I had great laughs this morning reading through B’s latest Eurotrippen post about the celebrity life of her dog, but it also got me thinking about a German TV show I saw on the weekend, which had an item about photos and copyright.
B’s photos are all her own, so she’s free and clear. But what if B didn’t have a dog? What if she had that twisted little idea in her head, but no dog to illustrate it? She could probably find a few pics of doggies dressed in leather and lace and weave a little story around them, right?
Sure, but she’d be putting herself in serious financial peril, not only for the obvious reason that a lot of photos out there have rights on them, but that there are websites out there dedicated to sucking you in to using their photographs on your blog and then turning right around and suing your sorry ass off.
The TV show profiles a couple who started up a little site dedicated to keeping birds as pets. They went a - googling for a few shots of common vegetables so they could brighten up a page on what to feed them. They clicked on one of the top results and found hundreds of photos on the Voldemort of recipe sites, the link to which I not only absolutely refuse to provide, I won’t even mention its name.
If you fail to look for the page that says they don’t give out the photos for free, and take one of their photos for use on your blog, the site tracks the photo’s new location and immediately fires off a bill to you for around €700 euro - or more than one thousand US dollars - per photo! Our pair of budgie boffins were asked to fork over €8600, and they are just one of hundreds the show says the site has already sued.
Since users are most likely to click on the top lines rather than wade through pages and pages of stuff, the shows says the site uses Google-bombing to game themselves into the top ranks of search results. And with more and more people getting into blogging for the first time without a clue as to its many pitfalls, their supply of fresh meat is almost endless.
The experts on the show say that if you don’t want to go to court and risk paying thousands more should you lose, there’s not much you can do besides negotiate the price down. After all, nearly a thousand euro for a fuzzy thumbnail jpeg is pretty outrageous.
So if you want to be like B, do what she does and use your own dog, your own camera, your own frilly clothes, your own electrician’s tape, and your own sofa. That way, the only mess you’ll have to clean up is a few hairs - provided it’s fully housebroken.
© 2008 lettershometoyou
PS: You can tape the show - schade, nur auf Deutsch - in repeat on Wednesday, February 20 around 2345, or Friday the 22nd at 0920 on HR (Hessischen Rundfunk) or simply watch it on the web via the link provided above when they get around to posting it.
PPS: Please see this excellent post on fair use from The Blog Herald, a blog on blogging.
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Yes. I sometimes worry about my cartoons plastered all over the internet. Any advice about that?
Hi Simonelli,
Are you an unknown artist trying to make a name for himself, or one who’s already made it and worried about someone else making money off his work? If it’s the former, tear a page out of the indie rock band playbook and just put it out there. That formula has worked for a few bands lately. If it’s the latter, you’d better see a lawyer - it’s something you probably wouldn’t be able to tackle on your own unless you’re willing to lay down the charcoal for a while.
About cartoons - what about all those sites that simply reprint them regularly?
This is interesting reading and good advice for all. I liked B’s post and her doggie is really cute too…ciao
Hi there,
I also took note of the BlogHerald article this morning and then I read this excellent post too. The FAQs gives us 4 links for stock photos http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/06/16/stock-photos/ however, I have located a total of 21 sources that can be found under “images” on this Resources page on my blog http://onecoolsite.wordpress.com/resources/ Also under “image tools” I have included several links to watermarking programs.
IMHO once you place something on the internet eventually you must face the reality that it will most likely be thieved. So, if you do not have:
(1) the time and energy to trace down who has thieved what from you;
(2) the time and energy to jump all the complaints to host and make DMCA complaints jumps;
(3) deep enough pockets to hire legal help to go after those who refuse to take your stuff down;
(4) and, if your are not mindful that you cannot get blood from a stone, then - you are in for a rough ride.
eeek… that’s kinda freaked me out. I link back as much as possible but sometimes I’m taking the piss out of sites I link back to. not with today’s post though….
Timethief - it is so good to see you back! You are SO sorely missed on the WordPress.com forums. I encourage everyone to check out TT’s blog. Even if you’re not using wordpress, you’ll learn a lot.
TT, If you have a moment, could you please explain what number 2 means? I’ve posted it almost as you wrote it, cleaning up only a typo, but the word “jumps” is giving me pause.
Nurse - It kind of slapped me awake, too. I don’t think you will have a problem, though, because fair use covers satire. How are you supposed to take the piss out of something if you can’t show it in the first place? Especially the wild stuff you throw at us.
Rositta - I hope you told B that on her blog!
Maybe I should trademark my photos and when they spread through the internet like wildfire, I’ll just sit back and start counting the euro/yen/pound/loonie/dollars!
I think the fact of the matter is when you put something out there, be it photos, words, facts or figures, you almost have to expect they’ll be ripped off. Sad but true…
The thing is, the law is supposed to protect legitimate copyright owners from having their work stolen and a profit made on it.
These people are turning the law on its head. They’re like a spring-loaded trap, ready to snap when someone touches the bait.
The site is based in Germany, and the three cases they featured were all German as well. I don’t know if this would fly in other countries, or if they could engage, say, a lawyer in the States to handle cases there.
You should really make an effort to see the show - they have the husband-and-wife team who own the site, their lawyer, all making jolly in front of the camera as they celebrate another victory for the cause of justice.
Hi there,
I look at my point number 2 today and I wince. It certainly does lack clarity. What I meant to say is that it takes a lot of time and energy to write up and document complaints to sent blogger, who had ripped off your work and, there is time and energy involved in the follow-up the email reply and response routine that follows when you do make contact. If the thief does not comply at that point then you must devote time and energy to write and document and file a DMCA complaint with the hosting company as well.
It’s sad but the situation is that most bloggers do not have as much time as they would like to have to devote to blogging, let alone, to dealing with content thieves. Given the lack of ethics and morality that we see in the blogosphere, where most bloggers are competitively chasing stats, page rankings and the almighty buck, IMO we should not be surprised that content is being ripped-off by sploggers - we should be surprised when it isn’t. And, that is what I mean by ’sad’.
Well, it seems I do have more to say so, why not? Some bloggers have blogs that are comprised solely of articles that are really nothing more than a re-blogging of the news, replete with youtube videos and videos from other sources. Such bloggers deliberately seek out ‘weird, sexual and/or sick’ news stories to pander to the easily titillated and they linked to each other’s non-content so readers keep seeing the same horse sex or donkey sex video over and over on site after site.
What’s worse is that these cunning bloggers provide only excerpts or titles on their front pages (they use of the ‘read more’ tag on every post) and lots of ’sexxy’ tags. This means that they get credit for 2 page views every time a reader clicks through from a title to a post only to find yet another youtube and, a phrase like, ‘this is so hilarious I almost peed my pants’.
You can always spot a hit slut by whom they pander to and how they construct their blogs. By over using the ‘read more’ tag you can get more title links on your front page and double the hits, which elevates your blog’s stats, even though the blogger’s actual contribution to the post, if any is made at all, is minimal. This is not a case of stolen content. The content will be a re-hash of the weird, awful or sick news or a video embed of something that sick people laugh at. This cynical viral parasitism exists in the ‘gray area’ of blogging and because it exists it creates an environment in which content thieves can flourish.
If you’re a decently serious amateur blogger, then an el-cheapo subscription to clipart.com is worth the money.
Even with the pitiful readership of my blog, I’ve still suffered unattributed image-theft. The photo of a tub of dickmilch seems rather popular.
Tell me, legally, is the Creative Commons licence worth the paper it’s written on? Er, the bytes it’s encoded in?
Headbang, I really have to do more reading on this. Considering there’s a branch of law dedicated solely to copyright, I hope the research will lead to some clarity, if not a law degree.
Timethief: it’s this grey area of “fair use” that has me puzzled. Is it OK to take someone else’s cartoon, for example, and write an opinion of it, and call that fair use? What if you take the same cartoon over and over, for months, with a comment every time? Is that fair use? I’m not so sure.
I’m glad to hear that someone else is also queasy about quasi blogging. It seems to me that using a tiny image (150 px) linked to the creator’s full-sixed cartoon and expressing an opinion should be acceptable. However, posting a full size cartoon without the creator’s written permission is theft. And, having the audacity to steal it without making any substantive commentary on it at all is even more offensive. Worse still would be if an image is ripped and then strategically given a deceptive “sexxy” headline in a blog post that brings in lots of hits to the thief’s blog for months on end. It’s unfortunate that blogs are rated based on hits and not on quality of content but, I haven’t a clue as to how ‘quality content’ could be ascertained. It’s a conundrum.
Hi Timethief,
The cartoon I refer to is called Comics I don’t Understand. They run mainstream cartoons every day, all the time. I asked them what they do about rights and they came back with fair use: since it’s a comment on the cartoon, they’re allowed to use it. What I don’t understand is if newspapers are paying good money for the right to use syndicated cartoons, how come a website can just grab it and post it, say, “I don’t understand it” and call it a critique?
I don’t understand it either. {shrug}
This is a standard fair use disclaimer.
Another perfect example of how laws are designed to be vague, so that lawyers will make money fighting over their interpretation. The disclaimer says this site may at times present copyrighted material. In the Comics blog I link to, they do it all the time. He is also probably not making a profit, but trying to - he’s got Amazon ads in the sidebar, anyway. If someone wants to sue him for copyright theft, will the defence of advancing some sort of understanding be enough? I’m not so sure. Almost his entire blog is based on the work of others.
Uh oh …
I take it was news to you too, az? Well, don’t worry. Just tell them it was all a comment on society, and you’re fine. (Read through the comments).
Thanks Ian,
Well, both really. I’m an established jobbing cartoonist and caricaturist. But I’m always looking to be ‘discovered’!
I’ve just recently discovered one of my poems being used on another forum, passed off as the poster’s material. So it is an issue.
Yeah, I did read the comments but it seems I might still be ‘at risk’ for the occasional posting of photos and cartoons, so I should probably take timethief’s advice and post a fair use disclaimer somewhere on my blog.
What about people who use famous cartoon characters as their avatar (I’ve seen quite a few of those)?
Whenever possible I credit the photos and paintings I use to illustrate my blog post topic. But sometimes, like today, the Jesus lightswitch photo was easily found on at least half a dozen other blogs, yet with no link back to the original photographer.
A few weeks ago I was contacted by a well-known Spanish magazine that wanted to use some of the photos on my tapas blog as they were doing an article on one of the restaurants I’d featured there. But after I wrote back to them asking if they would also post a credit linking back to my blog they wrote again saying they’d found some other photos. I wonder if they actually had or if they’ve just used mine anyhow (which are actually quite good!) and hoped I wouldn’t notice. As this would mean buying the next couple editions of this mag - which I don’t read myself - I’ve decided not to bother. Perhaps I should invest in some photo watermark software - haven’t been able to find any free stuff on the net.
Maybe you could just browse through the mag at your local magazine section, so you don’t actually have to buy it? That points to another thing, though: the impossibility of keeping track of where your stuff lands. And when you do find it, how much are you prepared to devote to pursuing them? This is why the bottom-feeders in this TV piece are so successful: they are set up to pursue, it’s their game. You, on the other hand, simply want some payment in kind for services rendered. Nobody wants to see their stuff used without credit, especially if it shows up in a high-circulation magazine. They should be paying freelancers or staff money to do their photography. If all they do is steal from the net, then people relying on that work for their bread and butter lose out.
Yeah, the newsagent at the end of my street is a friend so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me looking to see if MAN Magazine stole my stuff. I wouldn’t try it anywhere else because I also think it’s bad behaviour to peruse mags at length and then not buy them. So I’d ask his permission first.
Heck, I wasn’t even asking for money - just a link to my blog. Which is kind of a labour of love, so I don’t like to think of others making money off it.
@azahar
There are several free image programs on the net with watermarking features. There are 7 sources in this blog post Watermark Your Images so help yourself.
Hey, thanks timethief - I’ve bookmarked that and will check them out tomorrow.