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Messages - ingwio
26
« on: November 17, 2012, 12:27 »
lol
Thank you for your intelligent post.
27
« on: November 17, 2012, 11:34 »
Hi SIFD, I don't know your business plan, but you said, you make $8000 a month as a part time microstocker. You didn't say wether it's the operating profit or the operating revenue. I think it's the revenue. So let's try to make a (very simplified) business plan by estemation: Tax (-20%) Health insurance (-15%) Pension insurance (-20%) Other insurances (-5%) Investments (-5%) Office, car and such things (-5%) Reserves for bad months (-5%) So you see: the running costs will be about 75%. Thus you will have $2000 for the private expenses of the family. ... as a part time microstocker i'm making more than $8000 a month, 3 times more than my full time job pay check!
You didn't say, how much your full time job pay check is: - If $8000 is really 3 times more than your fulltime job pay check ($2000), you would have no more money for the private expenses, but you would have higher risks.
- But if $8000 is only 3 times of your fulltime job pay check ($2667), you would have less money for the private expenses.
That doesn't seem to be a big deal. My experience is, that you need a revenue of about 8000 ($10000) as a full time independent. My suggestions:
Stay part time in your job. Double your portfolio once more. Decide in one or two years. Oh, I just saw, you decided already. I'm too late. Good luck. ingwio
28
« on: September 07, 2011, 17:28 »
Hi RacePhoto, the known history of copyright and copyright laws is about 1600 years elder than described in the English article at Wikipedia. Please read the more detailed article at the German Wikipedia ( http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte_des_Urheberrechts). But the dates don't matter, we live in 2011. There are different laws in US and Germany today. Therefore I said in a previous post, in the first step I would hire an attorney to fight against illegal use in Germany. In Germany we use the so called "Abmahnung" when a copyright infringement happened. I don't want to explain "Abmahnung" here. There is a detailed article in German on the German Wikipedia ( http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abmahnung) and a very short and uncomplete article in English ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abmahnung). The result in short: You must be sure, that there is a clear copyright infringement. The attorney you hired writes the "Abmahnung" to the illegal user. The illegal user has to pay the attorney and your damage. If he doesn't, the attorney will go to the court. If there is a clear copyright infringement, there is no risc for you, the illegal user will have to pay. And because of the costs of the attorney and the court it will be a little more than a dog poop - I promise you  . I don't want to have a risc, when it's necessary to use the "Abmahnung", therefore I opened this thread: How to recognize legal/illegal use?
PS: You would like some laws that protect our work? Then we must work for that - in unions, political etc. That's what I said in one of my first posts in this thread. Do you think, the agencies will do that for us? Never! But if you would have that laws sometime in future, you would get back to the subject of this thread: How to recognize legal/illegal use? 
29
« on: September 07, 2011, 08:27 »
...
So, yes, recognising illegal use is very difficult.
The only real solution is either never to post any images anywhere or only with Getty, who I hear go after abusers like the Wrath of Khan.
Shouldn't we act like like Getty too?
If you've got the money to pay the lawyers, go ahead.
Oops, I didn't know that Khan paid a lawyer to fight for him.
30
« on: September 07, 2011, 08:04 »
...
So, yes, recognising illegal use is very difficult.
The only real solution is either never to post any images anywhere or only with Getty, who I hear go after abusers like the Wrath of Khan.
Shouldn't we act like like Getty too?
31
« on: September 07, 2011, 08:02 »
...
You are getting into why we have Copy Right Laws because of the ease at which people could suddenly copy books when movable type was invented. Imagine the same for photo copies which was some kind of a threat, and now digital, where nothing is safe. That's why Sony and the big ones tried to block videtape recorders. funny we have CDs and DVDs and both of those technologies will be short lived. 78 RPM records may have lasted longer than 45s? Now we have electronic and don't need things that scratch and break and we can make our own back-up copies. The world is changing and the laws need to change.
I think there is a small error in your thought. We don't have the Copyright Laws because movable letters were invented. We have these laws, because there were people in the past who fought for their intellectual property. We must fight against the illegal use of images, otherwise the impression might arise that copyright laws (for photographers) are unnecessary and the laws would change, but not for the better (for the photographers).
32
« on: September 07, 2011, 06:19 »
Sorry to go off Topic: "How to recognize legal/illegal use?",,, just wanted to point out how naive (silly) i was to think that when some 'agencies' offer a low % cut-back to the contributor/photographer (ie: me) that the rest of the money was partially going to protect my work too, apart from profits and other costs.
Some agencies promise to do so in their blog. I think it's only to get some more new photographers. A while ago I decided to stop working with some agencies (low earners). One reason was: they didn't use watermarks in their previews or the watermarks were very small and deleting them would be very easy for a thief. Going exclusive normally means you get a bigger cut of the money from your work being sold, which unless sold at a higher price too, means that's less money is going to the agency... which is less money for them to 'use/waste' time on hunting down illegal use.
( I bring up this post, since a previous post mentioned, forget having your work defended unless your an exclusive,,, although that does make sense too since it's harder to track down the source/agency )
If you upload an image to more than one agency it may be difficult to recognize where the misused instance of the image comes from. Which agency would be responsable?. That's no problem if you are an exclusive photographer - there is only one agency. I don't want to go exclusive. There are other ways I decided to go (and will strictly go in future): - The image is uploaded to one agency only and declared as a part-exclusive image (if possible/allowed).
- The agreements of an agency (i.e. SS) doesn't allow part-exclusivity at all. They only get non-exclusive images, but no other agency will get these images.
- If an image is uploaded as an exclusive image to an agency, the agreements don't allow uploading a similar image to other agencies. In this case all agencies get non-exclusive, similar, but unique images.
In result: all agencies have unique images, it's possible to recognize which agency is responsable for an instance of an image. Also want to bring up a point about google-images-search and tineye etc... these site don't track every image on the web, so illegal use might be greater, or lets be positive, your/our work might be out their more than is found. Also am pretty sure that stock is being used for Printed media that doesn't appear on the web, let alone to be found by any image-finding-site.
That's my experience too. Google found more than 20 instances of an image. Tineye found none. I think in future there will be found more instances. It's only a matter of time before the databases of search engines are more complete. On the other hand, we must recognize that we only see the tip of the iceberg today. Perhaps the iceberg is growing under the water level.
33
« on: September 07, 2011, 05:14 »
"Only you are permitted to use the Content, although you may transfer files containing Content or Permitted Derivative Works to your clients, printers, or ISP for the purpose of reproduction for Permitted Uses, provided that such parties shall have no further or additional rights to use the Content and cannot access or extract it from any file you provide."
Yes, you're right.
Plus I have no idea how you can make sure you client 'cannot access or extract it from any file you provide'. Just about any file (word, pdf, powerpoint, etc.) can be screendumped and the photo saved out in Photoshop (etc) and the file would have to be provided as an entity in e.g. an html web page or IIRC e.g. InDesign, so that's just an unpoliceable rule.
ShadySue, thank you. This gives a chance to play on words. I don't know how to solve the described problem with the agreements of IS. But your signature in your posts gives an answer: "There is a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in". Let's ask sjlocke, he's a crack (in the German meaning of "expert") of the agreements of IS - I hope he will let the light get in  .
34
« on: September 07, 2011, 02:47 »
I think this shows that you definitely didn't go to law school.
Yes, you're right. But I never claimed that. Trust me. The IS license allows a buyer to use the license for multiple clients, for any number of projects. Try reading the whole clause next time instead of just underlining the part you think backs you up:
"Only you are permitted to use the Content, although you may transfer files containing Content or Permitted Derivative Works to your clients, printers, or ISP for the purpose of reproduction for Permitted Uses, provided that such parties shall have no further or additional rights to use the Content and cannot access or extract it from any file you provide."
Yes, you're right.
35
« on: September 06, 2011, 15:13 »
ingwio I think I'm lost, but thanks for trying.
RacePhoto, I don't think so, because you posted again just about 14 hours later. . Are you related to Don Quixote
Don Quixote? The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha? I don't think so: no Rocinante (only a bike, but skinny), no Dulcinea in mind, no Sancho in sight (do you want that job?), can't speak Spanish. There are too few similarities  . No, I think I'm more related to some of the enemies of Don Quixote - the windmills. I sold my last (and only) windmill about 20 years ago, built about 1860, 25 m in height, 1 m thick walls on the ground floor, without sails (lost by a strong storm years before and not lost by Don Quixote). I sold it to - you won't believe - a photographer. But there is an interesting thing about the author Miguel de Cervantes and his work I read in the German Wikipedia. I don't know wether it's true but it's similar to the discussion we have in this thread. from Wikipedia - Don Quijote (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quijote)
Translation:
The work was a bestseller immediately after its initial release in early 1605 - a few weeks later, three pirate editions appeared.
Please, excuse me. I'm a little out of topic today. But I wanted to answer the funny part of your statements. I think we should go on with this thread. As you can see in the statistics, there have been about 1700 views since 2011-08-21, not just a little. It seems to be interesting to many. I'll try to be more serious tomorrow - I promise.
36
« on: September 05, 2011, 04:15 »
ingwio,
Have you ever reported a clear infringement, such as watermarked images, to any site? Have they done anything?
Just as an example, when Google Images released that search tool, I found watermarked images from FT in six different sites and reported them to FT. They said they would "make an effort to resolve the issues". The watermarked images are still there:
http://theenglishstars.blogspot.com/2010/06/airport.html
http://www.infoaviacao.com/2010/02/em-marco-tem-novas-turmas-de-check-in.html
http://machhen-travel.blogspot.com/
http://deliraradois.blogspot.com/2010/08/checking-in.html
http://taxitravel.com.br/
http://ulatenglishbox.wordpress.com/2010/05/page/5/
So, this is an example of clear, unquestionable illegal use, and they didn't do anything about it. I have reported images above the max web size, nothing.
I have found images the exact same size of unwatermarked small thumbs from 123RF (the only site I saw with that specific size). It looks like a huge coincidence that someone buys an image and downsize it exatcly to their size. I reported those, no answer - this one isn't much of a surprise.
And the list goes on. Maybe I'm the only one whose reports have been unfruitful, but I have the impression sites really don't care, unless it is something big.
Madelaide, I started this thread with the subject "How to recognize legal/illegal use?" In many replies I got the answer, that we can't do anything. Some of the reasons were: 1. The agreements of the agencies allow multiple copying, sublicensing etc. 2. The agencies do nothing against misuse, even when I have reported misuse. 3. I can't recognize illegal use. 4. I don't want to spend time on that. etc. My answers are:1.The agreements are different. We must know them. FT: The designer is allowed sublicensing to 1 client per purchased license. SS: Allows 3 (with some complicated exceptions and time limits, that I don't want to repeat here). IS: There is a discussion between sjlocke an me. We will see later. DT: ... 123RF: ... ... 2.I haven't the experience how reports are handled by the agencies (but they want to earn money by selling licenses and they don't earn money by allowing illegal use). My first report to FT (Germany) was answered by a preliminary answer. The user of the image isn't a client of FT. They have given this case to FT (US), who are responsible. Maybe this turns to a first class funeral (as we say in German), but I have great patience and will write them again after a while. My second report to FT (2011-08-24) wasn't answered so far. But that was hard stuff with multiple illegal use. Because of Google's image search something is changing, therefore the agencies will have to act against misuse. Look at the DT Message Board (2011-08-11). They have a "New feature: Report misusage - DMCA notification" ( http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_28308). That's one step to handle misuse - agency and artists together. Some important things are described in that message, here are three: "Educate yourself: know what your images can be used for." "In some cases the images are used properly, in other cases the license is incorrect." "We don't want this to be transformed into a witch-hunt." I fully agree. I don't want to harass legitimate users. Therefore this subject: How to recognize legal/illegal use? 3.That's the problem. Therefore we should put together the criteria by which we can detect illegal use. Some were already described in the replies.
The agreements of the agencies are different. It could be a good idea, that those of you repliers, who have special knowledge of the terms of an agency, would describe what a misuse is under the terms of that agency. Could this be a way?4.Great. If I were a designer and wanted to do my work without paying for licenses, I would ask: "Where are your images?"
37
« on: September 04, 2011, 10:28 »
I think you don't realize that IS and others allow usage by one designer for multiple clients.
Do you think we are all stupid?
...
Also, I wouldn't use Fotolia as an example of stellar contracting: "You acknowledge and agree that Fotolia or its licensors retain all ownership rights in and to the Works, and that such Works are covered and protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights of Fotolia or its licensors. "
...
sjlocke, do you want to annoy me? Here are some terms of the agreements at IS: from CONTENT LICENSE AGREEMENT at http://www.istockphoto.com/license.php
2. Standard License Terms
We hereby grant to you a perpetual, non-exclusive, non-transferable worldwide license to use the Content for the Permitted Uses (as defined below). Unless the activity or use is a Permitted Use, you cannot do it. All other rights in and to the Content, including, without limitation, all copyright and other intellectual property rights relating to the Content, are retained by iStockphoto or the supplier of the Content, as the case may be.
3. Permitted Standard License Uses
(a) You may only use the Content for those advertising, promotional and other specified purposes which are Permitted Uses (as defined below). For clarity, you may not use the Content in products for resale, license or other distribution, unless (i) the proposed use is allowable under an Extended License which is available for the Content; or (ii) if the original Content has been fundamentally modified or transformed sufficiently that it constitutes an original work entitling the author or artist to copyright protection under applicable law, and where the primary value of such transformed or derivative work is not recognizable as the Content nor is the Content capable of being downloaded, extracted or accessed by a third party as a stand-alone file (satisfaction of these conditions will constitute the work as a Permitted Derivative Work for the purposes of this Agreement). ...
(b) Seat Restrictions. Only you are permitted to use the Content, although you may transfer files containing Content or Permitted Derivative Works to your clients, printers, or ISP for the purpose of reproduction for Permitted Uses, provided that such parties shall have no further or additional rights to use the Content and cannot access or extract it from any file you provide. ...
(c) Permitted Uses. Subject to the restrictions described under Prohibited Uses below, the following are Permitted Uses of Content:
...
4. Standard License Prohibitions
(a) Prohibited Uses. You may not do anything with the Content that is not expressly permitted in the preceding section or permitted by an Extended License. For greater certainty, the following are Prohibited Uses and you may not:
1. ...
...
9. remove any notice of copyright, trade-mark or other proprietary right from any place where it is on or embedded in the Content;
10. sub-license, re-sell, rent, lend, assign, gift or otherwise transfer or distribute the Content or the rights granted under this Agreement;
11. install and use the Content in more than one location at a time or post a copy of the Content on a network server or web server for use by other users;
...
15. ...
...
The result of this at IS: retained rights, only 1 user, 1 client - 1 license, 2 clients - 2 licenses (or EL), deleting the copyright phrase is not permitted etc. For me these rules are nearly identical to those of Fotolia. In some cases they are even more restrictive than those of Fotolia (read more at the above given link). It seems you don't know the agreements of the agency you are a member of. But you should know the terms before you compare them with the terms of the other agencies. Please, read them at your own before posting and don't waste our time.
38
« on: September 03, 2011, 16:29 »
click_click, I didn't answer the question about consulting an attorney, because the subject of this thread is: How to recognize legal/illegal use? As you see in the posts of this thread: recognizing legal/illegal use under the rules of the agreements of the agencies is hard stuff enough. Asking how to fight against illegal use before you have clearly recognized illegal use is like doing the second step before the first - you will stumble. Therefore I beg you, don't turn the subject of this thread. Nevertheless I will answer (some of) your questions in short. Yes, I did. I asked my attorney, who worked for me for many years in good and in bad cases. Mostly I've won, sometimes a compromise had to be closed. Mostly he was paid by the opposing (loosing) party. He took the time to discuss the problem of illegal use of images with me - under German right. I'm not an attorney, therefore you must go to an attorney in your country. Copyright is international right, there are not so many differences. But the rules of justice and the judgements may be different in the several countries. What are the damages? - In case of a non purchased license for an illegal copied image with a copyright phrase (i.e. ingwio - Fotolia), the damage would be the commission I didn't get. I would write a note to Fotolia, they are responsable to check and (perhaps) write a note to the illegal user.
- In case of a non purchased license for an illegal copied non-exclusive image without a copyright phrase, the damage would be the market price. The thief would not be able to rely on the price at the agency (i.e. Fotolia), because he has not agreed to the terms and conditions, especially not if he is not even a member of Fotolia. In my opinion (but I'm no attorny) you could calculate the price for the image like a non-microstock photograph would do (size, purpose, number of copies etc.). And that's a little bit more than the artist's commissions of the microstock agencies.
I will pursue copyright violations step by step, first in my home country (Germany), then maybe USA, the other European countries etc. Hard work is only the first time for each country. I hope there will be no illegal users in China or Japan, because I'm not so good in Chinese and Japanese. There is no reason to hurry, the illegal used copies will wait till I find time for them (except those which are deleted in the meantime). Some of your other questions are already answered in this forum. Please, have a look at the other threads of this board "Image Sleuth".
39
« on: September 03, 2011, 11:36 »
Madelaide, thanks for your factual post. I will try to answer. I would be curious to know if designers write any formal agreement with their clients especifically about the licensed images, regardless of the one-use rule, forwarding the restrictions of the license terms.
I think there will be designers who don't know the rules of the license agreements they have agreed with. So they won't write a formal agreement about the special rules of the sublicense they give to their clients. But my experience is, that many designers write agreements to protect their own work. In result it often makes no difference for the clients of the designer: the client gets a work that is protected by an agreement. In other cases there may be clients of a designer, who never would use the image in a further instance, because they are unable to handle digital media, create or change a website etc. So the rules of license agreements are protected by this. It would be expected that the client, once having the images in his server - in a website, for instance - would find it natural to use it in other means inside his business.
Yes, that's right. And the client is allowed to use it inside his business. He has rights similar to the rights of the designer (as declared in the Fotolia content download agreement). But he is not allowed to sublicense the image again. Anyway, even if in my example we now have 1 (or 2) legal usages of the 5 instances found in the web, what would you do? Write to each of the users to find which is legal? And if you find 50 instances of an image you only sold 10 times?
Under today's copyright phrase: 5 or 50 instances, exclusive image: I would write one note to Fotolia with the description of the (perhaps) illegal use. 5 or 50 instances, non-exclusive image: If I can find out that Fotolia licensed the image (by copyright phrase in the image, by the name of the downloaded file etc.), I would write one note to Fotolia with the description of those instances. The other instances are those with deleted copyright phrases, I would write a note to the owners of the sites. Under my idea of a unique license ID: Exclusive image, 5 or 50 instances: I would write one note to Fotolia with the description of the perhaps illegal use. Non-exclusive image, 5 instances as described in your example: I would write one note to Fotolia for the instances with the same image ID. For the instances with deleted license ID/copyright phrase I would write a note to the owners of the sites. Non-exclusive image, 50 instances: I would check the license IDs. Then I would write one note to Fotolia, but only for the instances with identical image IDs. Instances with deleted license ID/copyright phrase I would include in the note to Fotolia, if the source is an Fotolia licensed instance (see above). Otherwise I would write a note to the owners of the sites. It's also about the time spent in this and the return you may expect. In my experience, agencies won't do much about this. I believe they only do something when it is a case where an EL is required, they won't go after a person using a small image in a blog. And if you write people, they just remove the infringing image. Only once I got a compensation, it was when the name of the blogger was published here and she came to the forum and was morally forced to pay me something, even after removing the image.
In my opening post I described the result of Google's image search. It was the first time I used it, therefore it took a little longer. In the meantime if have trained the workflow and a search takes only about half a minute per image (plus the time to check the found instances and write the note(s)). Every week I search for 10 images, from week to week I change the images I search for. 5 minutes for search per week - that's much less time than I spend for discussion in this thread. Fotolia says, they can't check each image that seams to be misused. They will only do something in case of misused exclusive images or when the source of the illegal used image is clearly an image licensed by Fotolia. And there are cases, they can't do anything, because of international rights and the ownership and rights of the uploading member. I agree with that. I don't have experience what will happen - future will show. Would I write a note to a blogger who uses a small image? I would have a look at the blogger's site and then decide. A blogger like Robert Kneschke ( http://www.alltageinesfotoproduzenten.de/) would get a note. By the way, I just saw a new article (in German) on his blog: The story of a picture in internet - copied, stolen, used (Die Geschichte eines Internet-Fotos Kopiert, geklaut, benutzt, 2011-09-02). Seems to be interesting. I think, mostly I won't get compensation. But I think, mostly the one who got a note will not misuse an image again. Still, even if your purpose is noble, I can not see any improvement in the current situation. Unfortunately, the multiple sales in the microstock world will make you crazy if you decide to go after each user. It is trouble enough to go after the more visible infringement (watermakred images, large sizes), with little or none compensation.
It's a long walk, we all together have to go to prevent RF turning to PD. With or without license ID: In clear cases the illegal user must get a (polite) note. Otherwise he will steal images again and again, because he doesn't know about copyright (after the first note he will know) or he doesn't want to pay for using an image (then there is to decide what's to do next, but that's another already existing thread).
PS Let me tell an example of another case: Last year my son asked me to go to a photographer (specialized on portrait and wedding photography, studio, some employees), who took some pictures of him two years before. My son had seen pictures of that session in the gallery at the website of this photographer. My son had not agreed in publishing and he didn't want the pictures to be public. Not just a good job for me - the photographer is an acquaintance of mine. So we had a small talk first: good weather, nice studio, great website etc. Then I asked him, wether he had agreements with the persons he published in his gallery. He didn't know, because one of the employees was responsible for the website. But he suspected that there would be no agreements. However, he said, if anyone should be against the publication of his picture, he could sue in court. This example also shows that you have to fight against the violation of your rights.
40
« on: September 02, 2011, 17:16 »
I think you don't realize that IS and others allow usage by one designer for multiple clients.
I said in an earlier post, that there are different agreements of the agencies and that they have to be checked. So far I didn't check them. Because of the example of Madelaide I only checked the agreements of Fotolia. Do you think we are all stupid?
No, at all no. I Think I answer the questions in the reply with great patience. Anyways, still, your scheme of an id won't work because the content can still be comped into a design.
Please, excuse me, but because of my untrained English I don't know the meaning of "the content can still be comped into a design" and Google's translator didn't too. Please explain. Also, I wouldn't use Fotolia as an example of stellar contracting: "You acknowledge and agree that Fotolia or its licensors retain all ownership rights in and to the Works, and that such Works are covered and protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights of Fotolia or its licensors. "
Fotolia repeats the rules of international right in the agreements. This is a clarification. As we know, Fotolia does the licensing. Its "contributors" or "suppliers" hold the rights. Fotolia is the "licensor". There is no agreement between the contributor and the buyer.
Here you are not right. In the terms of the Fotolia agreements the contributor (artist) gives a license to Fotolia and uploads his work under the terms of the upload agreements. The contributor (artist) holds his rights. The uploading artist (uploading member) is a licensor of Fotolia. Fotolia does the sublicensing to the clients (the downloading members). There has not to be an agreement between the contributor and the buyer. In the case that an illegal used image was sublicensed by Fotolia, Fotolia has to fight against the misuse. In the case that you don't know who has licensed the illegal used image (perhaps because the copyright phrase was deleted) the contributor holds his rights and has the right to fight against the misuse - if he wants. "Fotolia hereby grants to the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member" - What is a "non-exclusive downloading member"? Are there people that only download from Fotolia? Do you get a bonus for being an "exclusive downloading member" - only downloading from Fotolia? What does downloading have to do with anything - I thought they were selling licenses?
The term "non-exclusive downloading member" is a term of the Fotolia content download agreement. It's declared in the first sentence of the link I gave you: Content Download Agreement (Standard License) at http://en.fotolia.com/Info/Agreements/StandardLicense
This agreement (this "Agreement") shall be binding upon Fotolia LLC ("Fotolia") and any member (the "Non-Exclusive Downloading Member") who downloads a photograph, illustration, image or other pictorial or graphic work (the "Work") from the Fotolia.com website. I think they use this term because the downloading member downloads an image non-exclusive - there may be many other downloading members who download the image and no one gets an exclusive download/sublicense. Fotolia sells sublicenses to the clients (the downloading members), who want to use an instance of the image under the rules of the sublicense declared in the content download agreement. They are only allowed to download an instance of the image, if they have agreed to the content download agreement. And because they want to use the image, they do the download. That's what downloading has to do with the sublicensing and using an instance of an image. I think if you were a downloading member you were not glad if you only could purchase a license but could not download the image. I didn't use the term "exclusive downloading member" and it isn't used in the content download agreement of Fotolia. It's your neologism. Please don't ask me to explain it. "Notwithstanding the above, the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member shall have the right to sell or distribute the Work solely as incorporated onto an item of merchandise or other work of authorship if the Work has been modified to the extent that it is no longer substantially similar to the original Work (where such modification may be in the form of changes to the Work itself or the incorporation of the Work into other Non-Fotolia image(s), such as a collage), provided however that the modification must be sufficient enough to qualify as an original work of authorship."
So, you can't use an unmodified image in any way? A blog post? A news article? Everything licensed from Fotolia has to be modified?
I think you didn't see the first sentence of the content download agreement I quoted in that post: 2. Sublicense
Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, Fotolia hereby grants to the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, non-transferable sublicense to use, reproduce or display the Work an unlimited number of times in the authorized media solely for (a) personal or educational purposes and (b) in connection with the operation of a business. "As such, the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member may sublicense its rights and obligations hereunder" - So is it transferable or non-transferable? Boy, talk about your contradictions in terms!
You talk about the terms of Fotolia's agreements that I quoted, so contradictions wouldn't be mine. But there are no contradictions in those terms. Let's look to the following example: The designer (as a Non-Exclusive Downloading Member) has purchased a sublicense of an image and uses the downloaded instance of the image for his client A. In this case the designer has to sublicense his rights and obligations to his client A. This is only allowed for 1 client. If the designer wants to sublicense the image to more clients, he has to purchase a license for each client. These sublicenses for the clients of the designer are more restricted as declared in the agreements. "the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member acknowledges, agrees and warrants that he or she shall not: ... remove any notice of copyright, trademark or other intellectual property right, or other information that may appear on, embedded in, or in connection with the Work in its original downloaded form,"
Great! Because you can never use it in its "original downloaded form" - everything has to be modified according to the earlier terms. Or even if you crop it or flip it, it's modified. Requirement for rights out the window...
You draw wrong conclusions because you misunderstood the rules of sublicensing as explained above. etc.
Etc. you will find in the agreements of Fotolia or other agencies.
41
« on: September 02, 2011, 05:26 »
...
I think the point is that its very hard to track (impossible) selling with a RF licence.
I don't like my work being used without licence but its a reality and I would make more money shooting and uploading more than trying to enforce licence use.
... Emailing people to prove that they didn't steal the image isn't going to make legitimate buyers happy.
Have you heard of heroturko ? After you've shut them down you can implement your license id scheme.
RF:All the agencies call their offer "RF". That's because "RF" isn't defined public, it's defined by the agreements of each agency and the agreements are different. But RF is not PD. Legitimate buyers (i.e. Fotolia):- With today's simple copyright phrase it's difficult to recognize legal/illegal use. An image with a purchased license (i.e. from Fotolia) may be copied many times and even if the copyright phrase isn't deleted, you can't decide which one is a legal/illegal copy.
- With my idea of a license ID you would see that an image has been copied illegal, because you find several instances of the image with the same license ID - and that's illegal use (i.e. at Fotolia). Yes, you are right, you could not find out the one who has bought a legal sublicense. But in this case you can clearly say, here are illegal copies of an image sublicensed by Fotolia. The agency would be responsible to check it and write a note to the site owners.
- All instances of the image with a license ID used only once, will mostly have legitimate buyers. They wouldn't get a note.
- In the case the copyright phrase is deleted (not allowed by the terms of the download agreements of Fotolia) and it's an exclusiv image or if you clearly can say, that's an illegal copy of the image at a certain agency (i.e. at Fotolia), the agency would be responsable to check and to write a note.
- In the case the copyright phrase is deleted and it's a nonexclusiv image, the contributor can't decide at which agency the illegal copy is made. The contributor would be responsable to write a note.
- Because nobody wants to write notes to legitimate buyers, there is the need of a unique sign for a legal purchased sublicense.
- In some cases a legitimate buyer would get a note too, so the contributer has to think about a polite way.
Heroturko:I've just read their DMCA information at http://www.heroturko.biz/dmca.html. It seems they know about the problems of misused media.
42
« on: September 02, 2011, 02:54 »
Back to the main question. If I sell on four or five sites, how do I know which one sold it?
I didn't check it for all agencies, but an image that is sublicensed by Fotolia you recognize by the copyright phrase in the image file information (IPTC). This copyright phrase looks like: RacePhoto - Fotolia. Please have a look to the agreements of your agencies at your own. It seems that nobody can answer your question.
43
« on: September 02, 2011, 02:24 »
ingwio - don't go there. Please don't take that the wrong way but you took Fotolia just to make an example of madelaide's given scenario.
Other agencies have different licensing terms. Some are similar like Fotolia, some are very different! I think you don't realize that IS and others allow usage by one designer for multiple clients.
It was Madelaide who gave the scenario with a sublicense bought from Fotolia, it wasn't my choice. Therefore I described the different cases under the terms of Fotolia's agreements. Yes, I know that the license agreements of the agencies are different. That's one reason why I upload my images to only 4 agencies and not to 25. I don't care about the agreements of IS, I don't upload there. One question of my opening post was: Would a license ID for each download help recognizing legal/illegal use?Now my clear answer is: Yes, it would (at Fotolia). In the next weeks I will have a look to the agreements of my other 3 agencies and their efforts to protect my images from illegal use. After that I will decide to which agencies I will upload my images in future. I think Fotolia will be one of them - perhaps even exclusive.
PS: In the past I sometimes wondered, why some of my images were sublicensed 7 or 8 times at the same date/time at Fotolia. Now I think that was, because a designer had 7 or 8 clients for whom he wanted to use the images - and he knew the download agreements of Fotolia.
44
« on: September 01, 2011, 18:42 »
First let's have a look at Fotolia's general and download agreements. On this base I will explain in detail why I would decide to write a note to all users of the image in Madelaides example.from Fotolia: Terms and Conditions of Use at http://en.fotolia.com/Info/Agreements/TermsAndConditions
3. Use of Works
...
You acknowledge and agree that no ownership of any Works can be transferred, and that no sale of any Works can be effectuated, on or through the Website. Only the rights expressly sublicensed in an applicable Content Download Agreement are granted on or through the Website. You acknowledge and agree that Fotolia or its licensors retain all ownership rights in and to the Works, and that such Works are covered and protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights of Fotolia or its licensors.
from Fotolia: Content Download Agreement (Standard License) at http://en.fotolia.com/Info/Agreements/StandardLicense
2. Sublicense
Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, Fotolia hereby grants to the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, non-transferable sublicense to use, reproduce or display the Work an unlimited number of times in the authorized media solely for (a) personal or educational purposes and (b) in connection with the operation of a business.
...
Notwithstanding the above, the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member shall have the right to sell or distribute the Work solely as incorporated onto an item of merchandise or other work of authorship if the Work has been modified to the extent that it is no longer substantially similar to the original Work (where such modification may be in the form of changes to the Work itself or the incorporation of the Work into other Non-Fotolia image(s), such as a collage), provided however that the modification must be sufficient enough to qualify as an original work of authorship.
...
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in this Agreement (including, without limitation, the restriction in subsection 3(a) below), the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member may utilize all the rights under this Agreement for itself, and additionally, on behalf of one (1) of its clients. As such, the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member may sublicense its rights and obligations hereunder to one (1) such client, and such client shall have all the rights, restrictions and obligations under this Agreement, but without the right to further sublicense these rights to additional parties. If the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member desires to use the Work on behalf of more than one (1) client, then the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member will have to download and pay for additional license(s) to the same Work.
...
3. Restrictions
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in this Agreement, and without limitation to any aforementioned restrictions, the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member acknowledges, agrees and warrants that he or she shall not:
(a)...
...
(h) remove any notice of copyright, trademark or other intellectual property right, or other information that may appear on, embedded in, or in connection with the Work in its original downloaded form, it being understood that the Non-Exclusive Downloading Member shall reproduce any and all such notices in any backup copy of the file comprising the Work that the Downloading Member makes;
...
(n)...
There are some more interesting rules in the agreements, but this may be enough, because I think you all - especially the Fotolia contributors - have read and know them.Here is Madelaides example:FT sells an image to a designer, who uses it for two clients A and B. C grabs it on A's site and puts it on his blog. D grabs it on C's blog and uses it in his site. The designer uses it again for client E, but this time mixing this image with another one, so original embedded ID is lost.
You find 5 instances of the image in the internet, but sold it just once. Three are legal (one without the ID). How do you know which one is which?
Now let's look, wether the designer uses "the image" under the terms of the agreements of Fotolia. Please, Madelaide, don't be angry when I describe the cases of your example a little pedantic, maybe a little ironic too. Be sure - I did want it.Madelaide: FT sells an image to a designer, ...This isn't what happens. FT sells a sublicense to the designer. He can use the image under the rules of the agreements. Madelaide: who uses it for two clients A and B. The designer gives a sublicense to one of his clients (let's say to A) under the special terms of the agreements, that's legal. The sublicense for client B is illegal, because the designer had to buy a second license. Madelaide: C grabs it on A's site and puts it on his blog. Illegal use. Madelaide: D grabs it on C's blog and uses it in his site. Illegal use. Madelaide: The designer uses it again for client E, but this time mixing this image with another one, so original embedded ID is lost.We can't decide this case without having a look at the resulting image of the mix: - If the result of the mix qualifies the new image as an original work of authorship of the designer it's legal use. This case has to be decided Illegal use.
- If the result is two images side by side in one image it's illegal use, because the designer had to buy a third license and he was not allowed to delete the copyright phrase.
- There could be other results of the mix, that we can't not decide in a simple way.
Madelaide: You find 5 instances of the image in the internet, but sold it just once. Three are legal (one without the ID). How do you know which one is which? You have at least 6 instances of the image: one at designer (we can't see it, because it isn't on web), 3 at the clients of the designer, 2 at the thieves. Only two of these instances are legal, the one at the designer and one at the clients (i.e. client A). In legal use we would have 5 purchased sublicenses, 3 purchased by the designer for his 3 clients and 2 purchased by the 2 thieves. You see: In the result of this case description it was the right decision to write a note to all site owners. The clients B and E don't have a legal sublicense. The thieves C and D don't have legal sublicenses. Only client A has a legal sublicense. Perhaps client A would feel harassed by the note, but he would have to talk about it with the designer - that's the one who misused his sublicense. Let's hope he'll never do it again.
Even if there would have been sold 50 sublicenses by Fotolia you could recognize illegal use by looking for the license ID, because all the found instances have the same license ID or no one. Both is a misuse as described above (except client A). Without license ID it's difficult to recognize legal/illegal use, that's what most posters wrote.
PS: I think, some of the posters didn't know that a user has to buy several licenses, when he wants to give a sublicense to more than one client. Therefore they couldn't see, that a unique license ID would help to recognize legal/illegal use in the many cases.
45
« on: August 31, 2011, 17:10 »
It is absolutely not "constructed". Now, you will be harassing the legitimate buyers.
Harassing by deciding to do nothing? Please don't turn this thread named "How to recognize legal/illegal use?" in a thread named "What's to do, when I have found images, that seem to be in illegal use"? There are some other threads with this subject. In many of them is posted about the difficulties of recognizing illegal use, too. In this thread I tried to find out, how the contributors recognize legal/illegal use. As I posted earlier in this thread: The idea of a license ID would only be a first step. In this first step we would not be able to recognize legal/illegal use in all cases. But for many found instances of an image in the web, we would be able to say it's legal. For the others I would have to decide what's to do. Perhaps I would do nothing. Perhaps I would write a (polite) note. A legitimate (polite) buyer could answer me, that he has a purchased license. Another legitimate buyer could feel harassed (bad luck). But the thief would get a note too (good luck). I showed with my last examples (Reply #30), that today's copyright phrase doesn't help recognizing any legal/illegal use. Each instance of an image you find in the web today may be legal or illegal use, you can't find out. If you don't agree with my idea of a license idea, make other suggestions please. There is nothing you can do! If you have a problem with this than RF is not for you!
Is it possible that you mix up RF and PD ( Public Domain)? If we - the contributors - don't fight against illegal use, RF will turn into PD.
46
« on: August 31, 2011, 13:32 »
FT sells an image to a designer, who uses it for two clients A and B. C grabs it on A's site and puts it on his blog. D grabs it on C's blog and uses it in his site. The designer uses it again for client E, but this time mixing this image with another one, so original embedded ID is lost.
You find 5 instances of the image in the internet, but sold it just once. Three are legal (one without the ID). How do you know which one is which?
I think the example is a little constructed. Mostly the purchased license of an image will be used once and not all images are illegal copied. But anyway, in the case described, I would have to decide to - send a note to all website owners or - do nothing. Let's take another example of today's practice: You find 50 instances of an image on sites from all over the world. You sold it 25 times. They all are without a today's copyright phrase (but that doesn't matter, they all or the half of them could have a copyright phrase). What would you do in this case? Would you write a notice to them all? Or would you do nothing? What about the images you sold about 500 times when you find about 1000 instances with or without a today's copyright phrase?
47
« on: August 30, 2011, 16:22 »
- What do you do to let the agencies prevent illegal use?
I don't quite understand that question. Could you rephrase?
Oops, please excuse my untrained English. Next try: How you act on the agencies so that they prevent illegal uses?
49
« on: August 30, 2011, 14:05 »
You plan of registering licenses, but hidden from the artists view, makes no sense.
If an image is used with a purchased license, you can't use a visible watermark, because the image would be worthless for the buyer. So you have to use an invisible sign. This could be an invisible (Digimarc) watermark. My idea is to use a unified license ID in the image file information (IPTC data). How does someone who sells on 25 agencies find out which one sold the image? Ask all of them to go through and see if they have a sale at XYZ site for that shot? Wed' have to check every use we find, then write to every agency and have them check for licenses?
When FT sells a license today, they put a copyright phrase (i.e.: "ingwio - fotolia") and the image ID of FT into the image file information. Please look at my example 4 in the opening post. I think other agencies handle it similar, I did not check this so far. The copyright phrase and the image ID show you, which agency has sold a license for an image with a special ID, but it is not a unified sign for a purchased license. Worldwide everyone could copy the image and when you find it on a site, it looks like a purchased license. Only the agency could find out, whether it's a legal license purchased by the owner. I do not want to find out whether an image is in legal usage. I want to find the images without a license and would like the owners of these sites to purchase a license or remove the image. I.e.: An image is sold 30 times and used 60 times on web. Today you can't find out on your own which one is in use without a purchased license. Only the agency would be able to check, but it's hard work, because they had to check each website on which the image is used. They would not do that. And users who haven't purchased a license don't say: Look, here is an image in illegal use. Therefore we - the contributors - need to distinguish legal from illegal use and fight against illegal (non purchased) use. Therefore I started this thread. I thought the OP meant that every image will have a license ID attached to the IPTC data of the file.
Each agency could have license IDs starting with the first three letters of their name followed by a 30-digit number.
Once you would find an image of yours online and check the IPTC (if it hasn't been stripped...) you could then match it up with other sites using that same image. If any of them have the identical license ID it would either mean that it was purchased by the same buyer but used multiple times or... and that's the idea of the OP, the file is stolen.
My idea is to use a unified sign in the image file information - like a passport. Then we can check and do the following: - The image has a passport and is only found once: Legal use, nothing to do.
- The image has a passport and is found more than once: Maybe legal use, nothing to do. Maybe illegal use, send a notice to the agency (when exclusive image) or to the owners of the sites (when non-exclusive image).
- The image has no passport: Maybe illegal use. Send a notice to the agency (when exclusive image) or to the owner of the site (when non-exclusive image).
In my idea of a simple unified sign (passport) it should have the following elements: agency, image ID, license ID. In the image file information (part IPTC-Status) of an image licensed by FT we find the following data already today: datafield Copyright: artist and agency (i.e.: ingwio - fotolia) datafield Source: image ID of the agency (i.e.:22390470) This data is written into the image file information, when a purchased download occurs at FT. Only the license ID is missed. In a simple way the license ID could be the timestamp for that moment the image with the purchased license is downloaded. This data you find already in the artist's list of sold files at at FT (and in the buyer's list of purchased files too). With the format string "yyyymmddhhmmss" and the download date/time 2011-08-24 02:39:54 pm you would get 20110824143954 for the license ID, which could be added in the datafield Source (i.e. 22390470-20110824143954). The license ID isn't a new idea. The IPCT, " International Press Telecommunications Council" ( http://www.iptc.org/site/Home/), defined and described the datafields of image file information. Especially for Adobe users is the "IPTC File Info panel in CS5 User Guide" ( http://www.iptc.org/std/photometadata/documentation/IPTC-CS5-FileInfo-UserGuide_6.pdf), read pages 14-16, 22-25. Implementing this would be hard stuff for the agencies, therefore my idea of timestamp as a simple license ID. That's a lot of effort for a very low chance of making valid claims. The agencies would have to invest a lot of money and resources to implement that system and in the end it still has to be verified manually if two images may or may have not been used legally.
It's like treading water IMO.
I can't see that the agencies would have to invest a lot of money and resources to implement the additional image ID as I described above. I.e. at FT it looks more like a little finger exercise for a programmer at the beginning of his career: formatting date/time of the purchased download and writing it to the image file information together with the image ID. @ click_click:Now I've read about your opinion why an image ID would not work. But what about your answers to my other questions in the opening post? - Have the buyers to put copyright information in the files, when they use our images in their images?
- How do you recognize a legal/illegal use of your images?
- What do your agents do to prevent illegal use?
- What do you do to let the agencies prevent illegal use?
- What would you prefer instead of a license ID for recognizing legal/illegal use?
Your idea seems to be to produce more images instead of fighting against the illegal use of images. This would be like drawing water out of a boat which has a big leak IMO.
50
« on: August 25, 2011, 10:02 »
I just received DT's newsletter with a link to a new feature: New feature: Report misusage - DMCA notification ( http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_28308) The thread shows how misuse could be handled by a microstock agency, but the problem is left: How to recognize misuse.
PS.: I wonder how other agencies handle misuse. If they don't, I will know which agency gets my next uploads - exclusive.
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