Using pics from my site

Keith Webb · #1 19-12-11, 03:23

My attention was drawn to this site where some of my images have been posted without permission:

They didn't even get the place name right.

Does anyone know whose site it is? I don't remember being asked.

I generally don't mind giving permission for others to use my images when I have been asked and proper accreditation has been made.

This is the page they were 'lifted' from: http://oldcmp.net/yotcv_1.html

2nd AIF · #2 19-12-11, 04:19

Thats Col's website, contact him at

Col Filtness
stallchange@yahoo.com

http://www.centurion-mbt.com/

Keith Webb · #3 19-12-11, 04:56

Thanks for that Tony.

lynx42 · #4 22-12-11, 07:45

Keith, I agree that you should be asked before photos from your site are used on another without any credit, But I am glad I followed up the link and discovered the great research and facts on the Australian Centurian Tanks that Col has put together.

All 143 Cents. are now accounted for, I believe, and that would have been a mamouth task.

RegardsRick.

Keith Webb · #5 22-12-11, 09:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by lynx42

Keith, I agree that you should be asked before photos from your site are used on another without any credit, But I am glad I followed up the link and discovered the great research and facts on the Australian Centurian Tanks that Col has put together.

All 143 Cents. are now accounted for, I believe, and that would have been a mamouth task.

RegardsRick.

Yes he's done a great job there and he contacted me to explain the photos had been forwarded to him by someone else who didn't say where they had come from.
He has also republished them with a credit on a newer site as he can't access the old one.

Phil Waterman · #6 22-12-11, 15:49

Hi Keith

Yes it is a little strange when you are looking around the web to suddenly find your own pictures on somebody else web site, some times with attribution often without.

Must admit that until recently that I started being more meticulous about documenting where I found photos. Only time I used to be very careful to label the source of photos was when somebody sent photos and asked that I not copy or distribute them. Those I keep in a separate file in the computer with each marked as read only no copy. But more recently I started making better notes on photos I find on the web and save. My reason was more selfish than wanting to give proper attribution. It started to drive me crazy when I have a picture in my files and I can't remember or find the source.

The statistics and tracking software that tracks my web site provides some interesting things beside how many people viewed what. One of the features I find interesting is Links from an external page (other web sites except search engines) it tells me how many, today it is 433 links but I can also look at the full list of sites and just click on the site and it will connect me.

There are some strange web sites that have linked to my site, but one of the strangest was Disney World was linked to my site for years because I had used the phrase Beauty and the Beast.

Cheers Phil

Lang · #7 22-12-11, 23:28

Keith,

I have been down this road with my web site and really there is nothing you can do. I have a friend who has got himself into the commercial law niche specialisng in IT matters and his thoughts are:

Once you put something on the World Wide Web you are quite clearly offering the material to everyone in the world and anyone can use that material provided you can not claim and PROVE a physical or financial loss. How you are going to sue anyone in one of the 194 countries outside Australia has me tossed.

Having stuff on the web with copyright all over it does not prevent private use because you have sent it to 6 billion people. Private use can include a non-commercial second web site because they are only giving your material to the same 6 billion people you have already given it to.

Recourse can only happen if someone makes money from your written or graphic material (and much of your stuff is not original but arranged and edited material from third party sources) or you lose money, reputation, business opportunities etc from their republishing.

Of course the whole thing would turn into a shambles if everything published by everyone was pirated willy nilly so we rely on good manners to keep the thing on an even keel. The cost of legal action and the insurmountable problem of proving then quantifying losses and damage prevent almost anyone (including multi-national companies) proceeding against "borrowers". The worst you will get is a letter threatening all sorts of legal action if you don't remove their copyrighted or trademark material.

The best you can hope for is acknowledgement of the source, which in itself is a huge barrier to any action by the owner. You can even use Coke in your commercial website if it is in context ie "Our soft drink contains 30% less sugar than Coke(R)" and you can even put a picture of a Coke bottle beside yours in the ad if you acknowledge their trademark. People don't often do this by convention as apart from being bad business running down your competitors it gives them free exposure.

Keith, don't get too upset by seeing your stuff elsewhere and give up - your site is too good to lose. Just suck it up and ask people, whom you can contact, to please acknowledge you as the source. For anyone else I would also ask that you show a bit of respect for the efforts of any web site owner to find, produce and arrange material by acknowledging the source of anything you use. There are several quite long articles in Wikipedia written by me but stolen from various magazines and web sites by others who have submitted them under their own name - such is life.

Lang

Keith Webb · #8 22-12-11, 23:51

Thanks Lang

I didn't want to sound too precious about it - but of course it did look rather blatant.

A lot of photographers, particularly in the aviation world watermark their images.

The discussion it has provoked I think has been worthwhile.

Mike Cecil · #9 12-01-12, 23:19

And it doesn't end with images.

I have seen slabs of my research and writing taken and reproduced without credit. They have been sourced from books, newsletters, magazines and in some cases, even private letters, including individual Centurion histories, that were then provided by the vehicle owner to the website operator and reproduced, often with the name/signature block deleted.

Lang's right: there is not much that can be done about it, but now when I write an article for a website, I make sure it's prefaced with 'may not be reproduced without permission'. It has some limited effect.

I suppose what bugs me just a little is that the website operators who vacuum up all this 'free' stuff that took years to research, are then regarded as the 'source' of expertise.

Mike C

Lang · #10 13-01-12, 00:11

Mike,

It is not all one sided. I have often submitted photos in the public domain or my personal photos to various web sites for the enjoyment and enlightenment of those interested. A number of these webmasters carry regular tirades about stealing stuff off their site and spoil the photos with a large watermark or COPYRIGHT written right across it.

The sheer arrogance of these people doing this to photos submitted by their forum members and not sourced or owned by anyone, least of all them, muddies the water. In their rightiousness they have stolen and laid claim to others' work.

Lang

Dianaa · #11 13-01-12, 00:33

A lot of people merely use the Google Image search and use the properties box to identify the source location to repost/republish. So in effect it displays in the new location without actually being re-published. In a recent thread I used Noel Patrick's Scammell image hosted on the REMLR site.

It is the same as those of us who use an image hosting service like photobucket.

The only ways to protect images and text online are with electronic security measures embedded into the website or to watermark your images in a similar manner to the AWM. At least then while they may have breached your copyright at least you are identified as the copyright holder.

Lang · #12 13-01-12, 01:27

The use of watermarking may or may not be legitimate ie the webmaster laying claim to other peoples' efforts.

Mike may be able to throw some light on this but I think the AWM collection includes tens of thousands of photos in the public domain yet they still watermark them.

A case in point is a whole series of photos taken by my father in New Guinea during WW2 on his private camera. He says his CO while in a visit to Terapo, where he was movement control officer loading the landing barges to go up river to the Bulldog Track and Wau, asked for copies of the photos so he gave him the negatives (he still has the original photos). Lo and behold he only found them recently at age 92 when I showed him how to search the AWM collection - acknowledging him as photographer - but watermarked as AWM material?

The AWM must have tens of thousands of personal photos which are now in the public domain watermarked. Having to quite reasonably cover the cost for the archiving, copying etc by making you pay for hard copies of photos you want is one thing but this is a national collection which the taxpayers rightly should maintain and they should not be able to deface electronically photos submitted by individuals for the enlightenment of the future generations.

If the photographer was on the payroll eg Damien Parer then the government/AWM fairly own them until copyright expires - which I think has now happened to much of the material.

It is all such a grey area full of miffed people complaining of their stuff being stolen (most of which they stole, borrowed, edited or rewrote in the first place) and bush lawyers claiming rights under probably the most subjective, airy fairy and unenforcable area of law - that of copyright.

Robin Craig · #13 13-01-12, 02:10

I have a couple of experiences of this.

A certain UK MV parts supplier started using a picture of my Ferret on their website front page. I asked them to remove the VRN or give me credit. Its still there but modified now.

The other incident was when a photojournalist friend picked up a certain intel companies freebie disk of images at a show. He found his own images on the disk which were sold to them as "one time usage" at the time of submission in an article they paid for and published. When he challenged them they said "sue us", we will drag it out for years, we are bigger than you.

The same company bought some of my pictures, again for "one time use" and they popped up being used by them in other material. I started pegging invoices at them but being transatlantic from here it was awkward as they wouldn't pay and played out the same line to me.

Hence I gave up doing a lot of photojournalism work.

R

Dianaa · #14 13-01-12, 03:14

Now if we were muscians or movie makers we would be receiving the full forcce of the law in relation to our loss of copyright.

Richard Coutts-Smith · #15 13-01-12, 07:11

Have noticed over the last few months an upsurge in books on my fields of interest. They appear to be sourced entirley from Wikipedia content. Eg; http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Daimler-i...item231758b489

"this content has been curated from Wikipedia articles and images under Creative Commons licensing"
"We believe books such as this represent a new and exciting lexicon in the sharing of human knowledge"

I believe this to be a poor use of free and unverified information, some of the books I have seen listed are not cheap.
I see the willingness to share worthwhile information with others on the web dwindling rapidly. Soon it will be all worthless Twitter......
Rich