UK's Instagram Act . . . BEWARE!!

Here we go again . . . I hate to bring bad news first thing in the morning, but this is important. Whether we're "in the business or not", we need to take, keep and protect ownership of our work.

UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now ? The Register

Run Away!!!

They say "orphan works" so if the EXIF is there then it is safe supposedly. What if we have a copyright on the photo? Does that protect it? Looks like we had all better start putting on a very identifiable copyright mark on all our photos from now on. URL might be better?

'Tis a sad day indeed and reading that, I bet there were and are a lot of people who remain unaware and will forever remain unaware of such things

Tracsoft - Don Kuykendall said:

They say "orphan works" so if the EXIF is there then it is safe supposedly. What if we have a copyright on the photo? Does that protect it? Looks like we had all better start putting on a very identifiable copyright mark on all our photos from now on. URL might be better?

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There's apparently a way to "strip" the metadata from images . As a simple example, when a photo is uploaded to Facebook and you click on it . . . in the options menu you can simply "download" it to your hard drive. You can then import it into LR and either apply a preset that contains your copyright info, or blank if you want it to be "orphaned" and it will override any previously embedded metadata. Then export as a jpeg . . . and you are the now the copyright owner. Pretty sad and scary . . . and I just tested this.

​I'd be interested to know if there are programs out there that will "permanently embed" copyright info in the photo.

ohkphoto said:

There's apparently a way to "strip" the metadata from images . As a simple example, when a photo is uploaded to Facebook and you click on it . . . in the options menu you can simply "download" it to your hard drive. You can then import it into LR and either apply a preset that contains your copyright info, or blank if you want it to be "orphaned" and it will override any previously embedded metadata. Then export as a jpeg . . . and you are the now the copyright owner. Pretty sad and scary . . . and I just tested this.

​I'd be interested to know if there are programs out there that will "permanently embed" copyright info in the photo.

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As we already know many of the photos we upload here have the data striped out either by the forum software or more than likely the software we use to resize them before we upload.

Again I ask, will a visible watermark protect our rights? I know that you can edit them out but you could probable make a case it it had it on there when you uploaded it.

ohkphoto said:

​I'd be interested to know if there are programs out there that will "permanently embed" copyright info in the photo.

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As a certified computer geek I'll stick my neck out and say I doubt very highly there's anything anyone could embed into a digital image I couldn't remove if I was properly motivated to do so. On the most basic level I could use a tool like Batch Purifier and really, that's child's play. There are far, far more powerful tools available for those who want them.

Unfortunately, I can go to Flickr and look at all the resized versions of any of my photos and the EXIF data is stripped from each and every one of them, meaning that even though I have a version out there with my copyright embedded in the EXIF data, there are a handful of copies, produced whenever anything is uploaded to Flickr, that have that EXIF data stripped. So if you're willing to work with a "Large" file instead of my original, then technically there are 5-15 "orphan works" ON flickr for every well documented and copyrighted version of my photos. That's been a concern of mine for a while, and this has me ready to yank everything off of there.

What really gets me is that these same large companies will sue the pants off of anyone who dares borrow even a second of a song or an smidgen of an idea from a work that they own, even though the thing they based it on was "borrowed" from public domain or a previously expired copyrighted work (cough, cough, Disney, cough).

Where i come from, when you take something that is not yours, it's stealing. Do i now have to put name tags on everything?? If i find something on the plane that does not belong to me, i take it to lost and found. It does not belong to me just because there is no indication of who it belongs to. Where have peoples morales gone?

That's insane. Did anyone bother to read it?

There's some good information here on this site. They are stealing our work

Also, check this one . . . membership is free and this coalition is trying to standardize licenses internationally. You can even generate your own. :: PLUS ::

I think that every time we as photographers "give" away a digital copy of our photo without a license (even if it's a free, personal use license) we're shooting ourselves in the foot. We have to start changing the thinking in the general public -- photographs are a work or art, a creative work protected by copyright. The PHOTOGRAPHER/CREATOR owns the rights to that image.

Think i will start only uploading my photos to my Zenfolio site and then linking to them in facebook. That would be just for the photos I care about. Playing around can still go to the site.

That really is bad news. Sad to read this.

Why exactly this is bad? As long as you have metadata showing proof of ownership, you are safe. If someone strips metadata then you can't do anything anyway. This is same as someone stripping DRM from music, ebooks etc. So this is nothing new.

If you are so paranoid about someone stealing your images, then why load in those public sites in the first place?

It's not a personal concern as much as it is a concern for the rights of all artists. Just because someone can strip information off and do something with an image doesn't mean it's not illegal. I could give a rats behind about my images, but I know people who make a living with a camera, and just as I watched as musicians struggle to make a living in the digital age, I feel for these artists.

But to the point of all this, the paranoia here results in what amounts to a Government Blessing of Copyright Theft. Big corporations with the ability to employ a room full of internet monitors looking for violators (who will receive cease and desist letters and perhaps notifications of other legal action), the small artist is already screwed to begin with. That's the real problem here. The rest is the same old, same old that we've been dealing with all along.

mobi said:

Why exactly this is bad? As long as you have metadata showing proof of ownership, you are safe. If someone strips metadata then you can't do anything anyway. This is same as someone stripping DRM from music, ebooks etc. So this is nothing new.

If you are so paranoid about someone stealing your images, then why load in those public sites in the first place?

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It has nothing to do with paranoia.

If you want to get a better understanding of why it's bad (the original article gives clear explanations), download a Getty image, claim it as your own by stripping the exif data, post on your website and see what happens.

Big Brother is watching...and partaking...

It's one thing saying that 'orphan images' are a free for all, but if they insist on taking that approach, it would only be fair (not remotely suggesting that it is okay to begin with however) that there was some sort of legislation prohibiting these large organizations (or anyone for that matter) from automatically stripping data from uploaded images; it should then be up to the rightful owner of the work to decide whether they wish to have the opt in/opt out option to have data retained/removed. But I guess that is asking too much!

The reality today is, if you post an image anywhere accessible to anyone, it is at risk of being used with or without permission. But it truly is a sad day when it becomes official legislation that (in almost as many words) anything that you create has to be hidden and hoarded because in sharing with anyone, it is fair game and up for grabs to be claimed by someone else.

While watermarks won't stop anyone from taking an image, it does at least make then have to work for it.