Who's job is it to police images on stock sites?

snurder

« Reply #25 on: April 20, 2008, 14:51 »

#link

I just dd send a note off to Fotolia with a listing of supporting stuff found yesterday, including te Magic Book image you found.

So whose job is it? Well nobody's yet, except that we should watch each others' backs, and somebody has to do it. This is so widespread it would be very hard to notify every individual who got caught up in this Zillman98 mess.


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Calamity_John

« Reply #26 on: April 20, 2008, 15:34 »

#link

Quote from: fullvalue on April 20, 2008, 11:21

Thieves like this are slipping between the cracks because the crack is so large. ......

The solution would be the formation of a professional organization to which professional stock photographer's pay dues that includes a "legal fund." for just such situations. Until the risk/reward ratio is addressed, this will continue on a routine basis. Now, even when someone is caught, their files are pulled but the matter ends there.

The crack is not only large but complex since we are dealing with umpteen legal systems and typically cases where the thief and victim are crisscrossing national (if not continental) boundaries ...


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etudiante_rapide

« Reply #27 on: April 20, 2008, 16:10 »

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all credit has to go to those of you who even recognized the works of the victims. also to snurder for risking it to approach directly DT,and Fotolia. i don't think you'd get banned for this. you should get a medal, not a ban Cool

hopefully, once this is exposed it will be a deterrent to future or other current thieves not caught yet. good investigative effort , ppl !
hats off to you all. wow , what teamwork


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PaulieWalnuts

« Reply #28 on: April 20, 2008, 16:53 »

#link

While I think the sites should be the police, clearly it isn't a priority for them.

Someone here recently reported an image to Shutterstock that they thought was a copy of someone else's image. The image owner got banned from SS. While the image was questionable, it wasn't an exact copy and the guy didn't deserve to get immediately booted off of Shutterstock. The guy who reported it then felt bad and backpeddled.

If you want to play image police, contact the image owner and leave it up to them to report it to the site(s) or not.


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madelaide

Premium Member

« Reply #29 on: April 20, 2008, 21:20 »

#link

Quote from: jsnover on April 20, 2008, 11:58

Buyers need to have confidence in their purchases. What big corporation is going to stick with micros if there were stories of lawsuits over stolen images floating around? In the long term, it's definitely in the agencies' interests to police this.

I agree the should, but what are agencies probably going to do? Email the buyers explaining this happene, possibly offer a refund or info on the true owners (maybe giving them the $ they should have made). It seems (or not?) that not all images were already in DT by their rightful creators. They should check for duplicates (or too similar - don't we get that a lot?), but if those images (or most of them) were not in DT to begin with, how could their reputation be damaged in any way?

Hopefully the situation doesn't happen again, or does not become a common issue. But we have to face the fact that images are out there and a lot of wrong things may happen. I can imagine many images that were not purchased at EL being offered as products in Zazzle or Cafepress or whatever. I said once: I am a Brazilian photographer selling images through USA/CA/Europe agencies to people anywhere in the world. How can I have any control about what happens to these images? I know a photographer in SP that found one of her images being used to produce keyholders - with the watermark on it.

Regards,
Adelaide


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Chris S

New Member

« Reply #30 on: October 11, 2011, 05:38 »

#link

Sites like www.tineye.com do not check photos pixel by pixel, rather they use algorithms which will still find 'copied' works. These works could have been cropped, enhanced, modified or used as as part of another image. ( I believe the google-image-search tool works in the same way ).

If am not mistaken tineye offer services and other tools specifically for the 'Agencies' needs, and if am not mistaken too they also encourage portfolios/galleries/albums/depositories (call them what you want) to be added to their (ie: tineye's) image-banks.

It might not be the Agencies job to check duplicate/copyright works, however it is in their interest... unless their interests are in making profit from the money from held-back-sales.