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Protecting Your Images: The Myth of Creative Commons

rising.blackstar.com — One of the biggest problems photographers face online is keeping track of all the uses of their images. The recent case of an ad agency using a Flickr image for its client Virgin Mobile highlights this all too well. Adding to the confusion is the Creative Commons (CC) license now in use.

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  • ChapStik, on 12/02/2007, -11/+3I think it sucks that the companies that employ the thieving web designers are punished. You know most people just google image search for something and use the first thing they find.
  • geminitojanus, on 12/02/2007, -1/+26Creative Commons isn't meant to resolve Photographer Stupidity, it's meant to resolve copyright issues; anyone can use the copyrighted content as long as they abide by the rules of the license. The license doesn't cover whether or not that copyright was obtained legally or not (though by you putting the content under the license, it is assumed that you have done your part; if you haven't, you're liable for damages at that point).

    In other words, this is a completely separate issue, and it is why you're getting buried for not understanding the difference.
    • shanedog, on 12/02/2007, -0/+11Great point, I posted something similar in the comments section on that article:

      The Creative Commons copyright licenses have the same legal standing as as the old-style copyright license. They both suffer from the same drawbacks, namely that you have to actually find an example of the license being broken and then sue someone for breaking it. Your analogy of "locks are for honest people" applies to both a standard copyright license and Creative Commons, so you shouldn't single out Creative Commons as being different.
      • mumblyjoe, on 12/02/2007, -0/+1Agreed! The problem is that there isn't any effective way to protect your photos once they're posted on the Internet. CC isn't any different than copyright in this situation, both will be violated. Sure you can take the bastards to court, but how much does that cost?
  • Falldog, on 12/02/2007, -0/+15If you're absolutely worried about someone stealing your work - the only safe thing you can do is to just not upload them it at all.

    There are things you can do to protect yourself though. Watermarking your photos (please, not the horribly gay ones which cover the whole image) is a good step and some photo management systems, such as Gallery 2 (which I use, and love), will auto-watermark for you. Also make sure to never upload the full size original. That way if you ever find yourself needing to prove yourself as the photographer you can present an undoctored larger copy to strengthen your case.
  • cjly008, on 12/02/2007, -10/+0New information is always welcome
  • cjly008, on 12/02/2007, -12/+2There are things you can do to protect yourself though. Watermarking your photos (please, not the horribly gay ones which cover the whole image) is a good step and some photo management systems, such as Gallery 2 (which I use, and love), will auto-watermark for you. Also make sure to never upload the full size original. That way if you ever find yourself needing to prove yourself as the photographer you can present an undoctored larger copy to strengthen your case.
  • coffee200am, on 12/02/2007, -6/+3Hiding your EXIF when posting online may help.
    • unusualFall, on 12/02/2007, -2/+5Can you explain more? Doesn't EXIF data just tell your camera type, date, focal length, aperture, etc? What does that have to do with the license or protecting your image?
      • drgmdp, on 12/02/2007, -0/+2well it tells everything about the photo, something someone without that info can't bring out when asked about exposure conditions.
  • yours1860, on 12/02/2007, -8/+0Yeah!
  • Kitarist, on 12/02/2007, -1/+2Well you could use hidden copyright in your pictures. But if you really want to use pictures on your websites, magazine... there are many sites that have free stock photos. for example stockvault.net
  • ronakbhagdev, on 12/02/2007, -4/+1Watermark is the Best idea..
  • ElAssoWipo, on 12/02/2007, -7/+16I sure hope you're not the same people who complain about DRM and "fight for your right" to use torrents and P2P. Because that would make you giant hypocrites, wouldn't it?

    "Ripping off pics from flickr is the new competitor..."
    "Photographers have to get with the times, they charge too much for pictures..."
    "Copyright laws are outdated..."
    "They're not stealing anything, the photographer is not DEPRIVED of his pictures..."
    • vitriolage, on 12/02/2007, -3/+7It is different though. In this case it's a company using your image to make money. Applying it to the music industry, it's like someone selling bootleg copies of the song or sampling large sections of the song and selling it as their own.
    • phogasmic, on 12/02/2007, -2/+6I don't think its the same thing at all. File sharing music to listen too is way different then file sharing music to put it on a CD and sell it without giving money to the artist. That is theft, using a photographers image in a ad campaign without paying them is also theft. However, looking at they're photos is not theft. Photographers should be paid for they're work, before anyone else is paid for they're work.
    • Bamborzled, on 12/02/2007, -1/+1And what if I reproduce some photographer's photos and I sell it? That sounds exactly the same as selling bootleg copies.
    • ZachPruckowski, on 12/02/2007, -1/+1As the other posters pointed out rather well, it's a difference between non-commercial infringement and commercial infringement. The law doesn't make a distinction between the two, but many people do make that distinction morally.

      In the Virgin Mobile case, there's also an endorsement issue. Namely that some 16 year old at Summer Camp might not want to be seen as endorsing Virgin Mobile just because she flashed a peace sign in a photo.

      Then there's the utilitarian issue of weighed harms. In the filesharing instance, a major corporation loses a few pennies while the artist is actually helped (they get free promotion for their shows). In this instance, an individual suffers non-trivial harm because a corporation wasn't willing to check its paperwork or pay trivial licensing fees.
    • ElAssoWipo, on 12/02/2007, -0/+1Hahaha, sure, why not... I'm sure you know very well that you're full of *****.
  • Xioxao, on 12/02/2007, -4/+0good
  • luanatf, on 12/02/2007, -1/+0I think the respect of online copyright is mainly a matter of conscience T__T But it's even true that sometimes big dramas are born for just coincidences, such like similarieties between two images... it's a hard matter.
  • herc1024, on 12/02/2007, -2/+0i think that is a must that this type of sites( that want to protect their products) must have a program that protects them from saving pictures or other things
    • ZachPruckowski, on 12/02/2007, -0/+1See, but that defeats the purpose of the site. Sites like Flickr allow people to upload the photos and have their friends download them (Obviating 8 billion emails or passing a data CD around). Admittedly, I'd use Facebook for stuff like that, but allowing the download of the images is in many cases a feature.
    • VenTatsu, on 12/02/2007, -0/+1If the user can see it the user can save it. The author of the article even notes that.
  • Error601, on 12/02/2007, -1/+1Let's find the closest article about how copyrights are an evil conspiracy by movie and music publishers...
  • websiteowner, on 12/02/2007, -1/+2Theres not much people can do about having people steal their images, especially if it's on the internet.
  • D3koy, on 12/02/2007, -2/+3To Photographers: Don't put your pictures in the web unprotected if you want to keep them
    To Thieves: C'mon man...these guys aren't huge multi-million dollar record companies..they are often just a guy with a camera...
  • AerodynamicHair, on 12/02/2007, -0/+12This guy doesn't understand that one of the points of Creative Commons is to allow your work to be used by other people. In other words, if Virgin used an image I created under Creative Commons with a No-Attribute No-Compensation license, I'd be okay with it because that's how I wanted it to be used. This guy is just making generalizations about the internet as a whole and blaming it on Creative Commons.
    Actually, some of my stuff is labeled creative commons. I wish people would use it (for free), because it would give me some free advertising.
    • ZachPruckowski, on 12/02/2007, -0/+4Correct. The problem here is that people didn't apply due diligence. In the Virgin Mobile case, they didn't insure that they had a Model Release. In the case the blog post describes, they didn't insure they had copyright. To safely use a photo commercially, you need the photographer's permission (that's what the CC license provides) and the model's permission (that's the Model Release).
  • floatingpoints, on 12/02/2007, -3/+1Ugh, wrong mentality, 100%

    Replace photographers and images with musicians and music...

    "OMG, don't listen to my music without paying", "OMG, don't look at my images without paying"

    Blow me.
    • phogasmic, on 12/02/2007, -0/+2no ones saying you can't look, you just can't use them in your work without permission from the artist. That is totally fair. If you are getting paid for work that uses the work of a photographer, the they should be paid as well unless they gave you permission to use it for free. Its that simple. If you make a movie and use a song for the soundtrack then the artist should be paid period.
  • aliceinreality, on 12/02/2007, -0/+3I don't think that CC had anything to do with this article, really. Mostly, it was about people stealing images because they were made available on the internet and circumventing any protection on them any way they could.

    I don't think that Creative Commons licenses make it any more confusing for someone willing to screen cap a photo to get rid of the watermark.
  • drgmdp, on 12/02/2007, -0/+1how about "don't upload full-res copies"?
    a 1000-something width image is enough for most online activities, and you keep untouched originals with you to show the judge in any case
  • phogasmic, on 12/02/2007, -1/+2Some of the comments here are utterly ridiculous. The ones that suggest that Photographers complaining about theyr'e work being used in Ad campaigns is remotely similar to customers downloading music from file sharing networks for personal listening. Its very different. I don't think photographers mind you downloading they're images and showing them to friends. However I do think photographers mind if you are downloading they're photographs, using them in designs, and getting paid for those designs without paying the photographer. Thats insane. Should movies and tv commercials be able to use music for free?? If that is what we are suggesting then we can say goodbye to any incentive for anyone to become a full time artist. We expect musicians and other artists to give they're stuff away for little to no costs to us, thats kind of understandable, but do we expect them to just give they're stuff away to advertisers and corporations too? WTF?
  • eean, on 12/02/2007, -0/+1The issue is that copyright isn't the only thing. There's trademarks, modeling rights, moral rights. Like when some hemroid medicine got the legal rights to use Ring of Fire by Cash and included it in their ad campaign, they were still successfully sued for millions since it tarnished the song.
    All the CC licenses are only concerned with copyright. CC isn't claiming anything more. I don't really think it has to, thats not its purpose.
    So if you use CC images, its best to use ones without any identifiable people in them.
    One thing that annoys me: despite the low amount of requirements for CC images (include the copyright citation, the license) many people don't follow them. They see CC and think "Free to Use".
  • claquerre, on 12/02/2007, -0/+1Many people misunderstand the intent of releasing under the Creative Commons. The image in the Virgin case was released under a version of the license that clearly states that it can be used for commercial purposes.

    The problem isn't the Creative Commons but that the photographer chose a license without understanding it. This is equivalent to releasing software under an open source license such as the GPL and then suing if someone uses the code.
  • bedouin, on 12/02/2007, -0/+1I don't think many of the people commenting here have direct experience with the Creative Commons, in the sense that they actually released a major work with it. I completed a feature-length documentary and released it under the Creative Commons. There are different Creative Commons licenses. The one I chose allowed the work to be freely reproduced for non-commercial endeavors, but *not* used in derivative works without my consent. The difference between the CC and a traditional Copyright is that it provides the end viewer with extra freedom, while maintaining certain author rights. So comparing CC infringement to file sharing is not quite the same issue. My documentary has ended up on torrent sites, and I couldn't be more pleased. Now, if interviews in my documentary showed up in another documentary, I'd be upset -- and possibly pursue legal action. If the individual *asked* me first, and I gave permission, then no harm done. See the difference?

    The CC is not simply a free-for-all license, unless you want it to be.
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