Speaking Up For Copyrights!
My post about the pingbacks received interesting feedback and presented new subjects to ponder about responsible blogging. We appreciate when someone mentions one of our posts and guides the reader to us via pingback. Everyone agrees that those are great pingbacks! The image below shows five pending notifications of pingbacks. The question for me is, “Are these from people who have visited my site, or will I find another person in pursuit of more hits?”
Which is real and which is borderline spam?
Those of us who enter the photo challenges sometimes receive a different kind of pingback, With a right click, a small number of bloggers copy from the challenge site and paste to theirs; this past week one of these bloggers presented one photo, no text, linked to the WordPress challenge then listed 125 sites and received 66 likes!!!!! He also received several thanks for the pingbacks, so go figure, not everyone is bothered by these posts.
Those border on spam and join another type of borderline of spam. Some people visit sites and leave a string of suspicious ‘likes.’ How can one hit the ‘like, like, like, like, like’ button in a few seconds and say that they read the posts?!
A lovely REAL comment (right) awaited my approval!!!
Linda of Shoreacres contributed sound feedback and addressed her concern about copyright infringement from re blogging I’ve had my own brushes with copyright infringement, so I had no problem agreeing with her concerns.
Who Wants To Challenge A Sneaky Snake? –
Years ago I was shocked to find one of my photos featured in an international magazine. Challenging a copyright dispute is an arduous task, and several attorneys I consulted seemed to pull away as if it was taboo to challenge a well-known periodical. I regret not pursuing that infringement violation. (Living off the grid does have its disadvantages!)
I have frowned on Facebook because one signs over licensing rights for the photos. People have uploaded my photos without asking, and I wonder how they clear that ethical question about having permission to use the images before uploading. Angela West of PCWorld states in a February 2012 article, “Facebook asks each time you upload a photo if you have the permission to use it. The legal burden lies with the original person who posted the photo rather than those who share links to it.
Pinterest does not ask users to consider permissions before each “pin,” aiming to make the user experience seamless. While having your content shared arguably helps popularize it, many artists and photographers may want to be asked or paid first.”
I suspect that people do this with images found on Google searches and rarely remember to give credit (or ask permission!) before using the images. I’ve watched someone pull up images for iguanas, find my paintings then quickly right-click without any qualms! Others have said, “I saw the photos on facebook!” (Facebook?) and they told how a friend right clicked from my post and uploaded to share with others. This disturbs me a lot, though most do this with a novice’s innocence.
It all started when Luchy asked for suggestions for improvements to his cyber cafe.
IT STARTED WITH ONE LIGHT POLE
The above post, It Started With One Light Pole, received a lot of attention and praise, and I am now slightly amused at the the irony of the title. My most recent frustration goes back to this post, and yes, it started with one light pole!
While researching licensing and copyright infringement stories about Facebook and Pinterest, I wondered if anyone had right-clicked any of my images and posted them without my permission. I went to the Pinterest site and typed in my name, and viola! there were some of my photos! Most linked back to a feature article from Virtual News. that referred back to the light pole story. Paul’s article was a nice one, though he right clicked and wrote the article without asking permission to use the images. He DID write me and shared the link when he published it.
Someone else right clicked and wrote another article, this time with little reference back to my blog. They did give me photo credits, but never bothered to tell me they’d used them in the post. I found it by finding the image on google images, which took me back to that post.
Finding the images on Pinterest worried me, especially since one of the photos doesn’t have my copyright notice. (My mistake) So next I searched “Zeebra Designs” and found a photograph of a howler monkey. Again, full credit and a link back to the post was included, but I wonder who might right click it next into a periodical or greeting card or…?
Next I found one of my Playa San Miguel images from a search in that name, and it had two ‘repins.’ As with one of the street art, this image did not bear my copyright notice. (My mistake again!)
I have also found images of mine that friends uploaded to Google Earth to pinpoint a location. They surely claimed that they owned the image during the upload prompts! (They probably thought they were doing me a favor!) Discovering all of this sort of makes me want to butt heads with a few people!!!
Head Buttin’ Time
Before you right click an image, please consider the person who most likely devoted many years to hone and develop that talent. It’s unfair to insert it into your site without giving credit and a link back to the photographer, who might or might not stumble upon it one day. If someone else right clicks it and shares, eventually someone will assume it’s in the public domain. That might be a grand honor for someone whose profession is outside of the arts, but it’s a huge disappointment to the artist who has worked hard to gain respect and earn an honest living!
If the issue of copyrights interests you, here are a few details:
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-02-28/tech/31106641_1_repinning-copyright-entire-image
http://thephotoletariat.com/does-facebooks-copyright-policy-worry-you/
http://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-Copyright-Infringement
http://copyright.laws.com/copyright-infringement/infringement-remedies
https://shimworld.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/facebook-copyright-and-user-discontent-know-your-risks/
Thank you for sticking with me if you reached the end of this post!!!
Z
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