Since this flickr discussion came up again I was peaking over there again to see what the competition is up to these days.

I came across many fantastic shots, offered in decent sizes up to 1200px without watermarks.

I feel like a paranoid idiot uploading unwatermarked stuff - even at 500px width.

The craziest part was that none of those awesome images was picked up by Tineye. Not one. What's up with that?
How come that flickr images are immune to theft? Tiney should pick up at least some sites with those images on there.

Did anyone else make that experience? By now I'm so discouraged to even upload watermarked stuff that I might as well forget about it...

Then dont go looking here
http://morguefile.com/

or here
http://www.freerangestock.com/

I have seen some spectacular shots over there. I guess they just are not in the same frame of mind as us. I dunno.

they are promotional sites for microstock sites, like stckchnge was for stockxprt. I wouldn't call those shots spectacular...

When were those flickr shots uploaded?  It took my images more than a year for tineye to find even one of them.  Tineye takes forever to index them. 

When were those flickr shots uploaded?  It took my images more than a year for tineye to find even one of them.  Tineye takes forever to index them. 

Some of them are 3 years and older. I guess it doesn't matter. Some photographers do use it to direct the visitors to their smugmug site where they sell the prints etc., others just do it for fun.

I just did a search for "people" on flickr and one of the first ones that came us was found on Tineye:

http://www.tineye.com/search/e5dfb35f10f285baf4f39410c61145f437ca0ce3/

I assume that there are some shots on flickr that can be traced via Tineye.

I was just so surprised to see technically amazing images in medium resolution that I couldn't find anywhere else with Tineye. I'm talking about shots with a high commercial value. Maybe I just found a few of them that didn't get snatched yet... 

Either that or the photographer's picked them up and had them removed?  I'm with you though, I'd be too scared to load high quality unwatermarked images on there. 

The "temptation" of (possibly) getting commissioned work that way is very high though.

No idea how I'm going to approach this. I guess I just keep adding my watermark and hope for the best...

Seems like the best way to go about it.  What sizes do you upload your watermarked images as, if you don't mind me asking?

I looked at those links as well and there are some good pictures but not as spectacular as what one could find on flickr.

Considering that some of my mediocre images are being stolen constantly I wonder why those extremely awesome shots on flickr cannot be found by Tineye.

It just blows my mind.

Who of you on this forum is uploading without watermarks? I'd love to know.

I upload with a small logo+url in the corner. All this pararnoia about image theft thru flickr, et.c is useless, stupid, and very net / computer illiterate. First of all most images 'stolen' (so to speak) aren't used in any commercial mean that would generate a sale otherwise. Secondly real hackers can lift pictures off your own machine if they really want to, beleive me... or the stock sites storage servers...

That's why the recent microstock site fraud-sales are very-very suspicious to me. Spending the stolen virtual money to get some penny-sale pictures, that might or might not get them a few more pennies is utterly-totally useless for a hacker, who get instant money or usable items thru chargebacks, buying online, etc... Many of the guys buy the card and account data on the black market. Why on earth would they waste their money and time going thru this process of dl-ing $5 dollar pictures one-by-one, when they usually just get instant money, or rip complete sites with all buttons included? Those guys ripped archicad and that had a hardwer keys.... just total nonsense.

Quote from: click_click on May 06, 2011, 22:18

700px wide - Honestly I don't see a reason why anyone who uses flickr would need higher resolutions - unless they want to give their pics away for free.

That size should be big enough to decide whether the shot is worth buying or getting a different one. Always a learning curve.

Thanks for that.  Yes 700px wide is more than big enough.

Quote from: lthn on May 07, 2011, 05:31

I upload with a small logo+url in the corner. All this pararnoia about image theft thru flickr, et.c is useless, stupid, and very net / computer illiterate. First of all most images 'stolen' (so to speak) aren't used in any commercial mean that would generate a sale otherwise.

Really?  Do you know how many images I find stolen on sold on Zazzle alone?  Others in this forum find them too.

Could you give me a percentage? I bet you it would be less than 1%. What we are talking about is whether those ppl would buy the pics if there absolutely wasn't any other way to get them, and they wouldn't. Most times its just some  wallpaper site to gain popularity for an URL and get some ads. Those ppl wouldn't buy anything anyway. What contributors should worry about (besides getting shafted constantly by the agencies) is that many buyers don't give flying f**k about getting extended licences for usages where they should. That's a real loss there.

...First of all most images 'stolen' (so to speak) aren't used in any commercial mean that would generate a sale otherwise.

I wasn't aware of that. Has there any research been done about this that I haven't heard of?

If someone wants one of my images to use a nice little print on their bedroom wall or as a screen saver/desktop background they better pay me. Otherwise I'd upload my stuff to flickr under the Creative Commons license with free personal use, which I don't.

Secondly real hackers can lift pictures off your own machine if they really want to, beleive me... or the stock sites storage servers...

I'm not arguing that a "real hacker" could or couldn't get the images straight from an agency server and that isn't my issue.

I'm specifically surprised that there are tons of great unwatermarked images on flickr but I know that I don't have to understand everything and everyone.

I'll keep adding my watermark in way that requires major retouching in a relatively small resolution to minimize damage.

... By the way, 1% of my own images being stolen is 1% too many and I'll do whatever I possibly can to try and keep theft down.  Saying "oh well images get stolen, it's a normal part of life" doesn't mean we should make it as easy as possible for the thieves, does it?  Just accepting that it happens isn't good enough for me and probably for many others. 

I know how you feel but realistically we won't be able to catch them all. However, we stay on alert and do what we have to do whenever we find our images unlicensed.

As soon as a photo is sold RF and appears on someone's website it is out there able to be stolen. Nobody is worried about that. I don't see the point of worrying about thefts from flickr.

With all due respect, why do the agencies put a watermark on the images in first place then? According to your statement an image has to be sold once just to be stolen from the original buyer. The same reason, why agencies put a watermark on our images is why I put a watermark on my images on flickr.

My initial concern was the fact that other photographers are uploading unwatermarked images at medium to high resolutions.

Properly licensed images should be used in a resolution not higher than 800px according to most agencies.

I know very well that people who "don't know (better)" upload full high-res images from Shutterstock and make the mistake of using Frontpage to insert an image into a page at 400px width but regardless, the high-res file is on the server and often indexed by Google (in full-res) as well. Things that happen all the time, that we have no control over.

However, I do have the choice of putting a watermark on my images on flickr which makes it less attractive to thieves to perform heavy retouching just to get a low res image. They (the thieves) are more than welcome to move on to other photographers' images without watermarks to rip them off without any efforts. I just don't voluntarily hand out stuff for free (despite the fact that there is a � below the image on flickr - I'm sure that deters A LOT of people...).

I'm working on using a watermark that is recognizable but not distracting the viewer (through the center of the image). Those in-the-corner-fancy-logos are often cloned out using PS5's content aware with one click. That I don't understand, why people even put it there.

Everyone has a different approach to those things.

I found quite a few of my images on someone's Facebook page. I commented on each that I loved those too, mainly because I took those photos myself. What irked me was how other folks were gushing their appreciation with the images and the Facebook page person never said that he didn't actually take the photograph or say that he was merely posting photographs of others that he liked. I emailed him that if he wanted to post the pictures he should properly attribute them. I'm not too concerned because none of them had any stock value.

There is a lot of that on Facebook.  I follow the Vintage Racing interests on Facebook.  I'm constantly seeing my images posted there.  The bright side is ... it has led to many "Print" sales.  I'm going to smile and call it a trade-off.   

^^ But you're assuming:
1- That people can read
2 - That if they can read, that they will than read a warning/notice.

From my experience, I've got better odds of winning the lottery than seeing that happen! 

Lisa - just curious.  How does a Google alert manage to show you illegitimate image usage?

Lisa - just curious.  How does a Google alert manage to show you illegitimate image usage?

I didn't see myself directly credited, but I am guessing these jokers are not smart enough to strip the exif.  Somehow Google is still indexing it under my name "Lisa F. Young"...

Quote from: pseudonymous on May 07, 2011, 06:55

... By the way, 1% of my own images being stolen is 1% too many and I'll do whatever I possibly can to try and keep theft down.  Saying "oh well images get stolen, it's a normal part of life" doesn't mean we should make it as easy as possible for the thieves, does it?  Just accepting that it happens isn't good enough for me and probably for many others. 

I know how you feel but realistically we won't be able to catch them all. However, we stay on alert and do what we have to do whenever we find our images unlicensed.

That's true but what I meant was that I won't accept that 1% of my images being stolen is okay, just because it's expected. 

Quote from: louoates on May 07, 2011, 15:43

I found quite a few of my images on someone's Facebook page. I commented on each that I loved those too, mainly because I took those photos myself. What irked me was how other folks were gushing their appreciation with the images and the Facebook page person never said that he didn't actually take the photograph or say that he was merely posting photographs of others that he liked. I emailed him that if he wanted to post the pictures he should properly attribute them. I'm not too concerned because none of them had any stock value.

I once had someone post a pic I liked on Facebook and when I asked if it was hers she blatantly said that it wasn't and that she stole it.  She was bragging about it.  When I told her off, she changed her tune and played dumb and said that she just wanted the image so she can draw it on a bar stool at home (she was apparently an artist herself) ... as if that's okay to do as well!  I was utterly disgusted so I shamed her on facebook and let everyone know that I notified the true owner of the stolen image (which I did).  I also reminded her that I have no control over what action he would take.  She disappeared voluntarily from Facebook after that.

I'd guess she just signed up using another name

Quote from: lthn on May 07, 2011, 06:21

Could you give me a percentage? I bet you it would be less than 1%. What we are talking about is whether those ppl would buy the pics if there absolutely wasn't any other way to get them, and they wouldn't. Most times its just some  wallpaper site to gain popularity for an URL and get some ads. Those ppl wouldn't buy anything anyway. What contributors should worry about (besides getting shafted constantly by the agencies) is that many buyers don't give flying f**k about getting extended licences for usages where they should. That's a real loss there.

lol a percentage of what, the Zazzle database which is over 40 billion? Yes that's right, 40 BILLION products.  I hope it's not anywhere near 1% of 40 billion!  No I can't give you a percentage but I can tell you that whenever I open a thread in Zazzle asking for products to promote, I usually find at least one person with stolen images...  they don't even bother hiding it, it's so common.  You can do a search on this forum and you'll find some threads with many many images stolen.  I've never reported them here myself.  There are just too many to bother.  There are so many that I got to the point one time where I was spending more time reporting items than creating them.  I've had to turn a blind eye to it all because it was putting me off creating products... now I only worry about my own images being stolen.

It's irrelevant saying these people won't buy the images if they could... we all know they won't.  The issue is whether we want to just hand them over a nice large unwatermarked copy or whether we protect our images as best we can.  I'm sure there are those that can remove watermarks but with the smorgasbord of images on the net, they're more likely to pick a large unwatermarked one to spare them a few minutes adjusting it.

By the way, 1% of my own images being stolen is 1% too many and I'll do whatever I possibly can to try and keep theft down.  Saying "oh well images get stolen, it's a normal part of life" doesn't mean we should make it as easy as possible for the thieves, does it?  Just accepting that it happens isn't good enough for me and probably for many others.  

lol, a percentage of your stock income, # pics in your portfolio or at the stock site, that was hijacked, lol : ))

lol, a percentage of your stock income, # pics in your portfolio or at the stock site, that was hijacked, lol : ))

Well that's useless as I've only been in it for just over a year and don't have a huge port.  I mentioned above that tineye has only started indexing my images so I haven't been able to find many of my own yet.  I find heaps of other images that have been "hijacked" though.  When I say heaps, I mean I was finding from 10 to 20 a week when I was looking.  I wasn't looking through the database for images intentionally as I'm sure I would have found a lot more.  I'm just talking about images I'd come across on my zazzle thread.  For example, I may have been promoting yoga products and I would start a thread in Zazzle asking if anyone wants me to consider featuring their products.  I'd get a few pages of people giving me links to their products.  Each time I did this, I would find products using images that have been stolen and I'd report them and notify the original owner.

Quote from: lthn on May 07, 2011, 05:31

...First of all most images 'stolen' (so to speak) aren't used in any commercial mean that would generate a sale otherwise.

I wasn't aware of that. Has there any research been done about this that I haven't heard of?

If someone wants one of my images to use a nice little print on their bedroom wall or as a screen saver/desktop background they better pay me. Otherwise I'd upload my stuff to flickr under the Creative Commons license with free personal use, which I don't.

I perfectly understand that, but imho there's a difference between stealing your images, or you and others wanting to squeeze more money out the market... actually I phrased that wrong... it's more like you want to squeeze 'more market out the people' if you know what I mean.

Quote from: click_click on May 07, 2011, 08:06

Quote from: lthn on May 07, 2011, 05:31

...First of all most images 'stolen' (so to speak) aren't used in any commercial mean that would generate a sale otherwise.

I wasn't aware of that. Has there any research been done about this that I haven't heard of?

If someone wants one of my images to use a nice little print on their bedroom wall or as a screen saver/desktop background they better pay me. Otherwise I'd upload my stuff to flickr under the Creative Commons license with free personal use, which I don't.

I perfectly understand that, but imho there's a difference between stealing your images, or you and others wanting to squeeze more money out the market... actually I phrased that wrong... it's more like you want to squeeze 'more market out the people' if you know what I mean.

I bet most contributors will find this comment of yours a tad insulting... especially those trying to earn a living out of selling their work.  It's their work... their livelihood that you're refering to.  Are these people supposed to give away their work for free to those who admire their images and want to use them for personal use?  "Squeeze more money out of the market"?  lol, come on!  You say this as if the thief has a right to pinch people's work just because it's for personal use and because they've displayed their work on flickr.  If flickr was a free-for-all site, they should get rid of the option of uploading copyrighted images altogether but it's there as an option isn't it?  If you're happy to give away your images, there's nothing wrong with that.  But stealing images that are clearly labeled as not free is just not on.  The contributor is not trying to squeeze the market.  If anything, it's the market that keeps squeezing more and more from the contributor. 

Quote from: lthn on May 08, 2011, 06:26

Quote from: click_click on May 07, 2011, 08:06

Quote from: lthn on May 07, 2011, 05:31

...First of all most images 'stolen' (so to speak) aren't used in any commercial mean that would generate a sale otherwise.

I wasn't aware of that. Has there any research been done about this that I haven't heard of?

If someone wants one of my images to use a nice little print on their bedroom wall or as a screen saver/desktop background they better pay me. Otherwise I'd upload my stuff to flickr under the Creative Commons license with free personal use, which I don't.

I perfectly understand that, but imho there's a difference between stealing your images, or you and others wanting to squeeze more money out the market... actually I phrased that wrong... it's more like you want to squeeze 'more market out the people' if you know what I mean.

I bet most contributors will find this comment of yours a tad insulting... especially those trying to earn a living out of selling their work.  It's their work... their livelihood that you're refering to.  Are these people supposed to give away their work for free to those who admire their images and want to use them for personal use?  "Squeeze more money out of the market"?  lol, come on!  You say this as if the thief has a right to pinch people's work just because it's for personal use and because they've displayed their work on flickr.  If flickr was a free-for-all site, they should get rid of the option of uploading copyrighted images altogether but it's there as an option isn't it?  If you're happy to give away your images, there's nothing wrong with that.  But stealing images that are clearly labeled as not free is just not on.  The contributor is not trying to squeeze the market.  If anything, it's the market that keeps squeezing more and more from the contributor.  

If you look at it from the cold-hearted business standpoint, running circles around this issue makes even less sense, bacause as mentioned, these aren't 'lost sales', they wouldn't pay for it. Basically you are wasting time with an issue where there's no money involved. Okay, some might find it a tad insulting. Ever tried looking at this from the other side? Search for forums and blogs aout getty's extortion letter campaign, how insulting that is (coz that's the only way to squeeze money out of this) Photographers sometimes start to look like these big companies that everybody loves to hate, (including most photographers) trying to pressure everyone for any penny they can get. One more thing to give the craft a bad name. I also still strongly hold the opinion that this is all just a side effect of RF, which a hole the photogs helped to dig for themselves : (

If you look at it from the cold-hearted business standpoint, running circles around this issue makes even less sense, bacause as mentioned, these aren't 'lost sales', they wouldn't pay for it. Basically you are wasting time with an issue where there's no money involved. Okay, some might find it a tad insulting. Ever tried looking at this from the other side? Search for forums and blogs aout getty's extortion letter campaign, how insulting that is (coz that's the only way to squeeze money out of this) Photographers sometimes start to look like these big companies that everybody loves to hate, (including most photographers) trying to pressure everyone for any penny they can get. One more thing to give the craft a bad name. I also still strongly hold the opinion that this is all just a side effect of RF, which a hole the photogs helped to dig for themselves : (

Urgh, I am looking at this from a cold-hearted business standpoint.  I never look at anything from another angle... ever lol!  I'm not sure if you're narrow-minded or just refuse to think this through a little.  I have been talking of people stealing images and using them on Zazzle.  How can you say I wouldn't lose anything in that scenario?  If someone comes along and steals one of my images and puts it on a mug and posts it for sale on Zazzle or CafePress or wherever, isn't there money involved?  If a buyer finds their mug with my image on it before finding my mug, am I not losing money?  That's the POD side of it.  What about images ending up on a hundreds of CDs with tens of thousands of stolen images sold on ebay for about $5.00?  What if these ebay buyers sell products with these images on them, is there no money lost?  What if they upload these images on another microstock site?  Sure they'll be caught eventually, but what of all that revenue I could have potentially earned.  Actually, I would have "earned" it, but it would have been stolen.

This issue is probably a waste of time discussing this with you, but it's definitely not a waste of time trying to do whatever possible to make sure that any revenue earned from the use of my images ends up in my pocket.

ETA:  And to put this issue to rest (from me anyway), if someone's asking the question "should I watermark my images on flickr", my answer is "F#$% YES! Absolutely" 

 

Quote from: pseudonymous on May 08, 2011, 08:52

Quote from: lthn on May 08, 2011, 07:32

If you look at it from the cold-hearted business standpoint, running circles around this issue makes even less sense, bacause as mentioned, these aren't 'lost sales', they wouldn't pay for it. Basically you are wasting time with an issue where there's no money involved. Okay, some might find it a tad insulting. Ever tried looking at this from the other side? Search for forums and blogs aout getty's extortion letter campaign, how insulting that is (coz that's the only way to squeeze money out of this) Photographers sometimes start to look like these big companies that everybody loves to hate, (including most photographers) trying to pressure everyone for any penny they can get. One more thing to give the craft a bad name. I also still strongly hold the opinion that this is all just a side effect of RF, which a hole the photogs helped to dig for themselves : (

Urgh, I am looking at this from a cold-hearted business standpoint.  I never look at anything from another angle... ever lol!  I'm not sure if you're narrow-minded or just refuse to think this through a little.  I have been talking of people stealing images and using them on Zazzle.  How can you say I wouldn't lose anything in that scenario?  If someone comes along and steals one of my images and puts it on a mug and posts it for sale on Zazzle or CafePress or wherever, isn't there money involved?  If a buyer finds their mug with my image on it before finding my mug, am I not losing money?  That's the POD side of it.  What about images ending up on a hundreds of CDs with tens of thousands of stolen images sold on ebay for about $5.00?  What if these ebay buyers sell products with these images on them, is there no money lost?  What if they upload these images on another microstock site?  Sure they'll be caught eventually, but what of all that revenue I could have potentially earned.  Actually, I would have "earned" it, but it would have been stolen.

This issue is probably a waste of time discussing this with you, but it's definitely not a waste of time trying to do whatever possible to make sure that any revenue earned from the use of my images ends up in my pocket.

ETA:  And to put this issue to rest (from me anyway), if someone's asking the question "should I watermark my images on flickr", my answer is "F#$% YES! Absolutely" 

 

The zazzle etc thing is EL sale lost, not the flickr pehom, I already adressed that.

Sigh.  It's not about losing an EL.  I don't offer print licences.  The loss of revenue I was refering to is the loss of Zazzle revenue and considering I make about 4 times more revenue on Zazzle than I do on all the microstock sites combined, that's the revenue I'm mostly concerned about.

Look, if you're happy for your images being stolen and you tolerate it, that's just great!  I'm sure there'll be a few thieves out there happy to hear it.  Perhaps you can identify yourself so they can mosey along to your flickr page and help themselves to your wonderful high resolution unwatermarked images.  Personally, I will never tolerate let alone encourage theft of my images and will always recommend others who value their images and care about theft to protect their images where they can.  I'm fully aware that my images will be stolen where I have no control but I can guarantee you that if I upload high resolution images on my flickr account, many many more will be stolen...  why on earth would I want to encourage it?  It's bad enough these images are stolen without me actually giving them away.