Faceboook, unauthorised use of my images - by Dublin Gallery of Photography

Arciphel

Got a tip off from a good friend

Gallery of Photography in Temple Bar nicked one of my images from flickr to advertise the fact that they have Blackbird Fly cameras in stock.

My image - http://www.flickr.com/photos/arciphel/4877176776/in/photostream/

Their facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150457341149989&set=a.10150122124464989.330107.95856624988&type=1&permPage=1

This really takes the biscuit as far as I am concerned, not like they could claim ignorance of copyright law on photographs now is it? I have filled out a DMCA request to have it taken down.

padz

thats a pretty awful move for a gallery to do, did u contact them directly? i would, im sure ur fairly annoyed at them, its worth asking them where they took the shot just to see what they say, seams like their kinda lacking their own form of creativity

Arciphel

There are two other images in that gallery that have been taken from flickr also. I tried ringing them but no answer, I suppose they don't show up still the afternoon, probably up late being :pac::pac:arty:pac::pac: and trawling the internet for pictures to download and pass off as their own.

pullandbang

The face book link is now gone! 9.40am - wonder why......

maddogcollins

The link does not work on facebook anymore and it also seems to be gone from their photos when you like their page...very bad form!

danmanw8

well spotted but why make your photos freely available for download on flickr? I know there are rules but any of over a billion internet users can "rightclick" and "save as" within a second of seeing your photos.
You got lucky this time that someone tipped you off but if you make photos easy to steal, then guess what, there are people in this world who will steal them.
You'd lock your bike if you left it on a street where a billion people might walk by, but you expect the same people to ignore the fact that you've thrown high quality images all over the street for anyone to pick up.

At least put a watermark on them if you want to protect them. Or better still don't make them easy to steal in the first place.

Arciphel

You're so right Danman, it's all my fault!!! What a silly little sausage I am. I mean, what did I think would happen? I have only myself to blame. Give me a break, that argument went out a long time ago.

mkdon05

He is right in fairness to him.

Kenny Logins

danmanw8 wrote: »

well spotted but why make your photos freely available for download on flickr? I know there are rules but any of over a billion internet users can "rightclick" and "save as" within a second of seeing your photos.
You got lucky this time that someone tipped you off but if you make photos easy to steal, then guess what, there are people in this world who will steal them.
You'd lock your bike if you left it on a street where a billion people might walk by, but you expect the same people to ignore the fact that you've thrown high quality images all over the street for anyone to pick up.

At least put a watermark on them if you want to protect them. Or better still don't make them easy to steal in the first place.

If your bike is stolen, it's unlikely it was stolen to be used in advertising for a local bike shop.

jpb1974

I was in there earlier this morning and spotted your photo on their Facebook page along with your comments.

Shameful on their behalf.

Arciphel

The photo has been taken down now along with three or four other ones that were also from flickr. And it says this.

Hogzy

danmanw8 wrote: »

well spotted but why make your photos freely available for download on flickr? I know there are rules but any of over a billion internet users can "rightclick" and "save as" within a second of seeing your photos.
You got lucky this time that someone tipped you off but if you make photos easy to steal, then guess what, there are people in this world who will steal them.
You'd lock your bike if you left it on a street where a billion people might walk by, but you expect the same people to ignore the fact that you've thrown high quality images all over the street for anyone to pick up.

At least put a watermark on them if you want to protect them. Or better still don't make them easy to steal in the first place.

Basically your saying if I show/give something for free then those people who received it for free can replicate it and profit from it.

That would mean every free sample of food or a product you have does not have copyright attached to it. Hurray now i can make Billions, no no, TRILLIONS... No No NO, QUADRILLIONS . Danman thanks for the fantastic legal advice. Im off now to Brown Thomas to get a free sample of that new cologne they have. I can now replicate that because they gave it to me for free.

Arciphel wrote: »

The photo has been taken down now along with three or four other ones that were also from flickr. And it says this.

Fair play. Im guessing they were very apologetic.

artyeva

amongst the entire gallery of photography staff/volunteers/affiliates they couldn't have been bothered finding anyone to take images of and with the cameras they're selling for profit.

you couldn't make it up :pac:

Arciphel

I'm sending in a invoice, along with a "uncleared image usage" fee. That will resolve this matter to my satisfaction. I'll let you know what happens.

Arciphel

Hogzy wrote: »

Fair play. Im guessing they were very apologetic.

No, they haven't been apologetic - because they haven't been in touch with me at all. And it's not really fair play, because they only took them down because they got caught :pac:

Hogzy

Arciphel wrote: »

No, they haven't been apologetic - because they haven't been in touch with me at all. And it's not really fair play, because they only took them down because they got caught :pac:

They are not the smartest bunch of folk then. Seeing as you probably have sufficient evidence for a breach of copyright claim you would think that they would be on the phone to you apologising.

Although im not too sure of flickr's T&C's, Do they have a license to the image if you upload to their servers?

Arciphel

Hogzy wrote: »

They are not the smartest bunch of folk then. Seeing as you probably have sufficient evidence for a breach of copyright claim you would think that they would be on the phone to you apologising.

Although im not too sure of flickr's T&C's, Do they have a license to the image if you upload to their servers?

Nope, the copyright always stays with the photographer. Flickr just host it. And I have my flickr account set up so that you can't right click and save the images (a window pops up saying (c) All Rights Reserved), so they must have screengrabbed them.

Hogzy

Arciphel wrote: »

And it's not really fair play, because they only took them down because they got caught :pac:

lol i meant fair play to you for getting onto them and taking positive action to stand up for yourself.

sineadw

Holy jaysis that's terrible. And the fact that they still haven't contacted you is even worse! I can imagine someone's running around in there like a headless chicken.

artyeva

they now claim they got them from google and 'there was no credit to find'. what a crock!

so they still leave up the images of the cameras. what's so hard about lamping the camera up on their counter and taking a photo of it?

LOLZ!!!!:pac::pac::pac::pac::pac:

magicbastarder

artyeva wrote: »

they now claim they got them from google and 'there was no credit to find'. what a crock!

they have a slight problem with that excuse; if it's true what they say, they shouldn't have taken the photo. if it's not true, they shouldn't have taken the photo.

melekalikimaka

danmanw8 wrote: »

well spotted but why make your photos freely available for download on flickr? I know there are rules but any of over a billion internet users can "rightclick" and "save as" within a second of seeing your photos.
You got lucky this time that someone tipped you off but if you make photos easy to steal, then guess what, there are people in this world who will steal them.
You'd lock your bike if you left it on a street where a billion people might walk by, but you expect the same people to ignore the fact that you've thrown high quality images all over the street for anyone to pick up.

At least put a watermark on them if you want to protect them. Or better still don't make them easy to steal in the first place.

wow

artyeva

magicbastarder wrote: »

they have a slight problem with that excuse; if it's true what they say, they shouldn't have taken the photo. if it's not true, they shouldn't have taken the photo.

they work in a photography gallery. they're selling cameras for profit that they can't be a**ed to photograph themselves. they've hosted talks on photography copyright ffs!!! the extent to which they shouldn't have taken the photos is... er.... something very enourmous :pac:

Arciphel

They are suddenly in a big rush to get my phone number and talk to me... :rolleyes:

smash

"content unavailable" now

Misstaken

Wow... You would think that they would source their images AND source some permissions also... BAD FORM! :eek:

artyeva

there's other images still up in that album that were sequestered from flickr sent to them on the back of unicorns but the owners of the images don't live in ireland....


...just sayin'.

Arciphel

smash wrote: »

"content unavailable" now

That's OK, I took the precaution of saving all the images in the Windows Snipping tool, so I have them all. Funnily enough, I had a horrible feeling ti would all suddenly disappear. I just had an intersting conversation with a journalist & columnisy who writes about digital rights and media also...

CabanSail

Dept of Justice not aware of Copyright Law.

Gallery of Photography stealing Photo's and breaching rights.


What's next ...... Vatican Brand Condoms (The Altar Choice)

smash

For people that don't do it, it's an idea to look at your flickr stats every now and then to check your referrals. Of course it's only useful if they hotlink.

challengemaster

Arciphel wrote: »

Nope, the copyright always stays with the photographer. Flickr just host it. And I have my flickr account set up so that you can't right click and save the images (a window pops up saying (c) All Rights Reserved), so they must have screengrabbed them.

You (and a lot of people) might not be aware of this but the latest versions of firefox can easily bypass that.

Firefox now has a smarter pop-up blocker that works, and if you continue trying to right click / save an image and you get pop-ups 2-3 times, it will allow you to block the pop-up from happening, allowing you to easily right-click and save the image.

Same thing also applies to websites where people have designed a pop-up to occur on right click stating "Copyright of XXX"

Try it and see for yourself!

smash

challengemaster wrote: »

Firefox now has a smarter pop-up blocker that works, and if you continue trying to right click / save an image and you get pop-ups 2-3 times, it will allow you to block the pop-up from happening, allowing you to easily right-click and save the image.

But you'll usually only be able to save a "spaceball.gif" which flickr overlays on the image. If you use chrome you can right click the photo and select "inspect element" which will give you a direct link to download.

People will always take an image if they want it.

JustAddWater

Arciphel wrote: »

Nope, the copyright always stays with the photographer. Flickr just host it. And I have my flickr account set up so that you can't right click and save the images (a window pops up saying (c) All Rights Reserved), so they must have screengrabbed them.

But, if you right-click, then hit on view all sizes, and view the original size, there's a download link on that page!!

Takes 2 seconds to download the HQ image!

challengemaster

smash wrote: »

But you'll usually only be able to save a "spaceball.gif" which flickr overlays on the image. If you use chrome you can right click the photo and select "inspect element" which will give you a direct link to download.

People will always take an image if they want it.

the Spaceball.gif (AFAIK) was done away with when flickr started using the new pop-up system, and that was because there was a flaw with the spaceball to start out with, which I found out one day by accident. If you highlight the photo (click&drag over) there's a small section of photo that the spaceball never covers, stands out like a sore thumb. All you have to do is right click on that specific part and it'll save the actual photo.

smash

challengemaster wrote: »

the Spaceball.gif (AFAIK) was done away with when flickr started using the new pop-up system, and that was because there was a flaw with the spaceball to start out with, which I found out one day by accident. If you highlight the photo (click&drag over) there's a small section of photo that the spaceball never covers, stands out like a sore thumb. All you have to do is right click on that specific part and it'll save the actual photo.

It was easier than that still. Browse with Opara, hover over the spaceball.gif and press the kill button and you have access to the image underneath.

Kenny Logins

Very easy when you know how.


Which we do now...

Arciphel

I don't for a second think that flickr is secure, I know there are ways around it (view page source for example, or even finding the image in your temporary internet folder). I accept that a certain amount of theft will happen. But I don't accept that a gallery of photography that is essentially funded by the arts council of Ireland, i.e. you and me, would engage in this practise and then claim ignornace/human error when they are caught using images in this way for commercial reasons. I am sending them an invoice for €200 for image usage and donating anything I get from them to Barnardos, that'll learn them real quick.

smash

Arciphel wrote: »

I don't for a second think that flickr is secure

No photo hosting site is secure. Most hilarious I find is photobucket accounts with a password protection. Probably the easiest site to extract photos from.

Arciphel wrote: »

But I don't accept that a gallery of photography that is essentially funded by the arts council of Ireland, i.e. you and me, would engage in this practise and then claim ignornace/human error when they are caught using images in this way for commercial reasons.

It is quite possible that they have a designer or admin person managing their social media network who doesn't really have a clue (or care) about copyright.

Kenny Logins

Arciphel wrote: »

I don't for a second think that flickr is secure, I know there are ways around it (view page source for example, or even finding the image in your temporary internet folder). I accept that a certain amount of theft will happen. But I don't accept that a gallery of photography that is essentially funded by the arts council of Ireland, i.e. you and me, would engage in this practise and then claim ignornace/human error when they are caught using images in this way for commercial reasons. I am sending them an invoice for €200 for image usage and donating anything I get from them to Barnardos, that'll learn them real quick.

It's almost another line in a certain Alanis Morissette song.

rat_race

Right-click prevention only stops the completely clueless. It's very very easy to save any image once you can see it. It doesn't even require a screen grab at all...

Paulw

smash wrote: »

It is quite possible that they have a designer or admin person managing their social media network who doesn't really have a clue (or care) about copyright.

And that's an excuse?????

No matter who they hire to do the job, ultimately, they are responsible.

PCPhoto

Paulw wrote: »

And that's an excuse?????

No matter who they hire to do the job, ultimately, they are responsible.

totally agree with Paul here .... if they were before a court could they argue that they didn't know the law and should be let go because they were ignorant.

as a representative organisation (representing and displaying works of art/photography) .... they know all the rules of copyright and if they don't I'm sure they would be very quick to sue if the roles were reversed.

pretty poor excuse to try claim ignorance of the law - its about time that someone is held accountable for this sort of thing.

sNarah

sineadw wrote: »

Holy jaysis that's terrible. And the fact that they still haven't contacted you is even worse! I can imagine someone's running around in there like a headless chicken.

If only they had some good PR people.... *cough*

argosy2006

Most people love to have their Photos shown,
Nag nag nag ,
Geez

challengemaster

argosy2006 wrote: »

Most people love to have their Photos shown,
Nag nag nag ,
Geez

LOL, there's a difference between being shown and having it stolen and used for advertising of someone elses business.

melekalikimaka

argosy2006 wrote: »

Most people love to have their Photos shown,
Nag nag nag ,
Geez

wow

sineadw

argosy2006 wrote: »

Most people love to have their Photos shown,
Nag nag nag ,
Geez

Obvious troll is obvious

merlie

Arciphel wrote: »

Nope, the copyright always stays with the photographer. Flickr just host it. And I have my flickr account set up so that you can't right click and save the images (a window pops up saying (c) All Rights Reserved), so they must have screengrabbed them.

I too have a Flickr account. I'd say it wasn't screen grabbed. The only thing that isn't right clicked protected is the larger image. If you go to your photos and then to the lightbox and then click view all on the top right of the lightbox.

That brings you to the largest size and they can be right clicked.

It isn't fair and horrible what happened to you, after all it is your work, therefore they should have asked you, given you credit etc.

I think Flickr should disable all the right clicks on all the sizes.

This may give you ideas of how to search for your photos online and to see who is using them as their own.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/181361/finding_your_photos_online.html

AnCatDubh

merlie wrote: »

I think Flickr should disable all the right clicks on all the sizes.

A nice idea but it wouldn't matter as a right click action is purely an annoyance to anyone really intent on lifting your image. Once your image is rendered on the web at any size, a right click blocker won't work. Your machine is downloading the image and viewing. To do this, it must download from somewhere thus it is exposed from somewhere.

Screen grabbing is the other issue even if you could view only.

EVERYONE - lock your images in a box with a pad lock. Place under your bed. Don't tell anyone where they are. Sorted.

I jest of course however when you put something online you lose a bit of control up to and including the max size you allow your web provider (flickr, your website, 500px, pix.ie) to supply over the line to someone.

EyeBlinks

AnCatDubh wrote: »

I jest of course however when you put something online you lose a bit of control up to and including the max size you allow your web provider (flickr, your website, 500px, pix.ie) to supply over the line to someone.

Yeah of course, but come on .... The Gallery of Photography. Thats, just about as bad as it gets:eek:

Seem to remember it happened in the UK with the Photographers Gallery as well on a larger scale. http://johngoldsmithphotography.com/archives/491#1

Attempting to justify it is even worse imo. This is a publicly funded organisation and deserves a public statement and apology plus an outline of the steps taken to ensure it won't happen again.

Jackobyte

smash wrote: »

For people that don't do it, it's an idea to look at your flickr stats every now and then to check your referrals. Of course it's only useful if they hotlink.

Sorry for the OT chat but...

How exactly do you go about this? I've only stated using Flickr recently. Also, does pix.ie have such a service? I have most of my stuff up on pix.