Why does Google+ only take down one photograph when an account is clearly flooded with posts of stolen photos?
"Images with unenforced copyrights lose their ability to generate direct income for several reasons. First is death by search engine burial. I depend on a high search ranking, as most clients arrive to my website using Google. Yet the churning tides of Facebook, 9gag, and imgur make it harder and harder for prospective customers to find my actual website in the search soup of my uncredited images. I am too often competing—and losing—against uncredited copies of my own work. If clients do track me down, they have little incentive to buy. Who wants to pay for an image that is already everywhere?"
Google+ results show up in Google Search, and G+ posts can indirectly promote infringing uses over the creator's own copies of a photo as well. The DMCA takedown process is a minimum response; Google profits from serving ads against the infringing search results for posts it tolerates on G+. Surely Google can do better. Google could help content creators find and address copyright infringement, especially on Google's own services.
#copyright #copyrightinfringement #photography
Most copyright holders are individuals; most infringers are businesses. Things are broken.
Comments
thanks for sharing
It's becoming more and more problematic +Jeff Sullivan.
+Matthew Shuey Google used to pride itself on accurate search results. Now that it has 2/3 share of search, it tolerates (and even creates and promotes) deviations in small markets, at the expense of small businesses such as photographers. Google rose on its values. Whether or not it has abandoned those values will determine the next trajectory.
I hear you +Jeff Sullivan. I'm dealing with a few faux photographers that stole art from a few of my photo contributors and even put their own watermark on it trying to pass off the work as their own. Currently we are using DMCA as a last option as credit reporting seems to be a more viable option.
+Jeff Sullivan Can you send me (private message is fine) an example of an infringing G+ account, and I'll see if there's something I can do internally.
muy hermoso:)
very true!! Happy day +Jeff Sullivan
Will do +Travis Wise , thanks!
Wow not cool at all i loved Alex Wild's work he is a gifted macro photographer.
If I had a website, I would be bummed!
+Jeff Sullivan Although I sympathize, there's not much that Google can do to enforce your copyright without an accurate way to verify that it's your copyright to be enforced. If you have a clever technical way to do it, we're all ears. (And note that the current 17 USC 512 takedown scheme is massively flawed, as there's not enough penalty pushback against spurious, malicious, and incorrect takedown requests, especially against fair use applications of the material).
No, I don't have a solution either. This shit is hard to get right.
Having been publishing photos to the Web since 97, I've uncovered countless cases of infringement of my work. When its clearly for profit, I've billed and been paid by many infringers.
To help thwart infringement I put obvious contact info in the borders of my images but more importantly this facilitates the sale of rights to my images. It works. I sell rights to lots of stock. The e-mail address and phone number on the image turns directly into sales. http://photo.net/photodb/member-photos?user_id=215599&include=all&unlimit=1
There needs to be different laws for individuals and companies. I don't care if a person or a non profit uses my stuff, if they credit me, but if someone or a company uses my stuff to make money, i want a chunk of change.
+Valdis Kletnieks If services like http://www.pixsy.com/ can do it, why can't Google? Buy or license their technology and integrate it into G+. Problem solved. (Only it isn't, and that's the point.)
It's not like copyright infringement search services haven't been around for years. Give me one for G+, instead of pretending that the problem is intractable.
One of the most simple, accessible and common methods for detecting copyright infringement detection tools in recent years has been Google Image Search. Why doesn't Google use that to detect a duplicate image while it's being added to G+? The options given upon detecting an infringing photo could be to skip the upload or to assert ownership, and send DMCA take down notices to all offending sites. How hard was that? Sure, sites would need to need to have a method for accepting automated DMCA take down requests, and a dispute resolution system would have to be included, but sites could reduce their volume of manually processed DMCA requests and save money, so they should be eager to implement such a solution. It's exactly the sort of problem computers are perfect for automating, and not particularly complicated or insurmountable.
I think it's pretty obvious when you come across a G+ account publishing photos from all over the world and no person could possibly take all of those photos. A ton of accounts like that post in Google communities. I had such as user flagged by another user on Flickr, and by the time I was visiting the account over there, it was already disabled. On G+ the same person's account was active many months after I submitted a DMCA take down request to Google, and had my single photo removed from the hundreds or thousands of posts. So technology notwithstanding, there does seem to be a cultural difference in management style between Google and some other sites. Maybe the interaction as perceived to be too valuable to eliminate on G+, but copyright violation has driven some content creators way as well, so there may be no net gain.
+Jim Harrington Adding e-mail address and phone number is brilliant. I need to revisit my watermarks, thanks!
+Jeff Sullivan It should also be noted that black frames make images stand out better when presented as small thumbnails via image search. https://www.google.com/search?q=hawk+eating+squirrel
one of my images that sold as stock so long ago…
+Jeff Sullivan The options given upon detecting an infringing photo could be to skip the upload or to assert ownership
So Google refuses to index "infringing" photos. Congrats, you just shot yourself in the foot – if it has 57 copies of the image, how does it know that the one on your website is the legit one, and not one of the 27 copies that it indexed before finding your copy? That's the part there's no good handle on yet.
+Zach W I don't care if a person or a non profit uses my stuff, if they credit me, but if someone or a company uses my stuff to make money, i want a chunk of change.
There's a Creative Commons license for that. 🙂 (you probably want Creative Commons BY-NC-SA for your case, but there's lots of combos)
https://creativecommons.org/
+Valdis Kletnieks I think you misunderstood. I don't want Google to refuse to index infringing photos, I want Google to help shoot them down, and prevent more from getting uploaded, first to Google services, perhaps providing an API for other services to tap into, analogous to the spam databases blogs use.
It really doesn't take a lot of imagination to come up with checks and balances.
First, ensure that you know who is submitting a claim. I'm a "verified" user on G+, but credit cards and other trusted financial ID systems can help. My next Apple phone perhaps. If you know the claimant, you have a neck to grab for fines or damages if the claim turns out to be false.
Second, there are metrics for determining the legitimate copy today, for both site managers resolving DMCA claims and for existing third party services offering detection services (since they exist, I guess I didn't "shoot myself in the foot"). None of those are magically lost simply because the service moves inside of Google's firewall.
1. Generally claimants supply a link to the supposed original. If Google has indexed the page, it knows the age, and it should be the oldest or one of the older copies (if the oldest is on another of my sites, I can point to those copies too if the algorithm needs more convincing evidence).
2. Google probably knows that I'm the author (Google not using authorship for search doesn't mean that it doesn't have other highly productive uses).
3. For all of my photos online I have a higher resolution copy, which I can supply to demonstrate that all other online copies are derivative works. Often those originals will also cover more material, prior to a crop, leveling rotation, or lens correction which slightly reduces some of the original data in the infringed copies.
4. In some cases the watermark isn't even removed on the infringing copies. A search for my watermark would be a great way to find low hanging fruit for take downs.
5. A lot of infringement is casual, committed by unsophisticated infringers.
Why would Google do this? Theft causes economic loss, which reduces the pool of revenue from which marketing budgets are formed and Google ads are bought. If "a rising tide floats all boats", a lowering tide has the opposite effect. The photographer who wrote this article illustrates that point.
Good article and definately an issue that needs to be addressed further. While I don't register every photo I upload, I do embed hidden (Digimarc), as well as visible watermarks on every image so I can track online usage. If I have an image I think will be of monetary value to a client, I do register with the LOC.
One of the main problems is the "terms of usage" we agree to when uploading. Most social media or hosting providers terms state that "we" declare we have the right to post or upload and image and the media or hosting provider isn't responsible for any infringements.
While self policing is great for most creatives who respect and value others works and rights, it wouldn't be that difficult for social media or hosting providers to search LOC & third parties watermarks for registered rights before permiting an upload. If the works are already register to another user, then the upload would be denied or only permitted with accreditation to the license holder.
I also like +Jim Harrington suggestion of embedding contact information and will start to do so. Thanks
+paul richmond so many great photographers are flooding the web with pictures that have no watermark. This only makes it easier for copyright infringers.
+Jim Harrington I totally agree and wonder why. Most PP software makes it so easy as a final step. Plus when I enjoy a piece of work I like knowing whose's it is so I can follow their works.
+Travis Wise Please take a look at this community – http://goo.gl/NHkgEV, run by +Copyright Violation . There are several alphabetical lists of perceived infringers spotted by the community.
+Jeff Sullivan as I suggested in a post back in May ( http://goo.gl/HwYi9K), besides acting the way you suggest, Google could also discourage copyright infringement when posting by doing a reverse image search and, if many similar (or identical) photos are found, include a warning such as "please make sure you have the proper rights to post this image". It would at least send a message to people that Google is actually concerned about this (is it?)…
+Daniel Schwabe and +Travis Wise, I received a comment on the side which I think makes some good points,
"Excellent post about Google+. They certainly do have the technology, especially given that YouTube can instantly find rights-protected music tracks and movie clips in new uploads. Pinterest also has technology to automatically detect Getty images and pay royalties."
Perhaps the excellent Google team on the very popular and successful +YouTube project can share some best practices with the G+ team? It seems like some very tangible progress might be made on this issue, and it could be turned around to become a strategic advantage of G+.
+Daniel Schwabe Google could also discourage copyright infringement when posting by doing a reverse image search and, if many similar (or identical) photos are found, include a warning such as "please make sure you have the proper rights to post this image".
OK, that is actually implementable, and avoids the problem of "infringers upload their copies before Goggle sees an upload from the actual rights holder". Paging +Yonatan Zunger – got an RFE for you 🙂
(And while we're at it, if the EXIF data has a Artist/Copyright tag, could 'Photo Details' show it?)
Thanks +Travis Wise for replying to my private message. So much feedback I send to Google seems to go into t black hole, i'm not sure if it's even seen. From the lack of change in some important areas, it sure doesn't seem like it's taken seriously. It's nice to see the lights on for once, thanks again.
+Jeff Sullivan Right – checks like "I can produce the original and they can't" are useful during the conflict resolution phase.
What you originally said:
The options given upon detecting an infringing photo could be to skip the upload or to
The problem is that most of the things you listed (check the post date, higher-res images, etc) aren't really effective for an image being uploaded from somebody's computer. Consider an image that's on your professional website, that unknown to you has gone viral. You then upload your image from your hard drive to Google+, but it's the 47th copy it's seen uploaded.
Now explain what information Google has in general that verifies that you are the actual rights owner of the 46 previous copies (in other words, without checking for a higher res copy that is likely hidden behind a paywall in a manner that Google can't programmatically check, and so on)…
So.. Google has 46 previous copies, and now you show up. You're not the oldest copy, it doesn't have business records that show that you're the owner of jeffsullivan.blogspot.com, etc. On what basis should Google decide you're rightful and not a 47th infringer?
(And as noted, it can't be a "because I'm Jeff Sullivan" basis – it has to work in general for it to be useful…)
+Valdis Kletnieks Simply confronting someone upon upload with the duplicate copies, implying that they're caught, making them confirm explicitly that they're signing a legal document testifying that the material is theirs… that simple and relatively easy to implement step should eliminate the majority of casual infringement.
As I believe I mentioned, Google search records the date of the page that has my original copy. Does that site match the one tied to my G+ account?
I also suggested that Google Authorship be leveraged to resolve disputes. Google most likely already knows that it's my photo. It doesn't matter that Authorship is supposedly not used for search; it may serve a useful role for other things like reducing copyright infringement.
I also suggested letting photographers verify their identity, and when a likely infringement is detected (using procedures noted above), when you reach that step where you're digitally signing the declaration that it's your intellectual property, being easily identifiable should deter willful infringement. Pursuing damages gets easier and if I'm not mistaken penalties are higher for intentional infringement.
+Jeff Sullivan making them confirm explicitly that they're signing a legal document testifying that the material is theirs.
"that the material is theirs, or they have fair use right to post it, or…" Fixed that for you.
As I believe I mentioned, Google search records the date of the page that has my original copy. Does that site match the one tied to my G+ account?
Does that scale across Google? Gee, I'm glad you have a verified website. I'm stuck posting my picture to someplace like Flickr, where it doesn't get indexed if I make it private to a group, or it doesn't get indexed as mine if I use a pseudonym on that site and don't explicitly tell Google that I'm that person. For bonus points, come up with a secure way that I can tell Google that "Flickr user Pseu Do Nym is me", but prevent me from telling Google that "Flickr User Jeffs Pseudo Nym is me" (It's a lot harder than it looks once you realize that letting Google have your Flickr password or Flickr having your Google password is a Really Bad Idea).
Now somebody in the group reshares it, it goes mildly viral, and when I get around to posting it to Google+, I discover that some asshole name Jeff snarfed the picture up and posted it first, and now Google won't let me because he has a verified website.
Now do you understand the problem?
+Valdis Kletnieks
"I'm stuck posting my picture to someplace like Flickr, where it doesn't get indexed if I make it private to a group, or it doesn't get indexed as mine if I use a pseudonym on that site and don't explicitly tell Google that I'm that person."
Yes, the subset of people who care about image theft probably will have to explicitly tell Google that they are that person, and for those people, it is a huge step up to be able to do that at all. The Google Authorship technology and process already exists to be able to do that. The broader case of "everyone" is far less important because people who don't care… don't care. The people who see benefit will go through the extra steps. It may be intellectually interesting to try to design a system which will solve all problems for all users, but in this case there is no need for that, so the argument seems a little specious.
Technology improvements often come in incremental steps, not in monumental "solve everything for everyone" packages which miraculously arrive fully developed, solving all existing legal and technical challenges. I've worked on copyright protection products in my 20 years in high tech. It's interesting to be on the other side of the fence now, with content which needs better protection.
Comments like "*Now* do you understand the problem?" are unnecessarily condescending. That services already exist to identify and pursue copyright infringement, and that the article presented here notes recovering thousands of dollars in lost revenue using them, shows that such features exist, and can be very productive. Adding them into Google technologies which index much of the Internet for search and into other Google services which involve uploading millions of photos per day (G+ and Views) really seems like a no-brainer. and having the search and destination sites photos are uploaded to under the same company may provide some interesting synergy and opportunities to add improvements, not only to the copyright infringement detection and removal process, but to drive adoption for other technologies under the Google roof such as Authorship. I've outlined some incremental improvements, communicated them to Google, and it is not my goal or responsibility to convince everyone that incremental improvements are better than waiting for more comprehensive ones. No need for us to retread the same ground if you're uninterested in incremental improvements or bringing existing technologies into Google services, for whatever reason. Discussions on practical vs. academic solutions are superfluous. Google will weigh the options and do what they want.
+Jeff Sullivan Comments like "*Now* do you understand the problem?" are unnecessarily condescending.
Like your "and the rest of them probably don't care so they can go screw themselves" attitude isn't condescending?
+Valdis Kletnieks s I'm not sure what you're talking about. Those are your words, not mine.
You may be referring to my observation that if a process is in place, people who care about it will use it. People who choose not to use it are free to make that choice.
+Jeff Sullivan I'm referring to your attitude of "I'm somebody who matters, with an established website, and I don't care if the scheme I've proposed doesn't actually work for 98% of the people who own a camera".
Now, if you want to come out and say that only established photographers deserve to have their rights preserved, and if an amateur who doesn't already have a website and all that, happens to take a picture that subsequently goes viral they can go pound sand, that's OK. But you need to be clear about it. (Hint – what percentage of iconic pictures from 9/11 were taken by amateurs?)
+Valdis Kletnieks You're wrong, there would be benefit for everyone if Google simply integrates Google Image Search into the upload function on Google Web sites, advising and warning potential infringers that they could be subject to penalties. Such a function could inform suspected owners who are also on Google. That one suggestion alone disproves your insulting theories that you disingenuously present in quotes, as if they were actually said.
The steps I took to establish myself with Google such as authorship and verification are open to anyone as far as I know, or they could be (implicit to some of my suggestions). A Web site is available anyone for a few bucks, mine hosts the free WordPress software, no big deal. But many of my suggestions provide benefit to all without any of those steps, so to zero in on that one aspect is not a reasonable or accurate characterization of the suggestions I've offered..
But once again you assign to me things I didn't say. Since you refuse to stop, and I don't care to monitor this account for libel all weekend (or respond to insulting rants indefinitely), I'll have to rely on the block button. We're done.
+Jeff Sullivan Yes, the upload check would be very useful and it's a pity that G+ seems to ignore this proposal which made a long time ago already.
Many thanks for the informative thread – my photography friends have recently uncovered a most cheeky copyright abuser who passed herself off as genuine and entered G+ competitions with other peoples photos – As I understand, with the current G+ policy, without contacting all the original photographers and pointing this plagiarism out and then them issuing take-down notices nothing can be done! This lady is still posting and getting the adulations and kudos for other folks hard work behind the lens. This type of injustice is probably repeated throughout G+.https://plus.google.com/109797293495592736207/posts/NsocXnbVnQN
Thanks +Jeff Sullivan and also +Grant Stringer for all the details till now posted.