Lane Hartwell Speaks Out About Photography Theft
As many of you know, I’ve had my fair share of problems of people using my photos without attribution or worse for commercial use without first making arrangements with me. Recently examples are the San Francisco Examiner and startup ZingFu.
My good friend and fellow photographer Lane Hartwell (you can see some of her excellent photography on Flickr) has had her photos stolen too many times now and is fed up with it. She is considering taking extreme measures to protect her photography, including the use of watermarks.
She recently wrote a blog post about this issue: “Please don’t steal my work”
I don’t think a day goes by anymore that I don’t find my images taken and used without my permission. Magazines have stolen my photos. Acquaintances have stolen my photos. I have disabled downloading of my images to everyone but friends, but it’s still a problem.
Brian Oberkirch has some ideas on what people can do to respect the rights of photographers and their work, including honoring Creative Commons licensing.
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on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
I agree. I don’t hit every site on the Internet and I’ve send you (scott) and lane emails saying, “isn’t this your picture?” and i’ve been right so far. It’s ridiculous and there has to be a better way to protect your work online.
on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 5:46 pm
I’d like to go with the “You’re a Dick” strategy.
We make a group of people ready to respond on a moment’s notice if a CC/CR abuse is found.
Then we each send an email very politely saying we think they have a misused photo on their site. They get 1000 of these they won’t do it again.
Of course only works for sites, not print.
The other piece could be a screen shot history with very well titled entries about who misused an item. And these would show up in search results when someone wants to find a company like ZingFu.
Wouldn’t change the world but would embarrass people.
on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 1:27 am
What bothers me is the name of the hoop performer? Where is that attribution and link back? Who’s art are we looking at then?
Stealing performers images and likenesses is quite common also. Photographers don’t pay royalties for art works that they photograph and make money off of.
on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 1:59 am
It’s impossible to stop people from stealing your stuff when it’s published online. Even the trickiest obfuscation scripts and tactics cannot stop a determined person from accessing the files and downloading them. Watermarking only slows them down. If someone really wants your image, they’ll take it.
I spent about 15 minutes with the above image and was able to remove a great deal of the watermark. If I spent another 15 minutes, it would be gone entirely.
on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 2:00 am
p.s. the URL for the image is: http://jovino.com/laneHartwell.jpg
on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 9:24 am
i agree with Valintin
I am an artist and my art gets photographed all the time, i rarely get credtit and cannot even get print quality pucs. from photographers, they want exclusive rights to my art i made!
i agree photogs shoudn’t be getting ripped off but what about the artists getting ripped off by photogs!?!!!!
it is amazing the number of books i am in that i know nothing about some photog published….
on Saturday, December 15th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
i know this isn’t a simple issue, but i have to disagree with Ted here… i don’t think the solution is to send ignorant offenders thousands of “you’re a dick” letters. that isn’t scalable, isn’t motivational, and just in general seems like an exercise in futility. while i understand that it isn’t “right” (and in some cases isn’t “legal”) for people to re-use others’ work without payment or attribution, neither is the expectation for consistent universal & proper attribution and/or compensation by artists (=photographers) who make their living from the use of others’ likenesses a rational perspective. that seems about as likely as the chemist who first observes and documents the structure of H20 expecting every fish in the ocean to pay a licensing fee. the law may say one thing, but in this case it’s application is pretty much impossible & untenable, if at the very least impractical.
while i respect Lane’s decisions to make her images private, and also her right to speak out against improper use of her art by others, i still have a fundamental problem with someone complaining about re-use when that person’s art is based upon the tolerance of their photographic subjects providing their image freely. i know she’s an expert, and works hard at her craft, and pays for expensive equipment / etc.. but still… how does Owen Thomas feel about his image being reused? was he compensated at any time for the use of his image? did he even agree to be photographed, or did he just smile? the law may say one thing, but common sense does seem to lead to other conclusions.
i’m sure my legal awareness of the finer points here is fairly ignorant & immature… but that’s kind of my point, really. *everyone* else out there is similarly ignorant & immature, and they aren’t going to behave differently simply because a law which isn’t scalably enforceable says they should. it’s just not a practical solution to the problem. watermarking her images with reference to her brand is probably a much better solution than issuing DMCA takedown orders and/or coordinating email vigilantism against unsuspecting perpetrators.
in summary: mark me down for “rational & measured response to commonplace situations”. lane can of course decide to take her ball and go home, and she’s entirely within her rights to do so. then again, i find it somewhat irrational for a photographic artist who publishes work on the internet to not expect to occasionally be re-mixed & re-used w/o explicit credit.