You Never Know Where Your Online Photos May End Up

In this story, a mommy blogger got her family photo stolen and the photo ended up in an ad in a Czech Republic grocery store, advertising its quick home delivery service.

Well, something like this (or even worse) can happen to anyone who posts digital photo online in blogs, social networking sites, or photo sharing sites. Putting the note “All right reserved” next to the photo doesn’t deter people who are determined to copy your image.

There some good advices offered in the story:

  • Don’t post high resolution photo online. Use just large enough size (800×600 or less) for viewing online but not very useful for commercial use. Add watermarks on images if possible.
  • Don’t post any photo that may reveal where you live and other private information you don’t want others to know.
  • Use a unique file name for your photo so you can search periodically online to see if it has been misused.
  • Embed photos in a flash image viewer if possible. It makes it very difficult to copy.
  • Use privacy controls on photo sharing or social networking sites to control who sees your photos.

Additional reading: Stolen Picture – The story and reader comments (more than 600 of them) at http://extraordinarymommy.com/.

Posted in: Legal issues, Miscellaneous on June 26th, 2009. Trackback URI
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Comments

  • http://blog.sinarbron.com Michael H

    I also used to always use a unique filename in my images. BUt it is too easy to rename images. I recently found Tin Eye (http://tineye.com/) a reverse image search. It seems to work for finding images that match the binary data of the image file. So if you load an image into Tin Eye it will actually find all the images on the web that look similar to your image. It pretty cool.

    Michael
    sinar – broncolor – foba

    • http://dptnt.com/ picmax

      Not all images stolen were used as is or with simple scaling. The photos may be incorporated into a design that effectively makes it impossible to identify.

      More impractical reason is to upload every photos you want to check. It may take huge amount of time.

      There are actually quite a few people who use images without renaming them. Just search for “istock_” and you will find many images from iStockPhoto.

  • http://fotoblogg.wordpress.com Uffe

    I completely agree with the guidelines above, but unfortunately they are not enough.

    I have a little visited blog, on which a friend and I publish photographs we have taken (usually taken the same day they are published). One of these had vastly more viewings than any other, so I thought it might have found it’s way onto some other pages.

    An hour or so of using Google, Yahoo and Altavista provided me with a set of web pages on which I found my photograph, and _nobody_ had asked for permission to use it.

    I don’t mind the individuals who put my picture on their personal web pages, but would like to be asked before the fact. Those individuals I caught with my photograph on their web pages got an angrily worded email from me, asking them to either make the picture on their page into a link to my page, or remove the picture. All have complied.

    I did, however, also find the same picture on two web pages of a commercial nature. And this is not OK with me. If my picture is to be used in a commercial setting, I shall be asked for permission before the fact. And if I choose to not give permission, my photograph shall not be used.

    As things were, I sent Jay Klusky and Gita Rebbapragada an invoice for SEK 3000 each, as per Swedish standard procedure in cases like this. Neither has payed, and Jay Klusky has sent me an email saying, point blank, that he will not pay me since I have suffered no damage.

    Both Jay Klusky and Gita Rebbapragada saw to it that my picture was gone from their web pages within hours of me sending the invoice (the next working day). Gita Rebbapragada had the entire web page withdrawn, whereas Jay Klusky replaced my picture with another. Strangely enough, he has not seen it fit to replace the very same picture (ie _my_ picture) on another of his web pages…

    Some more info, for those who care: Jay Klusky had my picture on his front page (www.jayklusky.com), from which it is gone. It still remains on http://www.jayklusky.com/Jay_Klusky,Ph.D./Mentor.html.
    Gita Rebbapragada has (had?) an email address to Duke University, and her web page (http://www.footprintsconference.com) was used to advertise a conference that Duke University was involved in in some way. Although she owns the domain name herself I draw the conclusion she was acting as an employee of or student at Duke University. If you use Yahoo to look after a picture using “footprints in the snow” as search term you will find her web site in the results list, nicely displaying my photograph.

    Further reading available at: http://photo.net/business-photography-forum/00T5B5 and for those who understand Swedish (or will use a robot translator) at http://www.fotosidan.se/forum/showthread.php?threadid=105513 . Links to all web pages concerned can be found on both of these pages.

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