MicrostockGroup

Boy am I ever confused of this.

I do some stock photography and I also do some website designing.  When I'm working on a website, I usually either take the pictures myself, or use the pictures supplied by the site owner.  Occasionally I'll buy a pix or 2 through iStock.

Lately I have been question my customers about the origins of the pix they provide, warning them they need to be careful about copyright infringement.  Of course they always ask "How can I tell if it's copyrighted?"  I usually tell them to assume it IS unless it specifically says "public domain."

I've been wondering lately how much I am sticking my neck out as a webmaster by publishing these files provided by my customers that I don't know for sure where they come from.  But it's there site, right?  And I shouldn't be responsible, should I?

I became even more confused today when I bought 2 pix from iStock for a website.  Whenever I use a purchased picture, I always edit the IPTC data, adding "Licensed by iStock to Carrolls' Creations for use on whatever.com" to the Copyright Notice field. 

Well, neither of the pix I downloaded today had any IPTC data -- NONE!  The Copyright Status field said "unknown."  And they were from 2 different photographers.  So if someone stumbles upon one of these pix somewhere, how are they to know it's copyrighted?  And as a webmaster, how do I know if my customer really took it himself (I always look) or if they swiped it from a google image search.

I'm really surprised and shocked that iStock doesn't insert some kind of copyright information into the IPTC data!  I'm equally surprised that not all photographers insert that information into their files before they are uploaded.

So, what do y'all think a webmaster should do in terms of pictures???

Steve Carroll

Hmmm.  Well I have 3 pix that I recently downloaded from iStock.

iStock_000004462902XSmall.jpg had NO data at all.

iStock_000001648333XSmall.jpg had title, description and keywords. Copyright Status set to unknown.

iStock_000003299659XSmall.jpg had full information -- title, description, keywords, copyright status=copyrighted, copyright notice had photographers name and ALL of the Creator information, including her phone number, was filled in.

Strange.

But my question still stands -- how am I as a webmaster supposed to know if a client took a picture himself or stole it?

I would put the protection as noted and also you should be fine when you are using your clients images.  They are responsible for their site even if you are designing it.  I think you are only responsible for the images you provide.

Maybe I should edit the image meta data for those images furnished by the client to state, in the copyright notice area, image provided by client.  Don't know that it would stand up in court, but it wouldn't hurt,.  Beside, putting SOMETHING into the meta data should (yea, right) serve as a warning to others not to steal the pix.

Surprising that so many people uploading to Istock don't have the IPTC data properly filled out.

I think most of us that take this seriously fill it out.  In photoshop the default copyright status is "unknown".  Maybe people just don't know to change that?  It's still copyrighted, regardless unless specified otherwise.   

Yeah, being small is no excuse. Getting burned a couple of times was enough to convince me. Having the expectations of both parties spelled out in writing really avoids later headaches for all concerned. I had one too many dealings on a fuzzy handshake where the project grew and grew and my paycheck didn't. nolo.com is my friend now. 

you may be small now, but one day your business could be big and these images will still be out there. when that happens, you may have people looking to sue you .
so better to protect yourself  now, even if you are small