I just don't see the situation to be a dire as you do and think that the internet should be regulated with draconian China-like laws as you're suggesting.      

I wish.
Chinese (language) sites steal and resteal images and it's nigh on impossible to do anything about it.

There's also a lot of bloggers paying for photos.  If there's no watermark, it's impossible for us to tell if the blogger has paid for an image license.  I do get a few PM messages from people buying my photos and using them on their blogs.

The size doesn't really matter with subs but there might be a problem if people only buy blog size with pay per download.  Will be interesting to see what's going to happen as screen resolution goes up.  Will blog size still be OK or will people start buying bigger sizes?

hopefully as computer screens get bigger and bigger the bloggers will soon move to 800px or 1024px photos.

that's MAYBE the turning point where they will realize high-res images have a cost and are not easy to find for free.

Quote from: Karimala on July 09, 2012, 10:26

 I just don't see the situation to be a dire as you do and think that the internet should be regulated with draconian China-like laws as you're suggesting.      

I wish.
Chinese (language) sites steal and resteal images and it's nigh on impossible to do anything about it.

i lived in china.
from what i had to deal with it, it's very hard even for the chinese to get justice, and it's a lot worse in other
businesses by the way, think about brand names, only now in 2012 something is moving and only if you have billions like Apple
or Samsung.

You'll never stop it, ever. Napster was hot in 1998 and we are now 14 years, many court battles and new laws later and nothing has changed other than the fact that a song now cost 99c on an internet store. You will never ever stop piracy and certainly not for photos. TinEye has indexed 2,176,943,664 images from the web. Good luck policing that amount of photos and growing.

Educating the masses of the world will take time, but I'm optimistic lessons on copyrights will become the educational norm as technology advances.  In school we all learn about plagiarism as part of learning how to write reports.  Eventually teachers will include lessons on copyrights with those on plagiarism. 

Fortunately, at my school they are teaching about copyrights in the graphic and photography classes. But I see mixed messages. Students get reprimanded severely for plagiarism and cheating from the teachers, but I see some staff members cheating the school out of money by padding their work hours and it goes unpunished. It really does seem sometimes like a losing battle. 

Of course plagiarism is different.  What I was trying to say is general lessons on how to write a report will likely include lessons on copyrights, just like they do with lessons on plagiarism, because images are often included in reports, just like sourced reference works are used and cited.  

And the whole point was if we don't educate folks, which includes our local school boards, state education boards who make decisions on textbooks, and state/federal legislators, we'll never get anywhere.  There's no reason on earth why we can't educate these folks and demand that lessons on copyrights be included in the appropriate curriculum.  Maybe I'm just so used to lobbying and working with state and local politicians and government agencies that I have more optimism and hope than most that we can turn things around.  

There's no reason on earth why we can't educate these folks and demand that lessons on copyrights be included in the appropriate curriculum.  

I'm pointing out that it is included in the appropriate curriculum (IT) over here.
But look at this: the agencies don't make it easy.
I'd like to use one particular historical photo in a community education class I might teaching later in the year. I'm guessing as it's for education, it's a 'fair use'. NB, I get �21/hr for teaching this course, and that's just teaching time, there's no allowance for class preparation, materials preparation, getting there early to set up the class etc. The said picture would be in a powerpoint and would be shown on screen to a maximum of ten people (number of computers available) for a maximum of one minute.

So as it's a Getty image, I just had a look out of interest to see how much it would cost for this usage.
The first screen I get is:

Well, none of these are remotely like what I want to do, but I'll pick 'publishing and editorial'.
So now more choices:


So I tried again:


Which is odd because the thum of the image in the search indicated that it's creative, not editorial.
However, proceeding with that, I had to choose UK as an 'area covered' (though it's one tiny room with ten computers) and select 'up to one month' as a time scale, and I got a price of �141 (or maybe it was $141, whatever) So I'd have to teach for about nine or ten hours (to allow for tax and NI decuctions) before I could pay to use this image for one minute. Teachers in school don't get to count that sort of thing as a taxable expense, and I doubt if community education is any different.

Then I tried non-profit or museum (display), but hitting the pricing button got me no price - the page just refreshed without a price. And that was a really bit size (for printing, nothing smaller available) and the time was 'up to six months', so if I showed it for a minute this year, and the class ran again next year, I'd have to buy it again.

Hmmm. Do you know what, I think I'll just mention the image in class and reference it in the handout notes. You'd think they didn't want people to buy their images. I wouldn't use any other photo or take one myself, either of which would be more than easy. The point about this one is that is the historical context. But it's not so important that I'd spend seven hours salary to buy it.

Funnily enough, I noticed a photo book I bought a couple of weeks ago does just that - suggests Google Searches for a large number of historical photos, which I'm sure, if bought, would have shot the price of the book up to 'unaffordable'.