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/.
When a photo gallery or photo sharing website holds your digital photos hostage and demands payment to avoid the total destruction of your photos that were uploaded to the site based on the promise of “free” service, consumers like you can get stuck. When you clicked on “Accept” on the Terms and Services (TOS) during sign-up process, you might not have read it thoroughly and you perhaps missed the fine prints in the TOS allowing them to change the TOS whenever they want.
That’s what happened to a user of Kodak Gallery. The customer found out that she now has to spend at least $4.99 a year on prints or other products to keep her photos on Kodak Gallery from being deleted. It certainly sucks standing in the consumer’s shoes. However the business has the goal of making money. Kodak simply wants to focus on its best customers, not folks who merely want to take advantage of free picture storage. And its new rules are hardly unusual in the online photo business.
Even if you pay for the service from beginning, it is still not certain you will have access to the original photos without paying extra. Some sites are charging extra to download original high resolution photos. Some sites may suddenly go out of business and take all of your photos with it. Especially for those sites are offering unlimited free storage and sharing but doesn’t seem to have any valid business model to generate revenue.
What’s the virtue of the story? Keep a safe backup of your own photos yourself.
You are probably familiar with Chuck Westfall, but how about the fake Chuck Westfall. Just like the fake Steve Jobs blog, it is a parody blog. Every visitor should be able to find that out just by seeing the word “Fake” all over the place and reading the absurd posts. However Canon and their lawyers don’t seem to think so or still don’t like that. They sent a take down notice to the hosting company Wordpress. Fortunately Wordpress stood firm behind the blog (a Canon logo was however removed by the blog owner). My words to Canon: Why not save some legal expenses in such a bad economy?
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Posted in
Legal issues on February 16th, 2009.
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