Fleeced on Flickr?

Yeah, no kidding...

My images are constantly stolen by fleecing media outlets in Armenia such as Hetq Online, Armenpress and A1 Plus.

The latter just stole one of my images yesterday and they have been informed, but have done nothing to rectify the situation.

http://www.a1plus.am/en/?page=issue&iid=69595

Time to sue them?

P.S. most interesting example of my images being taken was when an image on my Flickr site was taken without permission by the campaign team of former president Levon Ter President who had returned to the scene for last year's election.

It became the image the radical opposition rallied behind. Although they eventually paid me a pitiful amount for the image, they still didn't understand what copyright was and ended up accusing me of working for the KGB.

One of my trainees on the newstracking course told me about a online tool which can, fairly accurately, track the use of an image across the Internet and find out where it originated. Can't recall it's name. He did say it was not 100% accurate, but it's something more and more snappers might have to look at. Happened to me too

http://flickr.com/photos/noodlepie/sets/72057594059461756/

But, I'm hardly a pro-snapper. Never saw anything from that.

BTW - I love the fact that whoever nicked this of mine in Vietnam cobbled together the text in such an amateur manner they left in all my made up English words and colloqial language. At least it might have brought a smile to the odd tourist.

Even though as a fine art photographer I'm more interested in getting images seen so they can start a conversation, I agree that there is a real need for an efficient and simple way to track images so they aren't appropriated. I believe in the Creative Commons license, but wonder how many people know it means and how I would find/pursue people who violated copyrights on my work.

That said, how does one discover that their work has been stolen by some Armenian media outlet, high school art student, or the like? I've always wondered that myself.

The downside of all this free sharing of content online is it undermines the value of professional work, at least in the eyes of outsiders.

A similar thing happened to me, though at least I was asked first. Some profit-making, commercial company wanted to use one of my photos for a digital, interactive map. The email ended on the one sentence that drives me up the wall: "we can't pay you but we will give you great exposure." Absolutely not. Would you tell an accountant, "we would like to use your tax preparation services. We can't pay you, but we will give you great exposure" ?

My mother, also a writer, told me many years ago: "Pick one cause you believe in, for which you want to volunteer-write (Frontline, anyone?). Everyone else has to pay you." I'm sticking to that.

@graham holiday

The service your trainee mentioned is called TinEye

It isn't 100% but is getting better as more and more sites are indexed. There is also a nice Firefox plugin that allows you to right click on any image and check for other sites usage.

Jaclyn,

Well, it's easy for me to find out about the use by Armenian media because I'm browsing it from time to time, or someone will tell me. Anyway, individual use according to the Creative Commons license is fine by me.

It's one of the hopes -- that bloggers etc would be able to use them to make their posts more interesting. Media outlets in Armenia, however, should understand copyright law, but I suppose that's an indication of how little they know about actually operating as one.

Regarding "starting a conversation," yes indeed. Like I said, I issued the low res under a Creative Commons license for non-profits and individuals for just that reason. However, then you discover that others abuse it, including manipulating the images in quite appalling ways.

About the only time when some money was paid in compensation was for last year's presidential election when the main opposition candidate's team took one of my images and used it on their web site. They apologized and offered $100. Fine, better than me taking them to court in a politically tense situation.

However, they didn't tell me that it had already been printed up as posters and that they would use it for placards, badges etc. Later, a pro-government party took the same photo taken at an opposition rally and used it for their own flyers.

http://blog.oneworld.am/2008/01/23/symbol-of-the-revolution/

http://blog.oneworld.am/2008/05/25/dashnaktsutyun-copyright-infringement/

Still, kind of funny really, and my main concern is with the media here using Google to search for images, taking them, not bothering to ask permission or even credit (although the source of the image is given in the search results and so on).

Anyway, Isabelle, you're right. Time to stop this now. Just as Shaun Curry will no longer be using Flickr, nor will I. Can't delete my pics, though, as they're used on my own site. Another option would be to watermark, but that's too time-consuming.

Thanks for the post. It's helped me make my mind up. It's happened too much in the past and it can't continue. And next time I should probably sue...

I guess the moral is don't make anything available - cc licensed or not - that you wouldn't mind seeing borrowed by a mate or on the back of a bus in Yerevan. There are I believe two breach of copyright court cases where CC licenses have been cited - both cases succeeded as far as I remember.

And Isabelle, we do appreciate you participation in the Frontline cause :) Glad you chose a good one. Someone's got to promote/help journalism these days...