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Are Flickr Images Abused By Foreign Businesses?
eldavojohn writes "My friend Drew was notified via Twitter that one of his Flickr images had been selected as poster child for freeloaders who abuse the benefits system in an Elsevier news story in the Netherlands. The original image clearly gives an CC BY-NC 2.0 license to the image which doesn't appear in the story — a story which generates revenue for Elsevier. My friend doesn't speak Dutch so he's a little confused about what, if anything, he can do in this situation. I'm reminded of a family's Christmas photo showing up on a billboard in Prague and I wonder if photo sharing sites are treated as free to abuse regardless of copyright by foreign businesses? Has anyone else heard of this sort of thing happening with images from social photo sharing sites?"
When information wants to be free?
Most likely they are. But the law doesn't serve us plebians. The law seeks to enforce the corporate order.
I never understood why photographs can be copyrighted. If somebody takes a picture of me, then why do they own the picture?
I bet the famous Afghan girl never saw any of those millions that the photographer did.
Elsevier.
-=Maggie Leber=-
Of course it's a violation of copyright to use other people's photos without permission. But why on earth would anyone want to put up their family photos for the whole world to see in the first place?
Your friend has given permission to use the picture with proper attribution, Elsevier doesn't give proper attribution. Your friend still has the copyright for the picture, he can offer Elsevier to give them permission for use in their weekly paper for, say, $100,-, if they immediately start giving proper attribution on the website. Elsevier may not distribute their weekly if they don't pay (that what copyright means).
There are several international copyright laws. That link will show you the participating countries. But even so, unless you're a top-tier photographer, it's not really worth the time it would take to pursue legal action. Your best bet is a good defense.
If you upload full size images to Flickr, etc, you're really just asking for someone to steal it and use it without your permission. So if you're that worried about it... don't use Flickr. But if you absolutely must, then you can take the annoying step of putting a watermark across the whole image, or, if you don't like to deface your work, there's also no reason you can't downsize the image to something like 800px at a low to medium DPI which makes it practically unusable for print.
All of that said though, people who steal images and use them without permission are, at least in my mind, in the same boat as people who steal music, warez, etc... if they can't get it for free they aren't going to buy it anyway.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
First of all, get them to stop using it! If you don't want them using it, tell them!
Almost everyone in Netherlands can read English, and the majority can also write and speak it to a decent level. So you don't need to be worried about the language barrier.
I'm pretty sure that copyright law here is similar to the US, so you can just email them and tell them to either remove the picture OR apply with the terms of the licence.
About every dutch person speaks English, so just write them an email saying you own the copyright to that image and would like to be payed a _reasonable_ amount for the usage of your photo. The Netherlands isn't some backwash country where they don't respect copyright. We don't always respect patents, when it comes to software patents, but we do with copyright, although not with the same absurd duration. Also, Elsevier is a politically right-wing magazine, and although I don't know their specific view on copyright, the political right tend to favor longer and stricter copyright terms. Perhaps that could be an advantage here. Also, don't start threatening with any legal action in the first email. That'll only incite a counter-attack. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar and all.
Manuals are your last resort only
Original article: http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Nieuws/Nederland/288453/Gemeente-wil-aanvragers-uitkering-eerst-thuis-bezoeken.htm
Elsevier editors email: redactie.elsevier@elsevier.nl
Posters above already mention that 95% of Dutch people speak English so I would just send them an email.
Copyright is separate from your personality rights. Regardless of the photographer's copyright on the composition & other artistic elements of the photo, he does not have free reign to do whatever with your image. That's why professional photographers will always use a model release form. On Wikimedia Commons there is warning in the upload form to this effect, and there is a templated warning that editors can add to an image description page to contend that an image may violate the subject's personality rights and therefore, regardless of the free license the photographer attaches vis-a-vis his copyright, it may yet NOT be free for use on Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia because the photographer cannot (without your permission) give away your rights in the image.
There are exceptions -- people caught in a photograph of a public place, e.g., are assumed to have given up some of their privacy rights by entering the public area in the first place. IANL.
Irrespective of who unfairly uses a copyrighted image, they are in he wrong. There have been a number of interesting incidents involving companies like the BBC (http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/market/23187-bbc-coughs-up-over-flickr-image-copyright-breach) and others that ended up with the company simply paying for the misuse. To be fair, the BBC's excuse seems reasonable - an oversight - and I'm sure that many other incidences are just that, although not educating your employees in what is and what is not permissible is unacceptable.
This particular example is probably on the extreme end of abuse: all metadata has been removed, so it looks like the abuser has explicitly done his best to hide his misdeeds. I think a sharply-worded E-mail, with a demand for say, $500 for usage and $500 for abuse of copyright and an offer of $100 for each future use, seems fair.
In particular, Holland is a relatively easy country to contact - I can't imagine anyone in business not having pretty much perfect English.
Intellectual property doesn't exist, if it did it would be wrong to download movie and music illegally. Do you really think they're a bunch of hypocrites who believe pictures are actually property instead of ones and zeros that can be copied but not stolen?
Oh, wait...
Commercial use, legally speaking, is use in a commercial (advertisement) -- i.e using the photograph to sell something. This article is an example of editorial use (using the photograph to illustrate a story), which is quite different. The fact that the user generates income from the use of the photograph is irrelevant. After all, Facebook has ads on pages that use your photographs, so does that make all presentations of photos on Facebook commercial use?
The big problem here is that the CC license uses legal terminology without defining it, misleading people using the license into thinking they're getting "protection" from something that they're not.
dom
The Dutch generally speak a decent English.
Generally speaking, Creative Commons is a fine license for most sorts of creative output for one simple reason: piggybacking. If you make music, you can use somebody's CC'd vocals in your track, they can use your drum loops or guitar riffs. In writing, you can use somebody else's characters, somebody else can use the world you've created. And so on.
For photography, it sucks. The photographer gets nothing out of it. They produce, but there's no reciprocation. Your photos get used by other people, sometimes they'll do something cool with it (I've had some of my stuff used as the basis for illustrations) but usually it's to illustrate some bullshit article on some crap blog. This is where the bigger problem with CC comes into play: your work gets tied to people who use it.
If I take a picture of a dog biting a dark skinned man and release it with a CC license, it can get legally picked up by a neo-nazi site/magazine, printed and credited to my name. Not only do people whose politics I find to be morally repugnant get to use my work, they get to tie me to their publication. Boned. Think that's unlikely? How about this example, where a french girl's self-portrait was used to illustrate an article about a lawsuit involving hotel pool sperm.
Just so you know, five years ago, a Dutch judge ruled that Creative Commons licenses are enforceable. See here: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5823 . This is the Adam Curry case from 2006, for those who follow the history of such things. There was also a later scenario in 2009 that he also won.
Summary from the Wikipedia article:
|/usr/games/fortune
Please stop basing stories on Google translations of articles. You are abusing the English language.
Just send them a bill for a reasonable amount, say $500 or so. They will know they did something wrong and will either pay or rectify. Stay courteous and don't threaten legal action of the bat. You're likely to make some money.
The municipality of Rotterdam wants to investigate whether it is legally possible to people who apply for benefits, first home visit. "Problems can be addressed immediately. Also be checked if there are no three Mercedes cars for the door. "
That says Alderman Eric Faas (VVD) of Economic Affairs at the Algemeen Dagblad.
"During these visits, you can see how the home situation. The children bruises, there is a fridge in the house? Often, people have different problems, can you right tackle. " Also examined whether people can be rightly called on the assistance to do.
Refuse - According to the Ministry of Social Affairs, a municipality does not benefit if the applicant does not refuse to have home visits. That is still Faassen investigations. There are no known other municipalities that benefit recipients home visits. The government wants to benefit fraud is harder. In all cases of fraud, the benefit is withheld three months. Also the government will investigate whether there is a counterpart of assistance recipients may be requested.
Photo: Who in Capelle aan den IJssel would like to request a payment, get first home visit
Your article reads as if you had researched someone. But as someone who does the due diligence of researching before posting I found your claim to be bogus. Go and read up on it. It is commercial use, and for your example you should've read the TOS when signing up to facebook.
Commercial use is relevant to the ORGANIZATION that uses the work. That newspaper is not a non-profit organization, nor is it a hobby.
A commercial use is one which is undertaken for a business purpose, rather than hobby, recreational, educational, or other purposes. Such uses are usually attributed to a for-profit entity, rather than an individual, university or other educational institutions, or non-profit organizations (such as public libraries, charities, and other organizations created for the promotion of social welfare).
http://definitions.uslegal.com/c/commercial/
we are all foreigners on the Internet.
We were out with a school friend of my girlfriend. She was very attractive; blond hair and blue eyes; she looked like a super-model. While sitting outside at a cafe, some guy snapped some photos of her, very indiscreetly, here in scenic Heidelberg. She snapped at him, and informed him that taking close up pictures of a single person in public was illegal, and even stated the paragraph in the law. He backed off.
I'm not sure if she was bluffing or not . . . and she died of breast cancer a couple of years ago, at the ripe old age of 37, so I will never know. Poor critter.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
As Cooks Source knows well, *anything* on the internet is public domain and therefore open season.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
They are a business, and their goal is to obtain profits with any method possible. When they get in trouble with the law they will find some way to get around it by either settling out of court, counter-suing, or doing whatever it takes so make more money than they have to pay out in damages. Business is all about screwing everybody and everything to make a profit. What else do you expect from a business? If they played fair, they'd make less profit!
Sorry, I think this holds the seeds of a flawed position.
You phased it softly - you touched on the yearning to escape the crushing mediocrity of life. But as a policy, "all you get is cool rights" is already accepting being the Boiled Frog. Watch what happens if it's a highly undesirable billboard!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
At least one of our local Flickr members has had one of their images used without permission or attribution by a foreign media company, some American news company in California I think (I'm lead to believe they have a few media companies in California ... never been there so not too sure).
they seemed to think that because it was taken in some other country than the US that our "local" copyright didn't apply to them I recall that between arguing about cosigned treaties and that it was published, with creative commons copyright declaration, on a US owned and hosted site (Flickr) they might want to rethink their non attributed usage, settlement was long, drawn out and the apology was insincere (could have easily been interpreted as "we're truly sorry we got caught") and read as if it had been dictated from someone speaking through clenched teeth.
It also doesn't help that average people don't seem to understand these things either. I work for a fairly large magazine (yeah, I know), and I've come across an archive of cover and page scans from back issues on flickr where the poster marked them all with some sort of CC free-to-use license. Not surprisingly, googling that username with some various keywords turned up tons of blogs and sites that used those images and included the relevant "licensing" information. All the while, that CC license was totally invalid because the scanner/poster never had the rights to those images in the first place. So it definitely cuts both ways.
Foreign Business? Well as I'm in Europe, I surely do agree, i hate it when those foreigners from America abuse my Flickr photos.
Once again the Slashdot effect strikes the unwitting site-host.
freeloading site is down as of 17:44 6/2/2011 GMT
When you say, foreign, remember that copyright violations are pretty common in the USA too, both by individuals and by organizations. From the perspective of most citizens of this planet, the USA is also a foreign country :-) (and GPL violations happen without regard for national borders, too)
Is is harder to take action against people in other countries. You may have to travel there to appear in a court, in extreme cases, and you may have to demonstrate financial losses as a result of the use of your image.
Many countries give a legal moral right to be identified as the author/creator of a work, and also give the creator ongoing rights to say how the work can be used. This may strengthen the poster's case here, although in the US, using creative commons may be seen as waiving some of those rights. Here in Canada, the rights are inalienable: you can't ever get rid of them, which in principle may not be compatible with some creative comments licenses (and GPL for that matter): there's no "public domain" in the same legal sense as in the USA.
Write a letter in general terms in the first instance - e.g., "I am writing because you are making commercial use of one of my images without permission; who would I contact in this matter?" Be firm but very polite at all times.
If you are prepared to settle for acknowledgment, and perhaps a small payment to compensate you for your time, then when you do get a reply, be polite and accept their offer if it's in the right ballpark, or negotiate for a little more. If the reply is unsatisfactory, immediately seek legal advice from a lawyer who specializes in cross-border/international copyright disputes. They are expensive, but you should get a free consultation that will get you started.
Do not be rude, arrogant, or demanding - not only is it likely to make people act defensively, rather than trying to cooperate with you in finding a friendly ("amicable') solution, but it can also actually weaken your case if you do end up with legal action. Similarly, be terse, don't volunteer information. Saying "I don't have much money, I'm a student" for example is also saying "I can't afford to sue you, you can do what you like!"
Do not attempt to base any sort of argument on the Wikipedia pages on copyright; every time I look at them I find errors (often with people fiercely defending them), and I'm not even a lawyer. Reading the actual copyright acts is difficult without legal training - e.g. knowing that a phrase like "time shall be of the essence" in US law might mean "if you don't make the deadline, all bets are off", or finding a footnote on page 50 that says, "hereafter, and everywhere in this document, the term "Ship" shall mean "Ship or hovercraft", or discovering some other law that amends the one you were reading... and even after reading the law, what matters is how individual judges ("courts") interpret it. Sort of like how different Web browsers react to the syntax errors that riddle most HTML pages - the specification says one thing, people do another, the Web browsers resolve it. Except that judges are human, of course, and consider each case as it happens. This isn't so much a criticism of Wikipedia as a note that, like any other resource, you have to know its strengths and weaknesses. For that matter I've seen official government web pages on copyrights that had serious errors in them (such as giving incorrect figures for duration, and then a while later silently changing them!) so it's all a bit of a minefield.
Live barefoot!
free engravings/woodcuts
I had a Belgian company contact me asking for permission to use my photo from Flckr in a tourist campaign. It was all on the up and up with full photo credit given to me but no money. If companies at least asked the Flickr contributer, most of the time there wouldn't be an issue
This story is written poorly (shocking for /., I know) because it has little to do with any of the players mentioned: Creative Commons (as opposed to other license writing organizations or other licenses), photography (as opposed to other artistic media), or Flickr (as opposed to other hosting services). This is just another instance of a wealthy organization (which can certainly afford the expense for due diligence) allegedly infringing someone's copyright. It can be dealt with on that basis and resolved amicably for the copyright holder. And, as with so many other copyright infringement cases, how amicable the resolution is for the alleged infringer is, at best, of secondary importance particularly because the license allows the licensee to do so much (derivative works, for example).
Speaking directly to your complaints: First, there are so many different CC licenses and they say significantly different things. So we can't have a reasonable discussion about them by lumping them together and referring to them as if they're a cohesive unit except to note that they're written and published by the same organization. Second, photos are no more exempt from extraction, reuse, and building upon (making derivative works) than any other form of expression (particularly with digital photo manipulation tools we have today). Third, I think the heart of your complaint has to do with what are referred to as "moral rights" in some jurisdictions. But moral rights have little to do with the CC licenses and far more to do with regional powers conferred to authors (moral rights aren't in the US, for instance). Any proper discussion of them would be independent of the copyright licensing for the work. If you want the power to reject the reuse of some work because of you disagree with a potential derivative work, you probably should not license the work to them at all under any license. Then, should they commit copyright infringement and make an unauthorized derivative work anyway, you get to see how CC licenses had nothing to do with that.
Digital Citizen
Elsevier is known for doing this. Get a Dutch lawyer, sue and make a buck. You're very likely to win. See Adam Curry's and other cases against them.
Foreign? It's not just foreign. I see it happen at American sites all of the time. Heck, BoingBoing is both one of the biggest fans of Creative Commons licenses and one of the biggest abusers. They always post the CC license link prominently when it allows copying, but when it doesn't they just post the image anyways. And they're about as commercial as a website gets charging some of the heaviest ad rates around. ($20 CPM.) They reportedly raked in more than $1 million in 2006. (http://blogbuildingu.com/articles/making-money-blogging-profiles-of-6-very-successful-blogs)
There's a reason why their masthead lists two lawyers but no staff photographers. They would rather pay the lawyers to spew squid ink about fair use than to pay anything to the people who contribute the art. This attitude, of course, is not unique to this site. A number of sites do it.
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/04/george-bernard-shaws.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/06/startups-of-londons.html
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/ol-space-food/
Flickr just announced its list of ways to counteract foreign photo stealing for stock photo-like purposes:
1. be really ugly
2. have a cheap, crappy camera
3. just take really bad, crooked, blurry shots
4. Photoshop a cheesy top hat, moustache, and monacle onto all your photos
It looks like a lot of folks on Flickr have already implemented these security measures.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Due to the oversimplified and poorly written terms of the CC licenses, which leave many details undefined, neither the copyright owner nor the publications wishing to license the owner's work can have any certainty about which uses are permitted and which prohibited, in some borderline cases. Moreover, since the CC license is irrevocable once granted, content creators can easily find themselves unable to stop others from using their work in ways that they don't want, and didn't anticipate, or which they mistakenly believed were expressly prohibited.
This article has a good discussion of the problems inherent in the CC licenses.
I really like BoingBoing and I like that they use the creative commons license some of the time. But they're happy to ignore it when they need an image and they can just nick one.
BoingBoing does the same thing with Creative Commons photos all the fucking time, and nobody ever calls them on it. I guess it's because it's "open source friendly" and Elsevier isn't?
Either way, sounds like hypocrisy to me.
Comment of the year
Yes, Flickr is popular but it's not like they're just targetting Flickr and that's it. These people hit Facebook, Flickr, and even Google image search to find what they're looking for. Like if you take a picture and put text near enough to it with a matching file name of "cute puppy" then your cute little puppy is going to be on some Korean bag of dog food after they hit Google image search. Foreign photo thieves will get an image from anywhere that's free on the internet because any way that they don't have to pay for a stock photo looks good to their boss and brings the project in under budget. I can't see anyone who's doing this hit just Flickr and if they don't find just the right photo, they give up and don't look anywhere else.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
your friends first step should be to write an invoice.
You missed the whole world part. Your a) or B) can be accomodated perfectly well without putting the picture on a blog for the rest of the planet to see.
Spoken like a truly dense technical nerd. Normally that's a good thing, but not in this case.
Most people don't want to access password protected galleries - especially older people (you know, the ones you wanted to see the photo?) just will not look at them. So to password protect family photos is to greatly inconvenience someone you know for sure would want to look at the photo, to protect against the slight chance that someone somewhere will *gasp* see a photo of YOUR FAMILY!
Who cares if your photo ends up in a billboard in prague or elsewhere! Shouldn't you be proud that your family is good-looking enough that someone else who is not your family thinks other people might want to look at you?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Come on dude, everyone knows that BoingBoing is a not-profit. I mean they act that way, right?
Dude, BoingBoing is cool and you're not. You know the hot chick at the bar? She drinks for free and you don't. She could probably stick a sword through the bartender and no one would do anything because she's the hot chick. If anyone calls them on it, BoingBoign will start calling them copyright trolls and making them seem like greedy idiots for asking for a share of their ad revenue. Then they'll get the EFF to defend them. That's because they're the hot chick and you're not.
Just use some steganography software to embed a version of the DeCSS code into your pictures. I prefer the haiku version myself...
If you dont want your pictures all over the internet...dont put them on the internet. Sorry but whining about the use of pictures placed on imgur or flickr is the equivalent of dumping a pile of random pictures on a table in the break room of a busy office then complaining when one of them shows up on someones desk.
You can share a lot of things from google or yahoo's photo sites WITHOUT using a password or making them public.
The only moron I see here is someone who thinks any images put online without an authentication barrier are in fact really hidden... the ultimate security through obscurity.
If you put it online, and you do not password protect it, you can assume someone you do not know ill be looking at it someday. Either compromised browser by friend/family using your link or curious admin, it doesn't matter how the exact link path can get out, the simple fact is it can and you should assume it will. The only difference between publishing a photo gallery link on a blog and putting up a directory without a clear path to, is a matter of time alone...
Well, THEY seemed to care. That's what this is about.
And I am saying, that's OK. There's no need to freak out about other people seeing your photo. I am trying to point out why they should not care, perhaps it will put them at ease. Sometimes all you need is a change of viewpoint.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Knowing people who work there, I can assure you that this is not a case of an evil corporate monster trying to keep "the man" down and profit for nothing. They review licenses and probably used the image from the OP because it was CC and did not or mistakingly read the fine print. I know for fact that they avoid copyrighted material and email original authors and artists for permission to use materials. This is either an honest mistake or an individuals rushed negligence. Either way, simply email them and ask about it. There is no story here.
Just make them an offer, they will comply if your offer is reasonable. Nobody "respectable" wants to infringe on IPRs willingly.
Ok, open up the demand for strict image management on the internet and the internet as we know it is dead. A uk judge ruled that the theft of Zynga credits (for farm ville) constituted a real theft of real property. In that sense the reuse of an image online is theft. But the deeper point is ownership, If you put an image online to be served to the public you no longer own it period. It is on the server, it is on every computer that views it, you gave it away. All rules about copyright are simply extortion schemes, if you want to earn money from it show it to a closed audience at some auction site.
(I get a Guru Meditation when I try to sign in, so I have to post anonymously)
Jeez, you Americans and your "us and them" culture. What does "foreign" meen when the context is global Internet sites like Flickr, or Slashdot for that matter? I've been a slashdotter since the early years, and I suddenly feel that I'm not wanted here, just because I'm a European. Please open your eyes and realise that there is a World, not USA and the others.
The law that is broken by Elsevier is artikel 25 of the dutch copyright law:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001886
There was a case recently were something similar happend and the owner of the photograph sued the other for 2.6 milion euro. He based this amount on the guidelines of the photograph federation but the judge didn't went along with it and said that the way the claim was calculated was incorrect or otherwise unreasonable:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.boek9.nl/%3F//Voor%2Beenmalig%2Bgebruik////27661/
The best thing you can do is simply email them and tell them to put a correction on the original page.
just few days ago I used CC-BY-2.0 image on the webpage and attibuted the author. Use of quantifier (nobody) is not justified.
...? Huh? I don't understand what you're trying to say. Do you work for Boingboing?
Comment of the year
We don't always respect patents, when it comes to software patents, but we do with copyright, although not with the same absurd duration.
Come again? Netherlands and the rest of the EU had a life+70 copyright term five years before the United States extended its own copyright term to match. See European Bono Act.
I had some photos that I took myself on a website of mine. Some of them were copied onto someone else's website, and were represented as being photos of someplace in Europe. I took the photos in Canada.
Form http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode Section 4 subsection b.
Looks quite cleat to me. The licence text doesn't even mention "commercial".
The article links to the site which talks about the image abuse, they are not the bad guys ;-)
The offending page is here : http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Nieuws/Nederland/288453/Gemeente-wil-aanvragers-uitkering-eerst-thuis-bezoeken.htm
Most Dutch people speak English, so your friend could just write them an email to correct this..
Actually it's not okay to pirate anyone else's work, whether you provide yours for free or not.
you mean, it's not ok with you. fine with me, but don't speak for everyone.
Friends of mine started telling me that my image was slashed all over Bavaria in an ad campaign. In this case, a pro photog took a photo of me at Burning Man, and sold this along with several other photos of people taken in or around San Francisco on a trip. In the campaign, each of us was made into a character on the website, that users could interact with. There were postcards of us in free racks, and even life sized cutouts in their road show.
Using entirely email, I successful got reimbursed e10,000 for the use of my image. I believe it was done as a modeling fee, as German courts do not have punitive damages for such things and I wasn't interested in them anyway. I found a German lawyer online and went from there.
It should be almost trivial to find yourself a Dutch lawyer to handle most, if not all of it, via email. And in your shoes I would not do mere cease and desist, but rather cost them as much money as possible given that they're a corporation. Corporate officers too often try to use their company's size and legal status as human beings to do some serious injustice given that they won't personally be held responsible. This kind of message needs to be sent IMO.
Believing security through obscurity does not work at all is a pretty limited point of view. Sure it is not the strongest possible type of security, but there is a huge difference between it and no security. Enough in a case like this to make all the difference that is needed. Your leak scenarios are laughable and your assumptions extreme. You have no argument.
You post your images on flickr because you want random public to 'discover' your talent right? If it was just for 'friends' you'd use a blog, or make your stream private.
But no, you dream of fame, someone may pick you as the next , so you make it public. Well, lucky you, you've been found! Be proud and move on.
The difference is that this image is CC-BY-NC .
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Allow me to suggest a slightly more relevant heading for this summary. "Online Images Are Often Stolen"
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Common JPEG steganography techniques are intended to hide a message inside an exact copy of the cover message. Most aren't designed to be robust enough to survive Rotate, Crop, Gaussian Blur, Unsharp Mask, Levels, and other effects in GIMP or Photoshop used to prepare an image for use in an ad.
Security through obscurity is not security in any way, shape, or form.
Anyone using one of those so-called "free" service providers should take those events as a lesson.
I know I'm repeating myself here, but you ought to not only read the Terms of Service, you should also try to understand what they mean, and keep in mind the contract maxim: the first part giveth, then the later parts taketh away including your shirt.
If you not only read the words in chapter 11 of the Google Terms of Service, you will see that they can get away with that the moment the mag would take a Google service, or offer one *to* Google.
11.1 appears innocent when you look at the restrictions:
"11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services."
Notice, however, that you have already agreed to use of your material in an altered format - now guess the fun you could have with that if you still attribute the original source. But the fun starts in the next paragraph, which negates the restriction in the last paragraph of 11.1 by it's abundant use of about the vaguest terms possible:
11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
It's worth checking the T&Cs or (ToS) of any site you publish on. You may find some ugly clauses. There is no such thing as a free lunch..
Insert
I hardly think you would be happy to be used in the advertising for an extreme political party that has views at the opposite end of the spectrum to you, or even on a less extreme level, if you were used to promote Windows while being a rabid Mac/Linux/whatever fanboy.
Why? I would be pleased indeed, because of how amusing it would be to have their "spokesperson" come out strongly against what they were using the photo for. No harm to you and a chance to ding something you dislike. That's all win from your side.
If you think about it leaving a photo online for the unscrupulous to use without permission is a kind of giant trap for the unwary. If a business uses it without your permission, you can seek damages. If an organization uses it that you disagree with, then you can embarrass them.
that doesn't give anyone the right to do it without permission from both parties
I agree they have no right but the harm and danger is really all on them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Whats the big deal here? A Business illegally uses a photo from a Photo sharing web site. This isn't the first time its happened and wont be the last time. If you don't want people to use your stuff don't post it on the internet because someone WILL steal it. Not maybe,not kinda They WILL steal it.
Jack of all trades,master of none
nope.
I just needed a nice pic of my city for a webpage header. Found one on flickr, and I've attibuted the author.
So your claim that "nobody ever calls them on it" is false.
So by placing a city of your pic on your website header, you somehow call-out BoingBoing on their practice of using CC works on a for-profit site?
Either I'm really fucking confused, or you are. What the holy hell does your response have to do with BoingBoing?
Comment of the year
Gave me one of the recommended articles links on the dutch news page as: "Pregnant with a clown? Allememaggies!". That's fantastic.
entitles you to a book loan????
BoingBoing does the same thing with Creative Commons photos all the fucking time, and nobody ever calls them on it.
Actually, I've seen them called on it, and I've seen them apologise for it. And as one of their biggest posters (and the one responsible for the mistake I saw) is a major contributor to CC, I'm inclined to give him a free pass on that one.
I don't know why people get so worked up about things like this, when it's so easy to fix. I've never had a problem with _anyone_ stealing any of my work.
Just be crap and you don't have to worry any more :)
Original site (finally) removed the image:
http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Nieuws/Nederland/288453/Gemeente-wil-aanvragers-uitkering-eerst-thuis-bezoeken.htm
I see a lot of talk here about how you need a model release to use an image of a person. Just to be clear, that's mainly a US thing, and in the Free World, this is not required. If you are in a public place or can be photographed from a public place (with some limits) then I can make a copyright image of you that I control distribution of. I do not need a model release for such an activity.
The question is, Are flickr images abused by foreign businesses.
The answer is, of course, yes.
Why is this news?
They did remove the image on the original article by now...
I guess with international laws being so murky when something goes amiss, unless you are a company entity that exists in multiple countries at a time, there is no reason for john doe to go to the Netherlands and sue the said company for using his photo, as there might not even be a law against this over there...I am not sure...but pretty sad to find out your wedding picks are making their way into some company's portfolio.
IANAL. But I was a professional press photographer - freelance and therefore well read of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/contents which was formulated in 1988 to keep the UK in line with European copyright laws.
The principle elements of this legislation are those that apply in the European Union and The Netherlands are part of that.
You can get an idea of what to charge them buy having a look at the London Freelance NUJ chapel site, which of course is not a church, http://www.londonfreelance.org/feesguide/index.php?section=Photography&subsect=Books.
You need to identify either the picture editor of the publication that used your pix (or the secretary to this person). If you can't find it on the internet, just phone them up and ask. Send the invoice directly to them. You can include a cover letter if you wish stating that you have enclosed the invoice for the use of the image with details of where and when. That's all a pro would do - because they are always TFB.
In your invoice you should identify the use of the image - Title, edition, date page number and with the price of your "reproduction fee". A legitimate newspaper will always pay because they know the law better than anyone. They know they would lose a court case, it would cost a lot of money and their unions wouldn't be to pleased with them either.
Oh and they are not stupid , they are unlikely to pay more than the going rate for a similar snap from Corbus.
A girlfriend once pointed out to me that A Certain UK Student Organisation had used one of my photographs without permission and had added the cross hairs of snipers rifle on to it. This modification is also protected against specifically, so I billed them 500 GBP for the use and another 500 for modifying the picture. Cheques arrived in three days.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
YES
Yeah but they still do it so...
Wait, people get a free pass for breaking the rules if they helped draft the rules? What kind of crazy topsy-turvy world are we living in?
Comment of the year
Never attribute to malice which can be adequately explained by either stupidity or laziness.
More than likely a graphic designer was lazy and grabbed the image and used it. Let the company know and they will respond quickly by either paying for it or adding in the attribution.
I had this exact thing happen to a photograph I had posted on Flickr. A magazine from the UK took my image without license, and published it in print, online, and in a DVD. Their distribution included many stores here in the US. Before posting the image, I had taken the time to register my copyright with the USCO, so that unlocks statutory damages, which are very important in copyright infringement cases. Without registering *before the infringement*, you don't get attorneys fees or court costs, and you only get actual damages. That makes pursuing an infringement case a loser if you don't have the copyright registered.
Having distributed physical copies into the US, I could have pretty easily used the US as the venue for a lawsuit, or even done so through a solicitor in the UK. However, lawyers are messy, and enforcing judgments across international borders is costly. The first thing I did was prepare an invoice stating the usage of the image, that there was no implicit license, that the images are copyrighted (which they are, whether you registered them or not), and how much I expected in licensing fees for the usage. I also added a multiplier for needing to issue the license retroactively and having discovered the infringement myself. After a bit of negotiation as to the licensing fee, the publication was very apologetic and wired me the agreed upon rate. Now they have a license, I got paid for the commercial use, and we parted amicably.
For more information, I highly recommend the ASMP website on copyright: http://asmp.org/tutorials/enforcing-your-rights.html
Stop anthropomorphizing information. It hates it when you do that.