Slashdot Mirror
ImageLogr Scrapes "Billions" of Images Illegally
PurpleCarrot writes "In what must be one of the largest attempts to scrape images from the Web, the site ImageLogr.com 'claims to be scraping the entire "free web" and seems to have hit Flickr especially hard, copying full-sized images of yours and mine to their own servers, where they are hosting them without any attribution or links back to the original image in violation of all available licenses on Flickr.' The site even contains the option to directly download images that ImageLogr has scraped. What makes this endeavor so amazing is that it isn't a case of 'other people gave us millions of infringing images, help us remove the wrong ones,' but one of 'we took all the images on the Web; if we got one of yours, oops!' The former gets some protection from the DMCA, whereas the latter is blatant infringement. ImageLogr's actions have caused a flurry of activity, and the site's owners have subsequently taken it offline, displaying the following message: 'Imagelogr.com is currently offline as we are improving the website. Due to copyright issues we are now changing some stuff around to make people happy. Please check back soon.'"
"Improving the site"? You guys can fuck all the way off.
Living With a Nerd
"Oh yeahhhhhhh. Tootally forgot about copyrighted stuff. Ooops."
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
So, I assume it scraped the 'publically visible' images from Flikr and not the protected/private images?
Oh I see, it's ok for everyone to steal music and movies in support of "freedom from record companies" but as soon as someone takes something of YOURS it becomes a problem. Give me a break. If you download music, books, movies, tv shows, etc. for free and violate the owners' copyrights, don't start crying foul now. Go ahead and have a legitimate beef if you actually own all the content you have.
Isn't this essentially what Google's image search does? The difference is that if you want the full-sized version, Google sends you to the original web site.
Can we just make a rule that any image you post on the internet doesn't belong to you anymore? Anyone with any sense already figured that out a decade ago anyway.
currently offline as we are improving the website
Nay ye scoundrels. Ye hath been slashdotted!
Reply to That ||
The web is full of landmines. They're going to download and repost something that someone who has good lawyers is going to demand they remove, and then they'll die... quietly.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
They have already taken the site down to mitigate the copyright issues, FYI
http://www.imagelogr.com/contact
it's a Gmail address that is obscured a bit so it doesn't get harvested by bots or something.
ironic
I like microcars
I know we aren't supposed to read TFA, but summary?
and the site's owners have subsequently taken it offline, displaying the following message: 'Imagelogr.com is currently offline as we are improving the website. Due to copyright issues we are now changing some stuff around to make people happy. Please check back soon.'
http://www.imagelogr.com/legal
I like microcars
Wait...is this a case where anti-copyright people are complaining about someone stealing their stuff?
Summaries sometimes get edited after an editor posts a story..
(Yeah, I'm a shameless pirate. We'll get that outta the way up-front. Arrrhhhh, matey!)
As long as it stays on this site where everyone expects everything to be pirated (and, therefore, won't be used in money-making operations without at least trying to find the source and evaluate their probability of suing), I don't really have a problem with it -- and I say that as someone with quite a few pics up on Flickr. Pictures worth using as wallpaper, etc. will be pirated regardless, and I'd rather mine weren't excluded from this popularity just because they're not in a commercial image collection DVD.
Remember, it's like games, movies, music, and kiddie pr0n: trafficking in copies of it (even with no money changing hands) popularizes it and benefits the creator! (What's that you say, MAFIAA? It sounded an awful lot like "sharing kiddie pr0n actually _hurts_ the original producers, so let's encourage it"...)
The problem isn't that they are hosting it, the problem is that they aren't providing origin links. That's where the primary issue is.
Living With a Nerd
The majority of Slashdot users always say that copyright should not exist. I hope you will be consistent in praising ImageLogr's actions and denouncing the people who gave them a hard time.
If you want something completely under your control, you do not put it online. How hard is this?
I wondered the same. You are posting for all of the world to see. When you post up a pic for all to see, I guess you feel comfortable knowing that you can take it down later if you change your mind but that logic is flawed. The issue is getting the recognition though. On a random page, it is very hard to say, hey, that's mine and not as obvious as going to www.photobucket.com/someuserwithcoolpics and knowing those were created by the user someuserwithcoolpics. Use EXIF data I guess..
...but almost never before.
Blank until
What's yours is mine. What's mine is mine.
I like how they say they are trying to "make people happy" as if it's just some minor bureaucrat the need to appease when it's more like "we flagrantly broke the law and are trying to get out of Dodge!"
And now my Facebook profile picture ends up on an Anti-Herpes-Drug ad.
With my luck, every female I know will see it.
Mods, please mod my post offtopic/troll due to website pumping.
Like I said in the post above yours, my primary problem is that they aren't including origin links. In the case of my own site, for example, I get most of my images from either Wikipedia, IMDB, or some other large website that uses industry-provided screenshots/pictures. If it comes from a gaming site that took the screenshot themselves, there is almost always a watermark on the image indicating where I got it from.
In the rare instance that I take a picture from an individual's site, I always link back to it. The most recent example was in my look back at Robot City. I not only provided a link to the original article/website I pulled the images from, but I even encouraged my readers to check out the website itself.
Living With a Nerd
How the fuck do you propose they do that? Should they write over the image with a white font, "THIS IMAGE CAME FROM JOEBLOW.COM"?
Context also matters. A picture from my collection means something different in the context of my other pictures and my site in general than it does as a stand-alone picture. Off of my site, I can't control that context.
There's also copyright issues: when you (illegally) copy my pictures and put them on your site without comment or notice, other people are liable to expect that they are free to use howsoever they chose. Imagine having a picture of you, ripped from your site, appear in a political ad for something you despise.
Doesn't information want to be free? If you're going to download movies and music without paying, why can't they scrape your images and serve them up to "whoever"?
No way! ... you mean everything I post on the internet isn't completely safe, and only handled in the precise means I've prescribed? Next you'll tell me Facebook sells my personal information and Google is reading my email!
I don't see what all the fuss is about.
How the fuck do you propose they do that? Should they write over the image with a white font, "THIS IMAGE CAME FROM JOEBLOW.COM"?
Google seems to manage with no trouble.
Living With a Nerd
I'll bet I know who's sending DMCA takedown notices...
What's her name, Tila Tequila? Cindy Margolis? All those chicks that claim they are the most downloaded on the internet, and *thats* their only claim to fame!
So, what's next, a business that scrapes every video and mp3 on the internet? Hey, this isn't a truck you can just dump stuff on, it's a series of tubes!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
"Imagelogr.com is currently offline as we are improving the website. Due to copyright issues we are now changing some stuff around to make people happy. Please check back soon."
How the fuck do you propose they do that? Should they write over the image with a white font, "THIS IMAGE CAME FROM JOEBLOW.COM"?
How about doing it the same way Google does it, with attribution and a link to the original source? Is that too difficult for you to grasp?
This ain't rocket surgery.
And now my Facebook profile picture ends up on an Anti-Herpes-Drug ad.
With my luck, every female I know will see it.
Hey, you're a Slashdotter. Showing up in an anti-herpes drug ad would probably only improve your prospects.
This ain't rocket surgery.
That is still copyright infringement in most cases.
You have no right to redistribute another persons original works without prior authorization by the original creator or someone who has been given that right through licensing from the original creator.
You can link back to their original source, and you may be able to create a reduced quality copy for non-profit educational purposes, but that is about it without going through extra effort.
It's useful to have an archive. After five or ten years people won't care about these images any more, and won't have a problem with someone archiving them. Unfortunately, the next five or ten years are the period when these images will actually be available. It doesn't really make sense to wait until flickr doesn't exist anymore to mirror its content.
And come on people, try to think outside of the current month. How ridiculous is it going to look in 20 years that content creators protect their images into extinction because of some by-attribution pissing contest of egos? We should be mirroring everything far and wide; protecting our society's creative output from annoying little people who don't cite sources looks preposterous next to protecting our creative output from disappearing off the face of the earth and being unavailable to our children.
Already people are kicking themselves for allowing content to be destroyed. A large number of silent movies (remember, the silent movie era stretched across decades) are completely lost today; not a single copy exists in the entire world. This is a critical part of our culture for film historians.
Imagelogr.com is an image & picture search engine. We try to index pretty much every picture & image currently available on the free internet. With our powerful search engine finding these images should be fairly easy. We also offer a few image manipulation tools to stand out from the competition.
From the main page. This is pretty funny.
Hehe, if you go to their site you get this...
"Imagelogr.com is currently offline as we are improving the website. Due to copyright issues we are now changing some stuff around to make people happy. Please check back soon."
Looks like they are doing some damage control =)
http://xkcd.com/743/
I opened this story and this latest xkcd at the same time...
I'm not sure why you say that. Certainly both are problematic but I'd say the copying of the images are the worst of the two. If they just put the original url in an IMG tag and didn't provide a link back, while bad, it wouldn't be as bad. It lets you retain a certain degree of control (even though they are leeching of your bandwidth) and might (I say might) even be perfectly legal.
As someone who hosts content on Flickr, I can say with absolute certainty that I find it a lot more annoying when someone copies one of my photos to their own server and links back to my flickr account then when they just load a photo straight from the flickr servers without a linkback.
Karma: 2.71828182846 (Mostly due to small, fun pills)
Is that too difficult for you to grasp?
Yes. I am sure it is too difficult for him.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Keep up that attitude, and we'll put it on a Pro-Herpes-Drug ad.
That's not true. My images took work to produce, and they're for my benefit on my site. Your stuff-- you do with it how you will.
If I want my images archived, it's my responsibility and those that I delegate the responsibility to. If someone else has done this, then they've stolen my work, as in ripped me off.
Should I want to use a license that give rights to someone else, I'll do so. Until then, the decision is mine.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I'll soon have a few hundred TB of images.
How can I get them to mirror my data, so I can offload the traffic to them?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
A new mirror for goatse, tubgirl, and lemonparty.
Hindsight is a virtual department in most software organizations.
Keep up that attitude, and we'll put it on a Pro-Herpes-Drug ad.
"Herpes. It's what's for dinner."
Yes, I know, way, way too far.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
The proper term for this is "snarf" not scrape. http://kltp.kldp.net/eunjea/jargon/?idx=snarf
you are promoting the idea of intellecual property... on slashdot.
good luck with that.
Not far enough...
Sorry, but the first thing that came to my mind after reading your post....
Let me introduce myself I'm a social disease
I've come for your wealth leave you on your knees
No time for feeling sorry, I got here on my own
I won't ask for mercy, I choose to walk alone
What's yours is mine and what's mine is mine too
If you shake my hand better count your fingers
What if I do get caught? what if there is no judgment?
If I'm right I lose nothing, if you're right I lose it all
I ought to get caught because I'm doing something wicked
I'm guilty haunted by my fear and the only consequences
Are dread and the fugitive mind
You built walls to protect you so no one will infect you
Pursued by those out there that vanish in thin air
Come a long way to find what you really left behind
You don't know when the end is but it's coming fast
What's yours is mine and what's mine is mine too
If you shake my hand better count your fingers
What if I do get caught? what if there is no judgment?
If I'm right I lose nothing, if you're right I lose it all
I ought to get caught because I'm doing something wicked
I'm guilty haunted by my fear and the only consequences
Are dread and the fugitive mind
Megadeth Dread & The Fugitive Mind
The Binary Anti-Pattern [http://beyondboolean.blogspot.com/]
I deliberately exclude most of my images in robots.txt, because they show people and I don't want them to be indexed. No, I do not want anyone but me to archive these pictures. I am not a professional photographer, but I have sold pictures for substantial amounts. If these bozos have ignored the clear hint in the robots.txt and copied my pictures in violation of copyright, they're going to pay.
The amazing part is how someone gets enough storage space to store every image on the web.
That sounds expensive to me.
ftfy
The only thing you possibly fixed for charliemopps11 was the mis-perception that you are capable of valid analogies.
Now if ImageLogr was actually moving the images from the 'owners' webserver to their own webserver instead of making a copy, then you would be presenting a valid analogy.
Can we just make a rule that any item you leave in an unlocked house doesn't belong to you anymore? Anyone with any sense already figured that out a millenia ago anyway.
'Can we just make a rule that any item you display to the public might be copied? Anyone with any sense already figured that out a millenia ago anyway.'
ftfy
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
1) see how google does it
2) browse the web with some spiders
3) provide enough storage space
4) fail to understand how google can be legal
5) fast reaction times
6) ???
7) profit
any site who hides their whois data is cause for suspicion
any reputable company will have their company name and address in the whois data
pick any of the top 100 domains and i bet none use domains by proxy
The DMCA is evil! Everything should be free! Copyright infringement isn't theft, it doesn't deprive anybody of anything!
(What? It's my stuff?)
I'll DMCA their arses! That's my stuff! I sell those, you're taking away my living!
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Assuming you're referring to photography, if you take photos of a public park, do you pay the local authority for their work in creating that park for your personal profit? Do you get everyone in crowds you take photos of to sign a model release form? No? Aren't you stealing from them, then?
Maybe the way forward is a photography tax, like a casual trading licence for street vendors.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Google brings ImageLogr servers to its knees by scraping images from them. (Details at 11:00)
And a lot of my work is on Flickr.
Well we'll see.
Be yourself and aim high!
Exactly. As a photographer it's my responsibility to archive my negatives/chromes/digital files. I'm certainly NOT using Flickr as an archive. I'm definitely NOT putting print resolution files out there for the world to download either. Generally I'm ok with the average person seeing my image and using it in a non-commercial way, such as a desktop wallpaper or to just enjoy looking at. It's why I put it out there. To be seen and enjoyed. I think the parent is wrong to say that these images won't matter in 5-10 years. Different images will withstand the test of time for different reasons. One good example would be of photos of the Word Trade Towers circa 2000. 10+ years later, and you're not getting another new photo. These guys have effectively robbed photographers of their control over their images and the kiss to go along with this screwing is that you have to ask them to take the images down. That's like some guy stealing my bike and then having to go ask him for it back.
Heck, I'd pay them to retrieve the ~20GB worth of personal pics I've posted to the web on my home server if my RAID array suddenly went south, along with the partial backups I've transferred to various friends and relatives.
It seems logical to have a black (or at least grey) market for this kind of thing.
In the end, we're all content aggregators in some form or another... as long as they're not destroying the original works (say, by failing with attribution), then I say archive away.
And as far as privacy and surveillance goes, there are already laws that supposedly prevent you from getting incriminated by recordings (like if you were recorded without permission), so have legal/political solutions to legal/political problems and let the technology roam free.
They know what they are doing is illegal. Why else would they use domains by proxy to hide their identity?
The only reason they blocked, ooopp...I mean "Imagelogr.com is currently offline as we are improving the website."
I am curious if their robots actually identified themselves or respected the robots.txt file.
Fight Spammers!
You know nothing of my work, yet you accuse me of stealing. Your assumptions are wildly incorrect. You've used the reply as your basis to blather your inability to grasp professional and personal photography, models and their rights, and the role of objects in photography all in one mad dash that adds the idea of a photography tax. Good Friday for you.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
A picture of a little kid in a bathtub aggregated with other little kids in bathtubs is creepy.
You weren't accused of stealing, read the post again. As it turns out I know a great deal about image rights and licences, and I'm quite surprised that you appear to have a complete mastery of model rights in every country in the world.
People are charged fees all the time for the enjoyment of specific facilities, and those who profit by those facilities are charged more. Why should photographers be any different? If photographers feel they can milk out per-view licences over fixed time periods, I feel the people really responsible for those images should be compensated duly. If you take a photo of a crowd then sell it for large amounts of money, why should people in that crowd not share the profit for their part in it?
The only suprise is there haven't been more lawsuits levied against photographers for using people's images. In a way a tax for profit making photography would be like insurance.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
While I admire your passion, I believe the poster meant "You" in the general sense, not "You, postbigbang."
Living With a Nerd
My servers aren't scraping pictures, though.
I'm scraping all the *letters* off the entire web.
No, he's not stealing.
I dispute that copyright infringement == theft
$ make available
They have stolen nothing. They may have violate copyright law.
frankly, copyright is about distribution. SO I can copy your crap all I want. As long as I don't distribute.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's like some guy stealing my bike and then having to go ask him for it back.
Hahah, no, this is nothing like that. Are you perhaps going to ask them to email you your pictures back so you can put them up on your web page again?
No, he's not stealing.
Actually, according to your own link there, he probably is in many countries, including the United States.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
We would disagree. Sorry. I understand that you may believe that Fair Use gives you the ability to do so, but that's only provided you have legal use granted to you in the first place.
In my context, you can link to my site. That's ok. You can link to the pictures in question. You can view them, and perhaps already have without looking at the Legal link on the same page. That's ok. If you copy them and store them onto your computer directly (cache excepted) then you have stolen my copyrighted material.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
So what you're saying is, you aren't stealing from the people whose photos you take if you sell them?
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Yeahhhhh... but the notion of model rights and the use of objects, etc., are all made up. There's no logical reason that things work that way, other than it's convenient and at the moment presumed to be of benefit to society. By the way, although I don't agree with a website reproducing your works without permission, it isn't stealing - for the same reason it isn't rape, arson or libel either.
Nowhere in the linked page does it suggest that the legal system of any country considers it to be stealing to take photographs of objects, publicly displayed or otherwise. It appears that some countries might consider it copyright violation, which has absolutely nothing to do with stealing (nor does it have anything to do with rape, murder or libel, just to be thorough).
How can downloading something be stealing? If I came to your house and made off with a print, that would be stealing. If you have a DVD with images on and I take it, that might be stealing. It's impossible to steal by downloading. I think you're confusing theft with copyright violation, which seems to be a common yet bizarre misapprehension.
How do you think Google Image Search works? Do you think that the little thumbnails are all generated on the fly for every search every time?
It's useful to have an archive. After five or ten years people won't care about these images any more, and won't have a problem with someone archiving them.
You can't make that assumption.
Also, what use is a billion images in an archive if no-one dares use a single one because there is no way to get copyright clearance? With the way copyright law is heading worldwide, I can't see this ever being anything other than a waste of disk space.
Just illustrating that loaded terms can be (ab)used by both sides. ;-)
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
The question is whether you recognize photographs as creative works of art. I do not, the law does.
Take a painter painting this woman. The artistic work is clearly of his own creation; every stroke of the brush is his own work and the whole thing breathes van Gogh.
Now take a photographer taking a picture. He sees something interesting already existing in the world and simply captures the naturally-occurring moment on film. Now, if he creates the moment (like a film studio hiring actors and building a set and shooting a movie) then there is certainly an artistic creation going on that belongs to someone. But I strenuously disagree with the photographer's ownership of an image, just because he cleverly placed a camera at the right moment in time and chose good borders for where the image should cut off. Those are exactly three vector quantities: time, place, zoom/whatever. About as sensible as an illegal number, IMO.
I didn't say that the images wouldn't matter, I'm saying that they do matter.
What? It's not like you built the thing, you just took a photo of it. How can you even think that photographers are entitled to control of historically-priceless unreproducible images of a public landmark?
post a link to your pictures and I will view them, give you my opinion if they are art, and probably download them and post them all over the web, without attributing them to you, with just a small copyright mark upon them. And then you show me any actual physical damages or losses you incur. Not hypothetical or possible losses, but real, measurable and quantifiable losses. But you can not do that can you? All you can do is cry and cry some more. So do us a favor and STFU because frankly you irritate me to no end with your blathering about your non-existent rights.
Where is this site/server located? Gotta stop always assuming American laws apply.
I do not understand the relevance of these questions in regards to my statements.
I understand the basics of the technical implementation of cached thumbnails.
Legally, these fall under "reduced quality copy" and may be interpreted effectively as a summary of the work for informative purposes, just like quoting a book in an essay can be legitimate.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363263,00.asp
But copying images directly, using thumbnails without citation or as part of a separate work is usually copyright infringement.
You are distributing it, to yourself.
Sure, but what use is telling you the time, position, and direction of something interesting and/or aesthetic?
I disagree you not seeing any creative work going into photography. Or maybe you don't know much about the creativity involved in photography and post production. (I didn't, until I recently started learning.) You've narrowed it down to three items, which is great if you're shooting with your iPhone. If it were that simple, then all I'd have to do is be in the right place at the right time with a camera, and I can be the next Ansel Adams.
But in reality, its not that simple - I've realized, since I started playing around more and more, that even with a digital camera, photography is analog in nature. How do you frame a certain shot? Does the image capture a large depth of field? Does it capture motion or freeze it? What kind of lens was used? What kind of exposure did the photographer want? Was a flash used to fill the scene? Was the flash softened? What kind of filters are used to create the effect? What kind of white-balance is the photog using? How is the light being metered for the correct exposure? Is there exposure compensation? Film or digital? Now, don't forget - as you say, time is a factor - the photographer may have an instant or two to figure this out - he may have gone through a significant amount of work to get the shot he wants (wake up pre-dawn to catch shadows just so as people are commuting to work.)
What kind of post-processing is done? Is it retouched, colors adjusted? If film, how was it developed? What kind of cropping choices did the artist make? Is the artist doing HDR processing of multiple exposures?
My point, is that photography does have a creative aspect to it, where the outcome is dependent on the photogs creative choices along the way, along with skill to actually have those choices made and dialed in before the shot they want comes and goes.
-- My Sig is a P228.
Because, per my post above, they made creative choices that went into the photograph, both before the shutter opened, how the shutter opened and closed, and in post-production.
Not to mention that a photographer spent their resources in obtaining the equipment to take and process the photograph, and also the resources to travel to the site where the photograph was taken, possibly waiting until a particular time of day for lighting to be better or more dramatic.
Resources, effort, and creative decisions went into the capturing of photons that otherwise would have just bounced off a sidewalk had the camera lens not been in the way.
If anyone's going to have a claim to control, its the photog.
-- My Sig is a P228.
do you pay the local authority for their work in creating that park for your personal profit?
Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Every April 15th, whether I've made any money off of any photographs taken of said parks or not (since photography isn't my sole -- or even primary (tertiary, quaternary, etc.) -- source of income.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Ummm, no. You may not like it, but copyright is very much an existent right. It is a right that is frequently abused and stretched to the breaking point in the U.S., but that does not negate the fact that our society as a whole has deemed that creative types should be compensated for their creative works.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Hmm.. OK I can buy that. It's definitely possible to make an artistic statement with photography, especially with the power of post-processing. For example I love the post processing on shots in this.
But for the most part it seems that the goal of tweaking all of those variables is simply to overcome technical limitations and capture as faithful to reality an image as possible. Tweaking the f-stop or whatever is most often done just to get the lighting to turn out realistically, not to add anything to the work artistically.
Oh, and I don't mean the corny CG imagery in that video, I mean the urban landscapes somehow made to look like HL2, like at 1:44.
My images took work to produce, and they're for my benefit on my site. Your stuff-- you do with it how you will.
Ah, you are one of those "I want copyright, but only if it benefits me and doesn't fulfill the express stated purpose."
When the copyright of your stuff is up, it belongs to the Public Domain. If you have your copyrighted stuff available for limit-1 years, then delete it all, we gave you extra rights and you didn't release it to the Public Domain. I'm curious how you can be pro-copyright and violate the very basis of it.
If you aren't willing to give the images to everyone, then you should never have released them to anyone. What you actually want is a Trade Secret, and the moment you release your trade secret photo to the world, it's no longer protected as a trade secret. So stop posting your trade secrets on public websites and there won't be any issues. But if you want copyright protection, then you have to live up to the agreement.
Not to mention that what these people did was wrong. Not scraping and downloading every image on the Internet, but then distributing them. The archive is legal and should be stored, whether you like it or not, and when copyright is up, they can release the images to everyone.
Learn to love Alaska
Sweat of the brow is not copyrightable. So then the issue becomes whether taking one perfect picture is creative or whether taking 1,000,000 pictures of the same thing and getting one that looked the same as the one "creative" perfect picture is copyrightable. For painting, there is no level of iteration that will create perfection. But for a picture of an inanimate object, iteration would get the same or substantially similar results as a creative person.
In fact, it has been ruled in more than one place that some photographs are not copyrightable (for example, pictures of paintings where the picture's goal was to copy the painting as faithfully as possible). But to paint a painting as faithfully as possible would be still covered by copyright. So I'm not just making up stuff, but examining your stance of "photography is creative" with the reality that it isn't always seen as such nor deemed as such by the law.
Learn to love Alaska
Ah, no.
The copyright for my stuff will expire long after I'm dead. It's otherwise owned by a trust.
Some works have been released under CL and CC. I get to choose which and what.
As far as your admonishment to "if you aren't willing to give the images to everone....", go fish. There is no trade secret; trade secrets don't apply here.
The archive mentioned in TFA isn't legally done. It's a repository of stolen goods, some not stolen goods, and some dubious goods. The very instant it's publicly accessible, it's a lawsuit looking for a spot marked X. It has been publicly accessible, and therefore is fencing, stolen goods, and not theirs-- or at least my portion. Others may have licensed things differently. I don't care what they've done, I know exactly what I've done, and what's mine in terms of copyright.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
If you copy them and store them onto your computer directly (cache excepted) then you have stolen my copyrighted material.
And if I just set my cache to never expire and crawl all sites? I just want to cache it until copyright runs out, then I'll look at it again. I'm not sure how you can except cache and not except long term archival where the image isn't viewed again until copyright runs out and the image is in the Public Domain.
Learn to love Alaska
You may not like it, but copyright is very much an existent right.
Um, no. It's a privilege bestowed by Congress. It is explicitly optional in the Constitution. "Congress shall have the power to [create copyright]." Not that they must, or anything like that. But that they have the power to, and can if they want, or not, as they see fit.
So I'm curious how this is some innate right, when it's explicitly optional in the Constitution. Just a single act of Congress and it would all be gone again. That's not a right.
our society as a whole has deemed that creative types should be compensated for their creative works.
That's irrelevant to copyright. Copyright explicitly exists for the sole purpose of improving the arts and sciences. Bribing the creators with a limited monopoly was the means to an end. You are stating that the Right to Profit is the purpose of copyright, and that's simply false.
Learn to love Alaska
That kind of purposeful activity might make one wonder. But you're not the kind to share, right?
Your life expectancy might be a long time. But do you really want to wait for my images? I didn't think so. You really want your own convenience, I'm guessing.... and that means subverting copyrights as they exist. I'll agree they're draconian. And they need changing. But until then, I still own them.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
What is the effective difference between this and what Google does? They encode your web pages and save it in their databases--they've got a copy of the whole freaking net, themselves.
I thought we didn't like Imaginary Property on slashdot? I know I don't. You put it on the freaking web. It's out there, deal with it.
Just like Facebook...
expandfairuse.org
*sigh*
If I take a photograph in a public park trying to make art for profit, then I am deciding what aperture settings to use, what f stop value to use, all sorts of different settings and possibly the type of film to get a certain result. All of that is work I am putting into the photograph to make it come out right and that is where all of the value comes from. It has very little to do with the park itself.
There is no trade secret; trade secrets don't apply here.
You are wrong. Most people want their pictures available for use by designated people, and seen by no others. That's a trade secret. That it doesn't apply in your situation doesn't mean it isn't what most people really want for some of their creative works. They don't want them in the Public Domain, ever, and as such, the only option for that is Trade Secret. Or do you not understand the issues at hand other than your personal myopic opinion?
The archive mentioned in TFA isn't legally done.
I never said it was. In fact I explicitly said it wasn't. Again, you aren't addressing what I actually say, and instead invent something easier to attack. If they did the archive and didn't let anyone view it until after copyright expired, would it still be illegal?
I know exactly what I've done, and what's mine in terms of copyright.
Yes. And if you make it publically available, you give everyone a right to view it. That view *requires* a local copy, and you know that. So you whine that you want them to immediately delete that, when copyright doesn't give you that right. You can't force someone to burn their books when they are finished reading them. You can just prevent them from ever getting them unless they sign NDAs and keep them trade secrets. But if you put them on a public web page on an unsecured web site and serve them up to anyone that asks, well, you'll get your stuff spread out all over the place and there's nothing you can do about it.
Learn to love Alaska
If I want my images archived, it's my responsibility and those that I delegate the responsibility to. If someone else has done this, then they've stolen my work, as in ripped me off.
Should I want to use a license that give rights to someone else, I'll do so. Until then, the decision is mine.
Now wait a minute, remember when it's movies it's not stealing, but now that it's your pictures it's stealing? No lost sale remember.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
What is it that kids learn these days, anyhow?
I know exactly what I've done
Stolen from everyone else? I see a couple of your fellow point and click artists got mod points, which only means neither they nor you could come up with a legitimate response to the points that were raise.
:-D
You lose.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
No, I wanted my own post modded down because I linked to my website to support my claims. Linking to your website is negatively viewed around here, so I was letting mods know that my post should be modded down accordingly. You accuse me of being an ass, when in fact I was being honest. Thanks, though!
Living With a Nerd
What about the architects that designed those buildings? They made creative choices that went into the structure, both before the formation was down, how it was constructed, and in maintenance.
Not to mention that an architect spent their resources in obtaining the equipment to design and construct the building, and also the resources to purchase the design tools, and possibly understanding the site and surroundings for the perfect alignment.
Resources, effort, and creative decisions went into the design of the building, shapes and forms that otherwise would never have been seen or used, instead replaced by bland and meaningless geometry.
If anyone's going to have a claim to control, its the architect.
--
Just to be blunt, I'm disagreeing that a photographer has an absolute right of claim over any photo they take, regardless of creativity. Yes, many photographs are claimable as creative works; many more are little more than duplicates and reproduction of existing works. Nature photography is one thing; a clear and sustainable effort must be made to take a perfectly zoomed-in and focused image of a rare insect. Photography of buildings, though, is mere facsimile. Photography of persons, too, although the line blurs - holiday snaps are personal and private, yet little to no effort goes into the majority of them, and belong not only to the photographer but to the subjects depicted. It gets worse - take a photo of a crowd and have an absolutely characteristic, identifiable individual - or individuals - standing out? That person surely has some legal claim over this reproduction of their image too.
Image data and intellectual property is a very complex field; far more complex than the IP-abolitionists seem to think, and far more complex than amateur photographers and artists seem to think. This is an age of data glut, where anything recorded can be easily and instantly reproduced by almost anyone with a simple computing device. What value does your intellectual property have in such a world? And what value would a person captured a million times by random tourists and security cameras the world over place on their image? This field is far too complex and messy to be resolved through simple argument here.
I'm not arguing against IP. I'm not arguing for it. Just saying that the concept of ownership and ownership of depictions is really, really complex, and both extremes have a point. I opened this post by mimicking you; that argument can be used almost endlessly, for any reproduction of reality, whether by dedicated time, effort and skill on the photographer/artist, or by simple happenstance snapshot. Determining the threshold of when something ceases to be a depiction of an existing work and becomes the depicter's intellectual property, and just how wide or narrow that threshold is, is so thorny as to be intolerable to discuss outside of legal practice with any due reason. Sure, we can attempt it, but we're not going to get anywhere.
Briefly on-topic with the main story; a simple, naive attempt at gathering and sorting data, without respect for existing IP law. The internet is still a wild, crazy frontier where old laws make no sense, but lawmen will ever try their hardest to civilise it. We'll see if they turn into a new Google,indexing and sorting the world's information for our benefit, or fold under the flood of imagedata and DMCA takedown requests.
Fun times.
But you're not the kind to share, right?
Stop making assumptions about other posters and calling them thieves please.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Sweat isn't... but the effect of that sweat is. If someone sweats to get an experience, and then shares that experience (via photography, film, or writing a book), then that is copyrightable. And if someone else takes a billion photographs, and one happens to be identical... guess what - all BILLION of those photographs are copyrightable by the second person. It would be an interesting legal battle if the first sued the second on account of the identical photo, but I believe the 2nd person is within their rights. Know why? Because outside of a completely controlled environment, you won't ever get the same photo. Lighting changes. Shadows change. Clouds change. Sun position changes.
I personally believe that "different paths to the same thing" is perfectly OK and intellectually honest, and encourages innovation - be it software patents, algorithms or brute-forcing a photograph.
I'm not arguing that all photography is creative. I'm not arguing that all photography is legal, or morally right. I"m not arguing "pro-copyright".
I'm simply objecting to the idea that photography is simply "Just being there with a camera", and thus takes no creativity. Whether such creativity is protected by law, or the various edge cases challenging such an idea, those are beyond me.
-- My Sig is a P228.
On the contrary - tweaking the fstop has an effect on depth of field (basically, the distance in front of, and distance behind, the measured point of focus.) For examples, landscapes often use a small aperture (high fstop) to increase the depth of field, ensuring that the foreground and background are all in focus at once. Portraits and macro-photography often use a low fstop (large aperture) to get everything but the subject out of focus, which forces your eye to the subject. And then, when you get into shallow depths of field, some people then start to get into "bokeh", which is basically defined as "what things look like when they're out of focus."
OK, so I got into the details again. :) sorry.
Here's the thing: You can't overcome technical limitations. Cameras (digital or film) simply cannot capture what the human eye can see. The creative part of photography is manipulating those limitations to your advantage.
A good photographer DOESN'T want to capture the shot realistically. For example - For a long time, I was very careful about getting my colors to match reality as best I could. I'd capture harsh lighting - maybe I'd increase the contrast in post, but I tried to faithfully reproduce what I saw. Only recently, did I discover that adjusting the colors (either in post, or with a color filter) makes images so much more pleasing to the eye, even if they get a bit warmer. In fact, I think the reason I'm harping on this article is because I *JUST* made this discovery for myself, and I'm a bit excited :)
-- My Sig is a P228.
Keep up that attitude, and we'll put it on a Pro-Herpes-Drug ad.
"Herpes. It's what's for dinner."
Yes, I know, way, way too far.
-Taylor
Actually, not too far from the truth. Do a google image search for genital warts. You know all those spam sites that return "The Best ____" where ____ is whatever your search term was? :) Yeah, they're offering the Best Genital Warts, free shipping, etc. Google's improved their algorithms, but there used to be a ton of spam links in the first two pages of results.
Old screenshot: genital warts image results (SFW).
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
I think we can agree that its complex. I'm not arguing for or against IP. And I agree that the threshold is a fuzzy one. Companies demanding that they take down a home video of a kid dancing, merely because a song they produced is playing in the background illustrates how fuzzy that is.
(To address your building issue though - the architect certainly did have a large amount of creative control when designing the building. But he was commissioned by a company that funded the construction of the building. The architects did their job, were compensated for it, and has no more say. The company that owns the building may try to restrict the _act_ of photography, but they can't very well say "You're not allowed to record photons that bounced off our building - those records belong to us."
But thats besides the point - I wasn't arguing about who has control over a photograph. I was objecting to the idea that there was no creative input into the taking of the photograph. )
But I think the same thing applies to peopl in a crowd. If the people in the crowd had any legal rights over any image they appear in, then security cameras, images of sporting events, of concerts, and of general life, would all be sued into oblivion.
Laws aside, I believe that if someone doesn't want to be photographed, then you shouldn't out of respect, especially if they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. But if someones in a public place, the photog is not bound to get permission from each and every person who crosses his viewfinder. Ethically, if the photog expects to make money or widely distribute the photo, then maybe an attempt should be made to gain consent before, or after the photo, if possible. But IMHO that's more of a gentleman's agreement than anything that should be morally or legally required.
-- My Sig is a P228.
0 * n = 0
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Sweat isn't... but the effect of that sweat is.
There's an art to hitting a nail. I don't possess that skill. But is it creative? I have friends that worked in construction. One can pick up a nail and put it in in under a third of a second. If you laid out 180 nails on a board, he'd be able to walk down that board, pounding every one in first hit and be done in under a minute. He makes things square. Most professionally built homes, even pre-fab ones with the benefit of being built in a warehouse, rather than outside, aren't as square as you'd guess. But he can eyeball it better than most people with a square can get it. A house built by him would be worth more to me than the "average" one. But again, nothing creative about it. The "effect" of sweat isn't copyrightable just because it was hard.
And if someone else takes a billion photographs, and one happens to be identical... guess what - all BILLION of those photographs are copyrightable by the second person.
You are 100% wrong. For one, you are ignoring the fact that in many places, photographs of certain types are not considered creative, and thus not copyrightable. So, since you are operating off a broken premise, your conclusions aren't justified.
I'm simply objecting to the idea that photography is simply "Just being there with a camera", and thus takes no creativity.
The law disagrees with you. And as such, you must first prove the law wrong if you want to touch the secondary subject that I'm discussing. "Just being there with a camera" isn't copyrightable in many places. That's the law. You can argue with them about that, not me. I'm just extending the legal argument that you are ignoring to the next step, and if you don't accept that, talking about the next part is a waste of time.
Whether such creativity is protected by law, or the various edge cases challenging such an idea, those are beyond me.
And I'm not talking about what's "creative" or not, but what's creative enough to receive copyright protections. So you aren't arguing with me, nor even talking about the same things I am. I don't see any objection you are listing to what I'm saying. I never once stated that it isn't creative. In fact, I'd argue that my builder friend is "creative" in that he has an artistic skill in assembly that many people, even with training, wouldn't be able to reach. But nothing he does will ever be copyrightable.
Learn to love Alaska
http://www.domainlogr.com/imagelogr.php
This should explain everything
Old screenshot: genital warts image results (SFW).
NO!!! ImageLogr will SCRAPE IT!!!!!! NOOOoooo!!!!!!....
"Gratuitous complexity is akin to chaos" - True Vox
The site is gone, and this explains why:
http://www.domainlogr.com/imagelogr.php
They were bullsh*tting everyone, almost daydreaming. Nothing was there, nothing was probably going to be there, they apparently didn't have anything like the resources for that sort of archiving.
They got caught in their bullsh*t, and chickened out. Bidda boom.
Actually, according to your own link there, he probably is in many countries, including the United States.
Those countries are wrong for doing that. I was arguing that it is morally acceptable.
$ make available
Their only mistake was to make the archive publicly accesible.
They have every right to keep an archive.
If you put your work up on your server and have it send copies to anyone with a web browser then you have no right to stop them from archiving what you send them.
We can only wish that people in decades past had archived works so that we wouldn't have lost so many early films,shows and other parts of our culture.
We disagree on these points, categorically.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Not to mention the lens setup, apeture, timing, photoshop/cleanup, etc.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Imagine if instead of images, it was MP3 files they were scraping...
Also, anyone got the IP addresses of their robots so I can block them with .htaccess?
Why bother copying.
Deep-linking is, or must, always be legal if technically possible, on the WORLD WIDE WEB (def'n: web: a network of interlinked nodes with a high degree of linkage)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Isn't this essentially what Google's image search does? The difference is that if you want the full-sized version, Google sends you to the original web site.
No.
And I find it odd that you decide to only name google instead of google, yahoo, bing, excite, lycos, altavista, askjeeves, clusty, tineye, etc etc etc. What major search engine of the past 15 years doesn't have image search?
Nice try, Bing.
leeching the entire net, instead of creating an Array from [A..Z] ;)
Or, do you also program in Cobasic Pascol ?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
So you want to send a copy of an image to someone and then force them to destroy that copy?
You know what would be easier?
Not sending it to them if you're so intent on keeping people from seeing your work.
It's a privilege bestowed by Congress. It is explicitly optional in the Constitution.
You are arguing semantics. There are "certain inalienable rights" that the Founding Fathers decided were important enough that they included them in the Constitution (well, the Bill of Rights, anyway). Then, there are "rights" that are granted by law. For purposes of refuting what stonewallred said, there is no effective difference between a right and a privilege -- both are provisions in law granting some benefit to the populace. As you stated, a right cannot be revoked by Congress (unless they create an Amendment to the Constitution) whereas a privilege can, but that does not change the fact that stonewallred was wrong to assert that "All you can do is cry and cry some more.". Ummm...no. Actually, were (s)he to take my copyrighted materials, post them all over the web, etc., etc., I would have the legal right to drag his (her?) sorry butt to court and sue for whatever I and my lawyer thought we could convince a judge was reasonable.
Copyright explicitly exists for the sole purpose of improving the arts and sciences. Bribing the creators with a limited monopoly was the means to an end.
Yeah...and? :) Perhaps it would have been better to say that society as a whole has deemed that creative types are entitled to the privilege of decided how and when their creative works are to be distributed (although I see a bit of a disconnect between saying that compensation is irrelevant to copyright, but then saying that copyright exists as a means to bribe creative types to create). In any case, I don't think our views are actually that far apart. OTOH, I think stonewallred is way out in left field.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Depends on what those new girls think where someone who never had sex with a woman got that herpes from in the first place... ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
How does it prevent spam?
Don't you still get e-mails forwarded to you?
Fight Spammers!