Tag Archives: copyright

Strike is Over…For Now

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An Eclectic Mind and Maria’s Guides are back online.

Stop SOPA / PIPA
CC0 Image: KSimmulator

Yesterday, Wednesday, January 18, 2012, this blog, An Eclectic Mind, and my other main site, Maria’s Guides, went “on strike.” Like so many larger and more influential sites — such as Wikipedia, Craigslist, Reddit, and Boing Boing — I’d decided to help spread the word about the potential implications of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) by giving site visitors an idea of what things could be like if SOPA or PIPA became law. While I don’t claim that either I or this site have the ability to sway public opinion, I believe that a strike can be most effective when everyone participates. I was just doing my part.

(To be accurate, I need to point out that my sites were still accessible after seeing the initial information screen. I’ve worked very hard to build readership on The Eclectic Mind and Maria’s Guides and didn’t want to completely alienate visitors who were looking for specific information. (At least 75% of traffic to my sites comes from search engines.) But in order to see the content, visitors had to look at the Strike message and find the “Continue to Site” link. Or visit it more than once during the day. And judging from the site stats for the day, I can only assume that many people did not take that extra step — which doesn’t surprise me, given the extremely short attention spans of people these days.)

Amazingly, there are many Americans who don’t realize how SOPA and PIPA could affect them. And, as evidenced on Twitter yesterday, there are a surprising number of people who have never heard of either one. (If you’re one of these people, you might want to watch this video, which explains it using a whiteboard and a discussion of the actual wording of the legislation.)

So I’m glad I participated. I helped spread the word. I hope a lot of people did and that awareness for the potential problems was raised. With the participation of over 6,000 sites, I was one of many.

Did the January 18 Blackout/Strike help? This Forbes article certainly makes it seem as if it did. PC World confirms this. And Wikipedia reports lots of support from users.

But the fight is not over. Many Senators and members of Congress still support SOPA, PIPA, or both — including, embarrassingly, BOTH of the idiot Senators from my home state of Arizona. Although the vast majority of informed Americans area against SOPA/PIPA, our elected lawmakers apparently don’t remember who they are supposed to serve: the American people — not special interest groups. The only way they can be reminded is if we remind them — by contacting them and letting them know what we think.

I’m doing my part. Are you doing yours?

Because if this legislation passes, sites like mine — and so many others across the web — might go dark forever.

Stop SOPA/PIPA. Stop Internet censorship.

Protecting My Work

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Site changes to images, file links, and RSS feeds.

Well, I’ve had enough. Enough of people using my images on their sites or trying to pass them off as their own. Enough of people hot linking to content on my site, forcing me to host images and files for them. Enough of feed scrapers stealing entire blog posts and using them to fill their sites with content.

So I’ve made some changes to this blog:

  • Through the use of a WordPress plugin called No Right Click Images Plugin, you can no longer right click on an image to display a context menu and download it to your computer — or do anything else with it. As an added bonus, you can’t drag it off the Web page and onto your desktop to save it either.
  • Through the use of some new code in my .htaccess file, if you embed an image hosted on my server in a Web page or use it in a blog post, e-mail message, or other location, you’ll see a message like the one shown here, telling the viewer that the content must be viewed on this site.
  • Through the use of a WordPress Plugin called Download Protect, you can no longer use a direct link to PDF or other selected files on this site. To download the file, you must go to the page on which its link appears and use that link to download it. This prevents file leeching — folks linking directly to a file hosted on my site, sucking my bandwidth without visitors ever seeing the post related to the file.
  • And finally, after a long run with full RSS feeds, I’ve switched back to summary feeds. This means that instead of being able to read entire blog posts from this site in your feed reader, you can now only read the title and summary. You’ll have to click a link to read the post and see its images. Although I’ve been using one-line summaries for all blog posts for a very long time, I’ll do my best to expand those summaries so readers know what they’re missing by not visiting the site.

I do want to remind everyone that the contents of this blog are copyrighted. I have every right to protect my work.

Internet content theft is possibly the biggest problem that original content creators like me face every time we add content to our sites. While these measures won’t prevent all content theft, they will make it a bit harder for thieves to steal my work.

Hopefully, these measures will also encourage more site visitors to interact with me and other visitors, share feedback, and encourage me to produce more interesting content.

Your feedback is welcome; use the Comments link or form for this post.

There IS Such a Thing as Too Much Business

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When that business is being conducted at a loss.

I’ve been deeply involved in the Groupon debate for the past few days.

Earlier in the summer, I’d bought a Groupon from a Twitter friend and had used it to buy some jewelry at half price. Later, in August, I was approached by a Groupon clone company and got the details on what they really cost a small business. I did some math, realized it would never work for my business, and blogged about it .

Only a week or two later, I heard a story on NPR about Groupon in which a friend of mine with a business similar to mine was interviewed. He seemed to say positive things in the interview. When I called him, he gave more concrete information that didn’t seem too positive. I spent half a day crunching the numbers again and still couldn’t see how Groupon could benefit me.

I put that aside and got on with my life.

Back into the Debate

Yesterday, my attention was captured by a story on Plagiarism Today about a photographer who had been caught apparently passing off professional photographers’ images as hers on her Web site. The whole thing blew up in her face when she offered a 1-hour portrait sitting with print and CD of images for $65 through Groupon. She’d sold over 1,000 of these — far more than any photographer could complete in a year — when someone pointed out that photos on her Web site belonged to other photographers. She attempted to say that her site was hacked, but it was pointed out that the same photos also appeared on her Facebook page. Then her site and Facebook page went down; when her site reappeared it had a collection of crap photos that my mother could have taken with a Kodak 110 camera. (My mother is a horrible photographer.)

If you’re interested in seeing how the situation developed, read the comments from the Groupon thread, which were preserved by Petapixel after Groupon cancelled the offer, refunded the money, and deleted the thread. (A little too late to put out that fire.)

This story was picked up by many other sites, including TechCrunch. Their focus was on the ability of a business to effectively service Groupon customers, Groupon’s apparent failure to properly vet the services it features, and the hardship incurred by at least one Groupon merchant, Posie’s Diner. Since I’ve always thought that the Groupon model could be potentially harmful to a small business merchant using their service to advertise, I went to the Posie’s Diner blog post and read the story. It’s an honest and rather sad account by the restaurant owner who wound up having difficulties meeting payroll expenses while accepting the Groupons she’d sold. Each one had a face value of $13 but she’d received only $3 for each one. That meant she’d have to sell $13,000 of product for only $3,000 in revenue. The blog post explains the other related problems, which are mostly customer related.

Some Commenters Are Jerks

To make it clear, Posie’s Diner does not blame Groupon. She admits she made a mistake and takes full responsibility for it. But that didn’t stop the usual bunch of jerks from making nasty comments on her blog post. This one really pissed me off:

Businesses that complain about too much business should not be in business.

Wow. This guy needs to get a clue. If every sale you make comes at a loss, then even one sale is “too much business.”

That’s the situation I would have faced if I went with the Groupon clone — or Groupon. My margins are so low that I’d lose money on every single sale. I didn’t need that kind of business. No business does.

Is Groupon a Problem?

I admit that I resent the idea of a company making money off my hard work while I lose money on deeply discounted sales. Posie’s might have made a mistake going with Groupon, but it’s a mistake they won’t make again. I just won’t make that mistake at all.

To be fair, I read both good and bad comments all over the Web about Groupon from both merchants and customers. Clearly, there are possibilities for using the service with success. I just can’t figure out what they could be for my business. But there’s also a lot of pain in the Groupon model: the financial hardship of businesses with too many Groupon sales, the difficulty for customers being able to redeem Groupon goods and services due to crowds and overbookings.

Back to the “Photographer”

The idiot “photographer” who unknowingly pulled me back into the Groupon debate is truly a fool. Not only did she commit fraud when attempting to use other photographers’ work as examples of her own to sell her services, but she sold far more Groupons than she could ever expect to accept. If she hadn’t been revealed as a scammer in time to cancel the sale, she likely would have been out of business before long. After all, she was making less than $35 on each hour-long session at a client’s home. Between transportation costs and materials costs, she would have been in the red from day one. Would 1,700 sales at only $35 each have been “too much business” for her? I think so.

Then, when customers starting seeing the dismal quality of her work, would Groupon have refunded their money? And what would they have done when the fraud claims starting coming in and Groupon was called out for not properly vetting the offer?

Or maybe she was a true scammer who never planned to do any Groupon work. Perhaps she planned to just take the money and run.

Clearly, there’s some kind of problem with Groupon that needs attention. I’ll continue to watch from the sidelines. But I certainly won’t be giving Groupon any business in any form.

DocStoc Sells Your Personal Documents

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Your privacy is obviously not their concern.

This morning, when going through the Google Alerts set up for my name — one of the tools I use to track down copyright infringement — I found a link on a company called DocStoc. The link was to a copy of my resume, created back in 2004, that included a variety of personal information about me, including my name; my city, state, and zip; my old e-mail address at my domain name; and my job history up to that point. The document was listed as “public domain,” but a Download link required you to have an account with DocStoc to download the document.

Needless to say, I was outraged.

I e-mailed the company and filled out a DMCA takedown notice on their site. I also demanded to know who had uploaded the document so I could take legal action against him/her.

If you have any sort of Internet or Web presence, I highly recommend that you go to DocStoc, perform a search on your name, and use their online DMCA Notification form to get whatever personal documents that are found removed.

Do not support this organization by buying documents that could be stolen from their sources.

Why I’m Watermarking All of My “Good” Photos

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And why other serious photographers should, too.

Bowman Lake
This photo of Bowman Lake at Glacier National Park appears in my photo gallery, Flying M Photos.

The watermark / copyright notice argument goes back and forth all the time.

On one side are the bloggers and readers of Web content who have created and seen more crap online than the rest of the human race combined. These people claim that copyright notices on photos are tacky and make the photos look ugly. They go on to say — and there is definitely some truth to this — that the average photo on the Web is so poor in quality that the photographer has no need to worry about it being stolen.

On the other side are the serious — or possibly professional — photographers who want to show off their work online but protect it from theft. These people are tired of seeing the results of their hard work and investment in costly equipment appearing on someone else’s Flickr account or in blog posts. Or, as in my case, in an e-mail postcard sent to me.

Why People Steal Photographs and other Web Content

Joshua Tree Bouquet
I clearly recall lying on my stomach on cold rock to get the right angle for this shot. Photographed at Joshua Tree National Park.

There are two reasons why people steal photographs and other content they find on the Web:

  • They mistakenly believe that anything that appears on the Web is in the public domain. This is not true. Most Web content is protected by the same copyright law as the most recent Dan Brown masterpiece of fiction (yes, I’m being sarcastic) or Black Eyed Peas single (do they still call them that?) or Pixar animated feature film. When these people honestly don’t know any better, they’re making an honest mistake. But when they’re told they’re infringing someone’s copyright and they refuse to believe it, they’re being downright stupid and putting themselves in the next group of people.
  • They simply don’t care about the rights of content creators. These people know that what they’re doing is wrong but they simply don’t care. Perhaps they think they’ll get away with it. Or that since everyone does it, the content creator won’t bother trying to stop them. They’re wrong. Many bloggers, photographers, and other content creators actively pursue copyright infringers — and win in court.

I follow many photographers on Twitter and have seen more than one of them complain about their work being used elsewhere without their permission. In many cases, a bunch of us will “gang up” on a copyright infringer to attack him/her for his actions in blog or photo comments. This usually gets some kind of result. A properly prepared DMCA Takedown Notice usually does a better job.

Just Say No to Flickr

In one blatant case I recall on Flickr, a woman was stealing photos from photographers all over the Web and passing them off as her own. If she really had such a huge, diverse library of quality photos, she’d be famous. But all she had was a big, diverse collection of quality photos she’d stolen from other photographers, removing any copyright notices she found along the way. It was quite easy to convince the powers that be at Flickr that she was a thief. Flickr closed down her account. Has she learned her lesson? Who knows?

The worst thing about Flickr is that if someone steals a photo and puts it on his/her Flickr account under a Creative Comments Attribution License, anyone else is free to use the image if they give the Flickr user credit. That means that not only is he/she making a photographer’s work “legal” to reproduce, but he/she will get credit instead of the photographer!

As you can imagine, I don’t use Flickr. It simply makes content theft too easy.

Why I’m Watermarking

I’ll be the first to agree that watermarking photos — putting a visible copyright notice on the face of a photo — can be downright ugly. Depending on how it’s done, it can really detract from the aesthetics of the photograph as a whole. That’s why I’ve avoided them for so long.

But the other day, I got an e-mail from one of Flying M Air‘s aerial photography clients. He’d given me permission to include some of his images on Flying M Air’s Client Photos page (since removed). Flying M Air has an unusual photo format. Each photo is brought into Photoshop, given a yellow background, white border, and drop shadow. It’s then tilted 2° or 3° to give it the feel of a photo album. I purposely use small images, not only to offer more room for text but to make the photos less useful to a thief. Unfortunately, one of his photos had been stolen and it appeared in a Flickr photo stream. The photographer was certain it had come from my site. He said that he’d given me permission to reproduce them, but only if I watermarked them. (I honestly don’t remember the watermark requirement.) To avoid problems in the future, I simply removed his photos from my site. If he experiences any more theft, it won’t come from me.

But the whole thing got me thinking. Here was a professional photographer whose work was being lifted from a third party site and being displayed on yet another site. He’d relied on me to watermark his work. Wouldn’t it have been better if he simply watermarked it himself?

And wouldn’t it be better if I simply watermarked my best work myself?

You might be asking why: what’s the purpose?

The purpose is education. While a watermark probably won’t deter a content thief who simply doesn’t care that he’s stealing from me, it might educate the person who thinks all content on the Web is free to take and use as desired. Or it might protect my work from the person who thinks that only those photos with a copyright notice are protected.

My client issued a takedown notice to the person who stole his photo from my site. The photo was immediately removed. I like to think that the person who stole it simply didn’t know any better. Now he does.

Zenfolio

I should mention here that in addition to my photoblog, I also maintain a library of images at a custom Zenfolio site. Zenfolio is a photo sharing site that offers a number of features a service like Flickr doesn’t offer. For example:

  • I can have my own domain name (www.FlyingMPhotos.com).
  • I can sell photos using format I specify — and actually profit from a sale.
  • I can create custom watermarks that are automatically placed on each image for display.
  • I can limit the sizes of photos that can be displayed.
  • I can customize the appearance of my photo gallery pages.

Wildflowers
I photographed these wildflowers near a mine site last February.

The list goes on and on.

Yes, I do pay an annual fee for this service. But I think it’s worth $100 a year to have control over how my photos are displayed and offered for sale. And I like the fact that my Zenfolio portfolio is completely separate from all others. On services like Flickr and Red Bubble (which I used to use), your photos are simply part of a much larger portfolio of diverse and often quality-challenged work. People who visit my portfolio aren’t exposed to that — unless they want to be.

I like the way Zenfolio places watermarks on images. They’re visible yet don’t need to jump out of the photo at you. I chose the same method for my photo blog; you can see it on all the images on this post. I used Photoshop to create the notice, applied an Emboss filter, saved it as a PNG with transparent background, and then applied it to photos with 20% to 50% opacity. Done.

What Do You Think?

I’d be very interested in hearing what other serious and professional photographers think about watermarking images. I’d also like to see examples of what photographers think are successfully applied watermarks. Use the comments link or form for this post to share your thoughts, horror stories, and links to one or two of your watermarked images.

I’m not interested in hearing from Internet trolls who want to criticize concerned photographers for wanting to protect their work. Or people who want to argue that Internet content is not copyrighted — get with the program already, folks.