Monday 26 March 2012

Link with love - not litigation, Fair Dealing laws

LINKwithlove
Link With Love
Dear readers: 'Fair Dealing' (Canada), 'Fair Use' (Nine Copyright Myths of the Online World - US), does not mean free, even if you posted it on FaceBook or for your non-profit site. Credit your sources.

Link With Love, is a wonderful teaching tool for those who plagiarize or simply misunderstand. I have dear friends who take professional photos, sell them and/or either donate them to a charity fundraiser, or sell them and donate the proceeds, as I do, to a favourite charity. 

This sign was for Oliver, who loved hunting birds!
When I saw Pinterest, I knew that it wasn't fair, nor was it legal, to post a photo that is not your own, for your own purposes. Non-profit site or not. For example, I have posted 'No Hunting No –Trespassing' signs on my property, despite the fact that you need permission to hunt, because hunters think the absence of a sign is an indication!

With Pinterest, one 'pins' a photo on one's Pinterest page, however, Pinterest stores this image and, like Facebook, can store, or sell the image with no credit for s/he who created it.

In the case of someone designing, for example, crafts (e.g., cakes, sweaters, gift cards), someone takes the image and uses it for their own to draw web traffic. The image is no longer linked to the person who created it.

When someone pins your photo, it goes onto the Pinterest’s servers. You no longer have control of that image, Pinterest does.
Pinterest has been charged with permitting spammers to make money.

Pinterest Spammer Makes $30,000 in a Month



Taking advantage of the startup’s fast growth and optimaluser demographics — consisting mostly of brand-savvy women with an annual household income of more than $100,000 and a love of shopping — spammers are making huge amounts of money just by pinning items to Pinterest and directing consumers to make purchases on Amazon.

Many young people feel that everything on the 'net ought to be free. They are entitled to their feelings, but this is not the legal case.
The worst offenders?
Someone has spent time, energy, and years honing skills to create their intellectual property. Many use the Internet to sell their artwork or photos, or market their products.
Pinterest, a for-profit site, much like Facebook, that earns profits off of you, your data, ads, and selling your photos.

27 Feb 2012 – There is so much flack lately coming out for Pinterest. ... People are pinning pictures that they have stolen from other bloggers and are ... There's a bakery in Europe that is using one of my cake pictures without crediting me
Pinterest says it will take down copyrighted content, but only if the owner goes through the list of steps on its site, for every piece of content they want removed.


 Is Pinterest a haven for Copyright Violations?
Yes, it is. Bravo to Pinterest for attempting to address copyright concerns by providing a snippet of code so that sites can "opt out". It doesn't entirely resolve the copyright issue, since one shouldn't have to "opt out" of a service you didn't join. How many of us, who sell our photos (I have 12,000 in my archives), have time to check the WWW to search for stolen images?

There are people who go to the trouble of removing a Digimarc, or watermark, and re-adding their own copyright to them.


Can you believe it? One friend, and I have blogbuds who are artists, photographers, and card makers, tells me she found more than 50 websites using her images for commercial purposes without permission.  Google does offer a service, but you have to search by image. Time consuming for those trying to earn a living by their hobby, or their work.

Copyscape
Regularly do a search:
 Google does offered service
To protect yourself:
  • Only post low-resolution photos. Thieves need large photos for professional ads. 
More horror stories:

Yahoo! Canada Answers - How to remove a child's photo from ...‎ - 21 Sep 2011
PLEASE HELP! Girl stole my boyfriends friends photo and ...‎ - 22 Oct 2010


Media is the worst! They stole my video, with no credit. You can read my story of theft of my entire video from a TV news outlet. I emailed Dr. Michael Geist (U of O) for a professional opinion, and he confirmed my belief. In fact, for-profit media take videos off YouTube, preface them with money-making ads, then post them on their own websites. This means the creator gets NO webtraffic at the original sight, nor a view count. 



Local newspaper stole my photos, what should I do?

5 Jan 2011 – ...and following all that, keep your photos off of stinkin' Facebook! 

Some other helpful sites

6 comments:

Powell River Books said...

Lots to think about. Recently a local Bellingham nonprofit used one of my photos in their banner. At least they had the courtesy to contact me after the fact and seek permission, which I gave since I agree with their area of focus. - Margy

Anonymous said...

I really don't know what can be done to avoid pictures been taken, copied or reused from my blogs.
Once I found the picture of our cat Maximus sold as a poster. The picture showed our Maxi smelling a gerbera flower. I know that one of my neighbours is using my fox picture as her avatar. Never asked me!!
Again, what can be done??

Linda said...

Thanks for taking the time to provide this...I am sure there are lots of people "stealing" images...

Linda said...

I had heard lots about Pinterest from others, so checked it out. I did add some pins of my own but when I found out they were showing up all over the place I took mine down. I need to add that code so people can't pin from my blog. I'm checking into it. Thanks for pointing that out.

Red said...

A very informative post. I did not realize that this was such a spam. I have found some of my pictures on a site but they have my name on them.

Kay said...

Wow! There's so much I don't know about social media. I still haven't really checked to see Pinterest, but I know it's really the hot new thing now.