they may make the degree/type of match more configurable in future versions (at least for paying customers). You might want to have a tight match criteria in an automated notify-me-whenever-matches-appear scenario, but looser searches when done interactively (e.g. show me the top 10 best matches, however good/bad the matches are).

Very impressive

[gstone]

The idea of a "visual" search has been around for some time. These guys at the Univ of Oxford

http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/research/vgoogle/index.html

showed the first working system, using around 10,000 images. They were able to search for repeating objects such as Bill Muarray's tie in the film Groundhog Day. In broad terms, these systems work by identifying "visual words" which are small, recognisable, patches in the images. A "vocabulary" is built up by clustering these visual words, reducing their number from perhaps several hundred per image, to a few thousand in total. Each image is now characterised by which of the visual words apprea within it. Traditional reverse-index techniques used in text retrieval can be applied directly, resulting in rapid query times.

This system is very impressive because they have managed to really increase the scale that they can create the vocab.

Re:Very impressive

[clone53421]

This system is very impressive because they have managed to really increase the scale that they can create the vocab.

That's partly because this isn't trying to identify shapes and objects in the picture. It's just fingerprinting the entire image and indexing that.

Re:Small letters

[jacquesm]

I suggest that if you're not going read TFA and can't be bothered to do any further searching of the site you are slamming that you read this page:

http://tineye.com/terms

which specifically states the opposite of what you claim might be there.

The letters aren't that small.

What a great idea

[malignant_minded]

I should create a page for movies and mp3s too, a place were directors and producers can upload their content to see if anyone has copied it already!

Re:What a great idea

[jacquesm]

I see where you got your nick :)

Hitting head against wall

[EmperorKagato]

I've had this idea for two years and never acted upon it. Here are my notes from brainstorming:

Great idea for an application of an Engine that searches image by using an Image.

"Epic Sauce.com" be able to search an image by using an image

- Using a face / recognition matching engine
- Using a pattern recognition matching engine

All is not lost. I can still extend this idea further by finding ways to match Graphics Interchange Format.

Re:Hitting head against wall

[ciderVisor]

I've had this idea for two years and never acted upon it.

1. Have great idea.
2. ????
3. Profit !

Where step 2 == "Implement the bloody idea in the real-world".

Re:Hitting head against wall

[4D6963]

That's one case of the idea being worth nothing, the implementation being everything. Sometimes it's the other way around, it depends.

Can't wait till Google buys these guys though.

Re:Hitting head against wall

[EmperorKagato]

It would be harmful to Google if they don't capitalize on newer search technologies. This could be Microsoft's way back into the search market.

I have tested the image search engine using a Jpeg i had no idea where it came from and discovered there were several variants of the same jpeg! (Additions and Subtractions from the original image).

Good Start

[dasheiff]

This is a good start and definally has the obvious applications. Hopefully, if this is successful, i.e. people use it, work on more complex systems can be created.

It would be really neat to find pictures with a certain symbol on them or even my face.

Re:easy to circumvent

[Jumper99]

how is this news on a day when pervez musharraf has resigned anyway - get some priorities!!1

Unless Musharraf is resigning to work on some new computer technology his resignation isn't really relevant on this site now is it?

well

[Kingrames]

does this detect hidden images in images as well?

Terms of Service:

[Alsee]

By using Idée's TinEye website you signify your agreement to the following terms and conditions, which may be updated by us from time to time without notice to you.

Submission of pornographic or illegal files is strictly prohibited. Do not submit any file that can be construed as pornography or is in violation of any law.

No porn searches?

::Blows a raspberry::

Failure to comply with these terms may result in termination of your TinEye account at any time, without prior notice and at Idée's sole discretion.

Ahhh.... okay.... don't search for porn, or we might not let you search for more porn from that particular account. Gotchya. Hehe.

-

Re:Terms of Service:

[Harin_Teb]

out of curiosity:

Why do you want to search for Pr0n you already have?

Re:Terms of Service:

[Opportunist]

I dare you to upload a picture of a peach.

Re:Terms of Service:

[ciderVisor]

Already answered:

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=648951&cid=24643811

Re:Terms of Service:

[Chickan]

Never wanted to know who that hot blonde with the big rack was? I'd sure like to track her down ...

Re:Terms of Service:

[Anonymous Coward]

say that you have this one picture you enjoy but you don't know the name of the person(s) in the picture. You could pornoogle it and find more information or more pictures from those person(s).

Re:Terms of Service:

[JCSoRocks]

Ahh her... she's a fembot... We knew all along, sadly.

Re:Terms of Service:

[Anonymous Coward]

To find the sauce...

Re:Terms of Service:

[Anonymous Coward]

say that you have this one picture you enjoy but you don't know the name of the person(s) in the picture. You could pornoogle it and find more information or more pictures from those person(s).

I thought that is what 4chan was for?

Just sayin...

Re:Terms of Service:

[Adrian Lopez]

Does that mean I should expect no privacy with regard to the images I search for? After all, searching for porn shouldn't matter to them at all unless their computers aren't the only ones looking at the pictures pictures I submit.

NOT "stolen"

[Anonymous Coward]

> Visual Search Engine Tracks Stolen Images

But using an image made by another person is NOT theft. Copyright infringement maybe, but not theft.

Good times!

[Tengoo]

This is great news! At long last, technology exists that will allow me to find the rest of that series with the rehea...

I mean, find out who is stealing my photographs!

Search by Text, 2D, 3D, or even Doodles!

[gblackwo]

http://www.vizseek.com/

I'm missing the file date

[hcdejong]

If you're going to track where a photo came from, I'd expect a timestamp to be useful.

So is this a crime against freedom?

[DesScorp]

This brings to mind an interesting question; guys like RMS, and even our own IdontBelieveInImaginaryProperty here at slashdot like to rail about how copyright is basically a scam, a crime against the public because it restricts "sharing".

Photos are copyrighted too. If this tech were for tracking copyrighted MP3's, there'd be howls of indignation here. It'll be interesting to see the reaction on the copyright side of the argument. If we don't see the standard "this is anti-freedom" arguments, it'll be interesting to ask if photos are somehow more worthy of copyright protection than movies, games, or songs.

Re:So is this a crime against freedom?

[inerlogic]

stealing an MP3 is different, you're taking money from the pockets of rich studio execs.... stealing my images takes money out of MY pocket.....

Re:So is this a crime against freedom?

[clone53421]

The difference, in my mind, is simple. I have taken plenty of good pictures in the past (a few are here). If somebody wants to rip off one of my pictures for their background, I'm totally ok with it... in fact I'm flattered (please do check them out and tell me if you like 'em ... thanks :). If they submitted one to a photo contest claiming it as their own, I'd be rightfully upset. Translating this into the world of MP3s, if somebody wants to download a song and listen to it that should be ok too; it isn't like they're claiming any credit for the tune.

Re:So is this a crime against freedom?

[ceoyoyo]

I'm a photographer. I have lots of images on the net. If someone wants to use one as their chat icon (that's happened) or desktop background, I take it as a compliment.

If someone takes one and claims it as their own and/or tries to sell it, then there's a problem.

I'm all in favour of going after people who try to sell pirated music or movies.

Re:So is this a crime against freedom?

[Anonymous Coward]

I checked them out. Keep your day job...

Re:So is this a crime against freedom?

[clone53421]

AC criticizes because he knows he's being a jerk? Why don't you post using your username if it's honest criticism? Or ARE you a jerk?

For the record, I haven't made a penny off my pictures and I don't expect to. However I definitely think they're better than any of the over-used wallpapers that come with Windows.

Re:Kind of Misleading on the Old Photo Identificat

[__aarcfd8085]

it does work pretty well for example i searched for this:
http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/BRGPOD-WM/BRGWM-158277_72_48~The-Great-Wave-of-Kanagawa-from-the-Series-36-Views-of-Mt-Fuji-Fugaku-Sanjuokkei-Posters.jpg

it did find the actual great wave, to be true after a ton of images that had replaced the poster with other posters from the same site but it did find them which was pretty good and would be useful for research

eg if you had a section of a photo and you wanted to find the rest etc.

Re:Small letters

[jacquesm]

Oh wow, an anonymous coward threatening and admitting to abusing the moderation system... I'm so scared :)

Well, I guess you'll have to wait until you have mod points again then so you can abuse the moderation system some more and 'pay me back'.

have a really nice day now...

Re:Kind of Misleading on the Old Photo Identificat

[clone53421]

Now what would be handy would be if it could somehow sort them chronologically (maybe using the metadata, or maybe if the server will give the date-modified on the picture...). That would reduce the amount of searching if you knew you were going for the oldest known copy, e.g. you wanted to know where it originally came from + whatever info there was about the picture that might not be quoted elsewhere.

Histogram comparison

[ChienAndalu]

I found comparing histograms to be very efficient. I am currently working on a project that matches similar images by a simple algorithm:

• split the three color channels
• create normalized histogram for each channel and concatenate them into one array
• for each other image histogram, calculate the inner product of the difference of the histograms. If its smaller than a given epsilon, mark the images as "similar".

This simple algorithm can be done with ~50 lines of python code using the Image and numpy modules. It's immune to rotation, scaling, and slight color manipulation or other small changes. Makes me wonder why they use pixel-by-pixel comparison.

Re:Histogram comparison

[timster]

What about cropping?

Re:Histogram comparison

[giafly]

Your alternative proposal is one of many that reduces the amount of information which represents each image, then compares the condensed data. This sort of approach can be good for small numbers of things compared, but inevitably gives lots of false positives when numbers get huge. This is also why face recognition, iris recognition, etc don't work in the real world.

Re:Histogram comparison

[clone53421]

They don't do a pixel-by-pixel "search", that would be dumb and apparently people are misunderstanding here. They're using some kind of fingerprint, which sounds pretty similar to your histogram comparison. Also, FWIW, a histogram is generated by doing a pixel-by-pixel analysis of the image.

Out of curiosity, I'd be interested in hearing what your histogram comparison does if the image were colour-reduced (say you set the least significant bit of every channel of every pixel to 0, for example). That would make the histogram look like a series of lines and I bet it'd throw your comparison way off.

Re:Histogram comparison

[ChienAndalu]

The resolution of the histogram is way less than the real resolution, something like 32-128 bins per color channel, so these kinds of image manipulations don't fall into weight because the information is averaged out. The information contained in the histogram is still enough to make a meaningful comparison though. What does reshape the histogram badly are things like cropping, as another poster said.

Re:Histogram comparison

[ceoyoyo]

It's a good component of a larger recognition system, but many images that are VERY different will have similar histograms.

Re:Histogram comparison

[clone53421]

Hm. Interesting. It's possible, though, to dither images to something as low as 256 colours (contrast that to 32 levels per channel, which give 32^3 = 32,768 colours) even without it being very noticeable. For example, compare the true-colour JPEG from here with the same image converted to a 256-colour GIF. The difference is very subtle.

Re:easy to circumvent

[4D6963]

No that's completely stupid, if you won't RTFA at least watch the video on the site. It can find very altered matches. No subtle little watermark could circumvent it.

Password may only contain alphanumeric characters

[ei4anb]

the 80's called and want their password scheme back

Re:easy to circumvent

[x2A]

better off if trying to escape it slicing images up into tiny squares and rearranging them in a table grid or something... it seems to be able to recognise slight differences in the image well enough.

Re:Small letters

[Anonymous Coward]

i like censoring social police. thanks. no need to be scared.

What is pornography?

[Valacosa]

Submission of pornographic or illegal files is strictly prohibited. Do not submit any file that can be construed as pornography or is in violation of any law.

How the hell am I supposed to know what their company considers pornography? Can I search for The Joy of Life by Henri Matisse?

The company is based in Toronto rather than some ultra-conservative U.S. state; that gives me an epsilon more confidence the company won't take the "nudity = pornography" stance. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if a search equivalent to a risqué ad campaign in Europe would get you banned.

Re:What is pornography?

[JCSoRocks]

That does raise the question though... how are they determining who is searching for it? Is it based on the results? Image Z returned mostly results from sites whose primary keywords were "porn" and "XXX" so this image is probably porn. Do they have a human just randomly check? or check the ones that the aforementioned programmatic filter found? It seems like there'd be a lot of room for error...

Re:What is pornography?

[that IT girl]

Can I search for The Joy of Life by Henri Matisse?

Moot point, you already know who to credit ;)

Re:What is pornography?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd suspect that any of Matisse's works will pass any reasonable test as non-pornographic. But you can probably get results that actually are pornographic by letting tin eye search for Gustave Courbet's "l'origine du monde" . (Possibly NSFW)

Re:What is pornography?

[Valacosa]

Oh my!

The Joy of Life was simply the first thing that came to mind. (I am not an art connoisseur.) Thank you though for your much better example.

Re:What is pornography?

[notdotcom.com]

I don't know, but it found 26 matches for goatse. (yes, seriously).

Re:What is pornography?

[Spacezilla]

That does raise the question though...

No, it BEGS the question! Goddamnit, how many times do we have to go over this?!

Re:What is pornography?

[JCSoRocks]

Q.E.D.

Re:What is pornography?

[Anonymous Coward]

Matisse is good with them
It found 46 results.
http://tineye.com/search/39d1f469324b29287bb6650f69e1b34a75cc11e5

Next point release

[c1t1z3nk41n3]

I read in the dev notes that the next version will finally be able to find Waldo.

Re:Kind of Misleading on the Old Photo Identificat

[clone53421]

You have to login to read the FAQ. If anybody wants to avoid jumping through the hoops, here's the FAQ as a gif. Sorry about the resolution, you'll just have to pick a good zoom level...

Hear that? It's Google's wallet opening.

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that idée is bought by the end of the year.

Mods still on crack

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it redundant when this is the first person to say it?

Re:Mods still on crack

[Anonymous Coward]

because he had the same thoughts as the parent.

Re:Mods still on crack

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you heard? Redundant mods are the new "in" thing. All the cool kids are doing it!

Bye-bye pseudonyms

[giles hogben]

Anyone who tries to hide behind a pseudonym but posts photos of themselves is now outed by this thing. The first such tools were used by forensic researchers to catch criminals.

Re:Bye-bye pseudonyms

[Hao Wu]

Anyone who tries to hide behind a pseudonym but posts photos of themselves is now outed by this thing. The first such tools were used by forensic researchers to catch criminals.

Someday, Anonymous Cowards may be easily identified by the style and content of their posts. Many trolls who think they are safe now will be outed using methods similar to this picture searching.

didn't find anything

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried searching by uploading 2 images from my machine. One is also on craigslist and the other on photobucket. It didn't find either.

Re:easy to circumvent

[clone53421]

Assuming human "readability" isn't a concern to you, why not just RAR it, password it, and put it on a filehost instead? If human "readability" is important, you obviously won't be scrambling the picture to begin with.

Are you sure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you provide a permalink to your searches with the shifted pixel and without? (Just copy the url in the address bar)

You'd need to move a *lot* of pixels to make it not work.

- shazow

C'mon Taco...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Software piracy is not theft!" is painted on the walls around here, but this program tracks down "stolen images".

Million dollar ideas

[camperdave]

I've had many great ideas that somone else had already implemented stage 2 before I could:

• Drive through window on doughnut/coffee shops. I saw my first one about three months after I had the idea.
• Building a universal remote control into a Star Trek phaser or tricorder housing and selling them at conventions. That idea died as soon as I googled it.
• Adding a button on your TV that makes your remote control beep, so you can find the thing when it decides to walk away. Again.

Steps 1 and 2 of your plan are not the easiest things in the world. Chances are if you've managed Step 1, someone else has already done Step 2 and is merrily working on Step 3.

Comics

[JCSoRocks]

I think it'll still work for for most copyright violations. Web comics in particular could benefit a lot from this. I see unattributed comics floating around on the net all the time. This would be a nice way to allow the owners to at least contact those people and ask to be given credit.

And hello false-positive and derivative lawsuits

[plasmacutter]

i can't wait till they implement a DMCA notice-bot and start shutting down every single *chan, every single image mashup community, deviantart, etc. with false positives, and the identification of those patterns within larger images.

The "free speech for sale" cover art comes to mind.

robots.txt

[SysPig]

My robots.txt excludes access to my huge collection of images.

So, either one can prevent discovery by this tool in a very simple way, or it ignores robots.txt. Which is it?

color balance

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, let's pretend I put a portfolio online like on the deviantart website. If someone wants to use one the digital art available on this website and not get caught by TinEye, I guess he just have change the color balance a bit...

Registered users only?

[Yvan256]

Maybe I'm still not completely awake, but I can't seem to see anything other than a login form. Do we need to be a registered user to use this search engine? Or is it because of its beta status?

How can they find stolen images ...

[freddy_dreddy]

... if you ban the search engine in your robots.txt ?

Re:How can they find stolen images ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Robots.txt only works if the search engine behaves itself and does not ignore it, some do.

Still good to include it, no guarantee that it will stop a crawler...just FYI.

Re:How can they find stolen images ...

[freddy_dreddy]

OK. But what commercial SE would claim to deliberately ignore robots.txt on images to find stolen images ? Wouldn't that be suicide ?

Re:easy to circumvent

[Goaway]

even automagically - just add some random minor alteration to pixels in statistically homogeneous sections of your foto

Easy, except for, you know, how it doesn't rely on exact matches, but finds images with minor alterations too.

On Inspiration

[paperninja]

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of DeviantArt users suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. At least, I hope they're silenced. This might help fill in gaps outside of some astute fan pointing out the half dozen or so "artists" claiming stolen images as their own.

Re: transparent 1x1 pixels FTW!

[TaoPhoenix]

You mean my unpublished Perma-Alpha site that uses these for spacing could get slashdotted? Hooray!

Where did they get the name?

[butabozuhi]

TinEye - they might have gotten the name from the Brandon Sanderson series "Mistborn" where tineyes are 'magicians' who have enhanced senses. They can see/find/feel things through the use of 'tin' (and there are other abilities that somewhat relate to a 'web' of connections).

Re:Where did they get the name?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the same thing, but the domain was registered in 2000, 6 years before the first Mistborn was released.

Re:Where did they get the name?

[piojo]

I thought the same thing, but the domain was registered in 2000, 6 years before the first Mistborn was released.

The current registrants may have bought tineye.com from its previous owners.

Re:easy to circumvent

[x2A]

Who said anything about scrabling it??? Have you never built a jigsaw? Never seen how you can put pieces of an image next to each other so you can see the whole thing???

A fucking tool

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a tool, you tool. However you want to use it is up to you.

stolen fruit tracker

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they can link it up from one of these and get it to track stolen fruit and vegetables? ;)

Re:Kind of Misleading on the Old Photo Identificat

[slarrg]

To do a similar search, I went to images.google.com and searched for "japanese painting wave" because I figured that would be the most obvious keywords you could use f you don't know anything about the painting except what you see. The first hit tells the name and the painter without needing to chug through lots of results.

Perfect 10 et.al

[Nom du Keyboard]

No doubt Perfect 10 and their ilk will be huge users of this service.

What All /.'ers Want To Know

[Nom du Keyboard]

Okay, I'll ask the obvious question. If you just have a shot of a great pair of boobs, can this service find the woman and ask her out for you?

p0rn search!!

[TheCybernator]

now its gonna be so much easy to search my fav p0rn star pics.

This impressed me...

[danamania]

I found quite a different result. I nabbed an old photoshopped pic I did a few years ago, and uploaded it. TinEye came back with two results, being the two source images from the photos. That's impressed the hell out of me.

Gatesfeld search results

For the full size photoshopped version, Gatesfeld if you want to try the search yourselves.

It will never find my images! [ref]

[Tmack]

My website burns copper

Tm

Firefox plugin does not yet work in ver. 3

[lifesizeactionfigure]

Hopefully they will get with the times and update their plugin.

Law not dictionary

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of reading a dictionary to get the definition of stealing, how about reading the law.

If you're accused of copyright infringnment (a civil matter, so far), you won't be charged with theft (a criminal act).

Re:easy to circumvent

[clone53421]

You mean put a buffer space between the pieces like a grid? It might work, but you're still stuck with the question of whether the grid detracts from the image to the point where it's no longer any good to look at, since that would probably defeat the purpose.

Great tool!

[SCHecklerX]

Blonde, Brunette, Redhead...

Re:Kind of Misleading on the Old Photo Identificat

[Anonymous Coward]

Run Jeff Goldblum! The aliens are coming!

...who said buttsex?

Re:Small letters

[Cousin Scuzzy]

The letters aren't that small.

Are you kidding? They're tineye.

Got to go now. It's lunch time and I'm hungreye.

Re:easy to circumvent

[x2A]

okay now you're just trying to wind me up! *lol* oi! I've got girls in my life for that! (and my god they're doing it)

Haha, no buffer space, just mean splitting into different files so search engine's not gonna pick 'em up as a single image :-)

Re:easy to circumvent

[clone53421]

Oh... hey I didn't realise that's what you meant. No offense. So what you're saying is you create a grid of smaller images that lie adjacent to create a larger, seamless image (think google maps)? Yeah, that might get under the radar... it's supposed to be able to handle cropped images, though, so even then you'd have to be careful to get small enough mosaic pieces so it wouldn't be able to link them to the original picture.

Re:easy to circumvent

[x2A]

Oh okay sorry *lol* yeah is kinda what i mean. Yeah it will find cropped images, but an image split into a 10x10 grid (or somethin, depending on the original image size) should remove enough detail from each cell to ensure that that just can't happen. It might find it if you search for a red square with a blue line running through it for example, but not what the actual thing is.

Re:easy to circumvent

[clone53421]

That makes a lot more sense than what I originally thought you meant anyway... lol. :-X

Re:Small letters

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, I see what you did there.
Policing society via the censorship of social police.
Why don't you do us a favor and censor yourself?

pHash

[b1ng0]

This seems like a good time to promote my new open source project, pHash. It is a perceptual hash library under the GPLv3 that will eventually be able to do all the things this commercial service does. Please join if you have DSP, digital imaging experience or strong mathematics background. We could use more volunteers!

soooo then

[Eil]

Anyone else feel another Google acquisition coming on?

I'm trying to appeal to your self-interest

[Nerdposeur]

Fine. Don't create anything if it's so unprofitable.

As a matter of fact, I am creating digital things and plan to give them away for free. I also plan to ask for donations, because it has cost me considerably to create these things.

If this doesn't work, it may be simply because people don't like my work or didn't hear about it. But I do need to make back my initial costs to make more stuff, or I simply won't be able to afford it. All I'm saying is that consumers should consider this when they decide whether to get something free or pay for it. It may be in your self-interest to pay.

Re:I'm trying to appeal to your self-interest

[clone53421]

Bingo. Aside, the people who aren't paying for your work probably don't have much money to begin with: you can't get blood from turnips, so they say. As long as the cost-to-reproduce is zero, and the distribution costs are zero, and you are being fairly compensated for your initial investment (time and resources) by the people who can pay and think you're deserving of their money, you're really not going to get very far complaining about the people who didn't pay.

That was quick!

[Cantus]

I suggested this in April.

How well does it do with art?

[kn0tw0rk]

Currently at work and stupid firewalls so cant check the site :(

One issue I've noticed mentioned on deviantArt is the riping of artworks and reposting them on other sites. Just wondering how well this tool would help with finding those sorts of misappropriations?

Lawsuits galore?

[teslatug]

I tried a search of an image of the Moon that I took. I got 89 results of which one was mine and the rest weren't. I wonder what would happen if one of those other 88 people were a litigious bastard.

Real Article By Real Photog:

[Anonymous Coward]

http://photobusinessforum.blogspot.com/2008/07/tineye-oh-my.html

MAh...

[me!GeekYet]

I'm a bit disappointed cause i tried to post that info weeks ago and /. rejected it.. Idée TinEye: Querying by images? Friday July 11, @02:22PM Rejected Maybe it's not the same TinEye? . .. ... .... MAh...

Re:easy to circumvent

[digitalchinky]

I think you actually mean RAR to about 17 different parts, zip those together, password the zip, then RAR all of that in to one big file including 3 or 4 .nfo files with ego tripping greetings.

Re:Kind of Misleading on the Old Photo Identificat

[__aarcfd8085]

True there are much quicker ways when there are obvious keywords but if you had, say the mona lisa what words could you use? but tin eye got it from this http://www.monalisarevealed.com/assets/images/Mona_Lisa_3_copy.jpg after one page (all of which were the same image)

at the moment its not too good but it looks like it one day will be quite powerful.

robots.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

User-agent: TinEye/1.1 (http://tineye.com/crawler.html)
disallow: /