This should be a warming to photographers who think that adding meta tags to get your photo found in Google search is going to get you plenty of business.

A photographer by the name of Zach was mildly surprised when his photo turned up in a mall. The story appear on Petapixel and goes like this.

Zach listed his photo with a photo credit at three online locations, but the last one used on his blog wasn't credited with a copyright notice. The first two were Flicker and Facebook and the last being his own blog.

 

How it got stolen was relatively simple. Remember how SEO pundits tell you to name your photo so that it gets discovered in a google photo search...well that is a bad fucking idea apparently. 

This is how Zach found out when he did a name search of his photo. Guess what, it came up in the top ten results and that is probably how it got stolen. 

Once a thief does a search, gets a low resolution file and extrapolates it to a bigger resolution size, there is no hope in hell he can't do a blow up poster of any kind. 

Well meaning photographers who post to places like 500px think that their photos are safe? In your fucking dreams!

All it takes is a screens shot and your picture is worth, well about next to nothing. 

And if you chased down the offenders, in this case...for Zach who lives in a country where copyright protection is guaranteed by law, who also demanded compensation was met with stiff resistance. 

The compensation was not agreed upon and guess what. Lawyers in the US had to say this to Zach.

"The photo stolen was not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office and without that, it would be hard to collect damages aside from usage fees."

So photographers, please don't think you have a piece of IP if you haven't registered it yet with the US copyright office and yes, registration isn't free of course. You pay for it and hopefully secure a windfall once some big corporation abuses your copyright and you sue the pants off them, that is...provided you had the money to pay a lawyer to sue.

I have come across job postings for Photo Editors with online sites which says...part of the job of the Photo Editor is to 'remove' watermarks so any talent with Photoshop will be deemed a talent. Needless to say, when you remove watermarks, it means you're openly stealing from a Google search. 

With this sort of image theft going on wholesale, it is little wonder that any photographer is seen as nothing more than a Photoshop Hack. 

Copyright when it comes to image is nothing more than the right to copy. That's all. So when you display your photo somewhere on the Internet, be prepared to have that taken by others. There is no putting the toothpaste back into the tube once its been squeezed out.

This just in. Alamy has revised its contributor agreement after receiving stinging criticism in regard to how it pursues copyright infringements. The original terms were sent in February and was all ready to go live in April, 2015. But photographers started to protest some of the amendments to the previous terms and this started the ball rolling for a change. Shooting stock is a very difficult trade. You can spend thousands shooting images which you hope to sell only to see a similar offering for Royalty Free licensing. 

Contacting the customer to check on copyright usage was one of the critical issues that led to an amendment. On the left hand side is the original usage and contributor agreement terms and on the left, you have the amendment. 

In the original revised terms sent to contributors in February, 2015. Alamy wanted photographers to stay the hell away from customers. I mean, who wants their customers hounded by photographers? Unfortunately, this didn't go well with contributors who say that Alamy just wants to protect copyright abusers by buying the least costly license for a photo and using it verbatim on every single imaginable print and web collateral. 

The problem is still Alamy's stand is on its own pursuant of the copyright infringer. Here, it is closely worded to imply that if they do take action, the nett amount recovered from the offender will be first used to pay of its own legal team before handing any residual amount due to you. 

In other words, if you spend most of your time combing the net for people who use your photos without paying, then you could ranking a huge bill of your own. Apparently, Alamy will have to determine if the offending party was a client or customers of Alamy when this all happens. No where does it say that it will pursue the offender for leaked images. 

How does a Photo Leak into the Mainstream?

Alamy has a distributor network, who in turn help to market your photos to countries where it is not reaching out to. It is through here that the leaks will happen. High resolution images could be passed on for customer validation and rejected, and later used in customers collaterals. But Alamy also has its own preferred client list, who may in turn have those photos picked out, paid for and later used in other marketing collaterals where the original licensing does not cover. 

For example, for print use and for web use. People can easily scale a web quality for use on print. It's not rocket science. This is done on a everyday basis for photos which do not have the resolution to meet the demands of the print industry. 

Just because someone buys a medium quality image for use does not mean it can't be upscaled to print use. 

Print is very difficult to pursue. Unless you have a printed copy of the offending collateral, chances are you don't have a chance in court regardless of where you sold your license. 

How can I protect My Images from such Infringements?

Technically, you can't. If you find one on the web, you could issue a DMCA on a web host where the site resides. It won't work if the offending server or web host in located in a country that have very different copyright laws than the one found in the US of A. 

When an image leaks onto the Internet, chances are it's a done deal. Your only hope is to petition Google with a DMCA to take down photos which appear on their search engine so that the you have some control over the spread of the wildfire. 

Google images can be your best buddy if you want to find stolen pictures but you have to be Internet savvy to know how to issue a take down. 

For example, a Fortune 500 company residing in Europe might use your stolen image in a slider, you can have that offending site taken off the Google search results. This will impact the offending party's capability to have a page rank and this is probably your best bet. 

Those mom and pop stores? Well you could do the same if you have the time but you have to show that you own those pictures (having a stock image agency link to the stolen photos can help). To know more about how DMCA works on the Internet, you can go to Chilling Effects to get a better picture. 

First and foremost, the picture above is credited to David Slater, who says that he owned the photo but he didn't capture it. He created the conditions that were optimum for such a picture and as such had claimed to it. Unfortunately, Wiki-commons disagreed and now there is a ongoing copyright battle on who owns the picture. 

What is Public Domain?

Wiki-commons lets people put up copyright free images for everyone's use and these become public domain picture which cannot be used commercially. But seriously folks, do you think people will ever care to respect this bit?

public domain images of Steve Jobs

There are plenty of images in public domain which you can use for blogs and researched papers that will be deposited in pubic domain. Such images cannot be used for commercial gain so even if you used this picture on a banner advertising your garage sale, that would be in breach of the law, citing wiki-commons isn't going to save you.

Who can put Pictures in Public Domain?

Only the photographer can decide to donate a picture he took to public domain. Nothing else matters. The problem here is two folds, Slater didn't take the picture nor did he get a signed release from the Monkey as a model. This makes the whole idea on Slater owning the picture very murky.

So technically, the monkey owns the picture, regardless if it was Slater's camera that took the picture. And since Slater did not get a signed model contract....there is no copyright contention.

Monkey See Monkey Do

Slater baited the monkey to take the selfie. But in the end, he could have just sold the picture as something he had owned. To save himself, he could have fibbed about the picture and then made millions in selling the image for commercial use. Selfie was in essence a bad tag for the picture because this is what created the copyright debate.

Stupidly, he didn't have the brains to do this and now it is too late. However all is not lost. Even if the image is in public domain, it still cannot be used commercially. Slater can still profit from this if he can prove he is the holder of the analogue image.

Opps. He shot digital. Damn. He could have gone the analogue route and saved himself a ton of problems.

Digital files are useless. You may own the RAW image of the file but no one is going to look at a RAW file as proof of copy. Anyone can technically steal a RAW image from your HD and put that up as his own. Even a high resolution JPG can be turned into a DNG file with the right app. Quite a different story if you had a copy of the analogue image in your HD and the real slide or film image in safe keeping.

Lesson is, professional stock image photographers would be better off shooting analogue to protect their own interest. Digital is vaporware...think about it.

This is the lesson gleaned from photographers all over the world who have accidentally shot and released images onto the Internet and regretted it later as it would have cost them lots in commercial licensing.

Petapixel.com carried this rather amusing story about a photographer fighting for damages resulting from the use of the images.

"In its new motion, Getty and AFP argue that their conduct was “careless” but not willfully malicious, thus shielding them from the maximum penalty. They argue the most Morel is entitled to is a single DMCA penalty of $2,500 and actual damages of $200,000 — legal fees in the case are estimated to have reached northwards of $8 million."

The last bit probably gets photographers worried. If a DMCA damage is only 200K, WTF is the legal fees all about?

Stolen Goods and Usage Abuse

Having your pictures stolen is probably as old as prostitution itself. These days, someone will rip your image and use it unconditionally via Instagram, posters or a soup kitchen. But there are generally two types of infringes you need to be concern about. People who stole your goods, and the people who abuse the limited copyright license of the image.

The first kind is what AFP and Getty got themselves into. They have to show that they had taken sufficient care in finding out the real owner of the pictures instead of just picking the first guy that is associated with it. By right, the photographer in this case should have sued both the thief and Getty+AFP. But the case does not mention this so I can't be sure if it did happen.

The second ones are those who bought a limited copyright license from you and used it on everything they can think of, including the condom packaging you found from a third world country. These you can do nothing about. They are after all your clients and no carefully worded demand for additional payment is going to win you compensation. 

Thieves like Us

Upscaling a low resolution picture is relatively easy as long as you have the right software. There are a few out there that does just this. Often, you can upscale or enlarge a stolen picture by 3 times. Perfect Resize 8 has a fancy patented, fractal-based interpolation algorithms that makes sure your image stays the same once upscaled.

Any stolen picture from the Internet can be given a new lease of life, including the humble screen capture image. This means no picture is safe, and to post your picture up onto the Web is in some ways giving it away. I am sure as hell you haven't got a team of lawyers looking after your images.

How Pictures get Stolen

Instagram, Flickr and any image hosting service. That's how popular these spots are image thieves. I have known some restaurants or cafes who have stolen images used on their menu. Heck, why shouldn't they? You posted it, and there is no water marking or demand for payment, so sue me!

Even with watermarking, you're just adding a layer of inconvenience as any good photoshop digital artist will be able to do away with it.

Searching for Misused Images

Google Image search is probably the best way to find them. They index more pages than you have read books. Drop an image onto the Google Image search bar and you'll be given all the results. Neat. So now you know your image has been abused and misused. What do you do now?

For someone who has stolen your image, you can issue an Internet take down, which is hardly useful if pictures of your beloved Pomeranian Husky is used in a restaurant Menu in Vietnam or for that matter, for the site to be hosted on a Web server that resides in Somalia. DMCA infringement take downs are as useful as a dog whistle—not everyone will hear it. Fair use compensation? That's like asking for a free blowjob while negotiating with a Hooker.

Why Copyright Does not Pay

In the US, you need to register for a copyright of the said image to enjoy additional protection. If you do sue the party involved, your lawyers are looking at the $$$ legal fees as oppose to staking your claim. If you lose, you still have to pay the lawyer. They don't work for free Starbucks coffees.

Legal fees are totally separate from actual damages. If you wish to pursue a case against someone who has infringed on you, make sure you have a good lawyer who doesn't charge that much and are in love with your work. Or for that matter, an avid photographer himself so that he's as interested as you are in protecting image rights. Everything else is secondary.