Can we opt to disable Dgrin RSS feeds for say, a week, then look and see if they are stealing the image posts through that method?
That's one option but the con to that is that we'd be cutting off a large number of legitimate users who are using RSS readers to follow DGrin posts. Give me some time to see if dgrin gives me any usage info on how many people view dgrin through RSS readers. If it's small, it makes this option much more appealing. If it's large, then less so. Ultimately the decision to do this would be more than just something I decide as the dgrin admin. I'll discuss with the ops team / management when I have some of the RSS data.
Disabling RSS would only be a band-aid, but at least it might help for the time being. They could certainly find other sources of scraping the internet (in this case dgrin) that doesn't use RSS (for example just reading the source code).
Thanks, Aaron. Another Dgrinner suggested that perhaps the thief might be subscribed to every forum. Don't know if we have ways of finding out how many do that or who subscribes to all. Can't find an area for that in the Admin control panel.
My Smugmug
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
This is a really really tough one for us. There's been a lot of suggestions thrown out, some of them fairly technical and clearly from knowledgable people. I've discussed this with the Operations team to see what options we can explore. Richard's explanation in one of the first posts here is quite accurate. We want to be heroic and we're always trying to be. I want to make it clear: we are not ignoring this issue nor are we just going to sweep it under the rug. The problem is that we're struggling to come up with a solution that will actually work. It's not trivial. It's not easy to solve. There's a trade-off to every possible solution which make most of them very undesireable.
Since the beginning of SmugMug, protecting your photos is extremely important to us (probably the most important thing). We have some of the most advanced privacy controls in the industry to make sure your photos are safe. What makes this hard is that this user is scraping your site rather than stealing it (meaning all the links still go back to your SmugMug page). If he was stealing the images we might be able to do more.
It's may seem simple to block just 1 person from seeing a SmugMug image but it's not. We could ban an IP but then this user will simply change the IP and go again. Bot detection is extremely hard to detect and keep out. They can be using multiple IP's from multiple locations around the world. If we ban 1 IP, it'll just get stolen from another, for example. Additionally, it takes a lot of effort to find the needle in the haystack, only for him to change the IP and force us to do it all over again.
One option would be to disable External Embedding of your images. The images will disappear from the blogspot but that also means they'll disappear from dgrin too. You'll have to link to the images instead of actual embed the images into dgrin. I realize this isn't a very good solution for dgrin since you want to display your photos for people to see and we want them to be seen here.
The best course of action to have the blogspot site taken down is for many many people to complain to Google. SmugMug can add our voice but a mass of people complaining will have much more weight than our 1 voice.
We'll continue to monitor and see if there's any additional steps that we can take.
Finally,
Smugmug graces us with a communication!
My first issue is with the thieves, but since I can't speak to them, I'll move on to my second issue.
Why did SmugMug et al make the conscious decision to NOT INFORM me, and all other posters, that our images were being stolen from your forum?
What exactly gives SmugMug the legal and moral right to keep knowledge of that illegal activity from the photographers whom owned said images?
SmugMug should know about federal copyright law. SmugMug should know that each image is protected by said federal law, and that image theft is a federal offense.
SmugMug should know that ANY KIND of unauthorized copying or reproduction of copyrighted images is a federal crime.
It should be beneath SmugMug to try and suggest that copyrighted images that are displayed in any manor or fashion without the expressed consent of the copyright holder, is simply not theft, therefore SmugMug holds no responsibilities to the copyright holder. This is inaccurate and untrue.
Why did SmugMug willingly allow the continued theft of federally protected images to continue?
Why did SmugMug not immediately notify all posters that continual image theft was happening on Dgrin?
Technical difficulties in no way hampers nor impedes the moral and legal responsibility to inform Dgrin patrons that their images are regularly being stolen from this forum.
Please, do take this open forum to explain SmugMugs actions.
Now, to the technical side.
Was it SmugMugs decision that to address this issue technically, it was willing to for-go implementing even a short term stop gap fix until a long term solution could be reached?
If so, why?
Why have you just now asked your people to look into this?
At this point, there have been hundreds of federally protected images knowingly (by SmugMug) stolen from Dgrin.
Please, do take this open forum to address EACH of these issues and questions.
I ask now in advance, that you not take a common approach and simply bloviate to try and dodge answering each and every question.
I realize that this may take some time and effort, but I feel these are VERY SERIOUS issues, and we as SmugMug patrons deserve answers!
This is a really really tough one for us. There's been a lot of suggestions thrown out, some of them fairly technical and clearly from knowledgable people. I've discussed this with the Operations team to see what options we can explore. Richard's explanation in one of the first posts here is quite accurate. We want to be heroic and we're always trying to be. I want to make it clear: we are not ignoring this issue nor are we just going to sweep it under the rug. The problem is that we're struggling to come up with a solution that will actually work. It's not trivial. It's not easy to solve. There's a trade-off to every possible solution which make most of them very undesireable.
Since the beginning of SmugMug, protecting your photos is extremely important to us (probably the most important thing). We have some of the most advanced privacy controls in the industry to make sure your photos are safe. What makes this hard is that this user is scraping your site rather than stealing it (meaning all the links still go back to your SmugMug page). If he was stealing the images we might be able to do more.
It's may seem simple to block just 1 person from seeing a SmugMug image but it's not. We could ban an IP but then this user will simply change the IP and go again. Bot detection is extremely hard to detect and keep out. They can be using multiple IP's from multiple locations around the world. If we ban 1 IP, it'll just get stolen from another, for example. Additionally, it takes a lot of effort to find the needle in the haystack, only for him to change the IP and force us to do it all over again.
One option would be to disable External Embedding of your images. The images will disappear from the blogspot but that also means they'll disappear from dgrin too. You'll have to link to the images instead of actual embed the images into dgrin. I realize this isn't a very good solution for dgrin since you want to display your photos for people to see and we want them to be seen here.
The best course of action to have the blogspot site taken down is for many many people to complain to Google. SmugMug can add our voice but a mass of people complaining will have much more weight than our 1 voice.
We'll continue to monitor and see if there's any additional steps that we can take.
Finally.
Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
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black mambaRegistered UsersPosts: 8,321Major grins
This is a really really tough one for us. There's been a lot of suggestions thrown out, some of them fairly technical and clearly from knowledgable people. I've discussed this with the Operations team to see what options we can explore. Richard's explanation in one of the first posts here is quite accurate. We want to be heroic and we're always trying to be. I want to make it clear: we are not ignoring this issue nor are we just going to sweep it under the rug. The problem is that we're struggling to come up with a solution that will actually work. It's not trivial. It's not easy to solve. There's a trade-off to every possible solution which make most of them very undesireable.
Since the beginning of SmugMug, protecting your photos is extremely important to us (probably the most important thing). We have some of the most advanced privacy controls in the industry to make sure your photos are safe. What makes this hard is that this user is scraping your site rather than stealing it (meaning all the links still go back to your SmugMug page). If he was stealing the images we might be able to do more.
It's may seem simple to block just 1 person from seeing a SmugMug image but it's not. We could ban an IP but then this user will simply change the IP and go again. Bot detection is extremely hard to detect and keep out. They can be using multiple IP's from multiple locations around the world. If we ban 1 IP, it'll just get stolen from another, for example. Additionally, it takes a lot of effort to find the needle in the haystack, only for him to change the IP and force us to do it all over again.
One option would be to disable External Embedding of your images. The images will disappear from the blogspot but that also means they'll disappear from dgrin too. You'll have to link to the images instead of actual embed the images into dgrin. I realize this isn't a very good solution for dgrin since you want to display your photos for people to see and we want them to be seen here.
The best course of action to have the blogspot site taken down is for many many people to complain to Google. SmugMug can add our voice but a mass of people complaining will have much more weight than our 1 voice.
We'll continue to monitor and see if there's any additional steps that we can take.
I'm glad to finally see SmugMug address this issue.....albeit in a very delayed time frame. The fact remains that SmugMug, as I understand it, knew these transgressions against its paying clients had been going on and failed to timely apprise us of the situation. I don't seek to fathom why SmugMug followed this course of action but, in doing so, it clearly fell short of its duty to protect our interest. As onerous as it may have been, SmugMug should have alerted its clients immediately when these activities were uncovered.
If I didn't perceive it as such a serious issue, I would probably laugh at the semantic warfare going on. We're told that we haven't been robbed....only scraped. Hell, by the sound of it I think I'd rather be robbed. You can call this thievery whatever you want; the fact remains that a crime has been committed. You say that if we had been robbed, there was a chance more could be done. The Federal laws of copyright are very clear. We have been victimized and I expect to see the most comprehensive, aggressive plan of action you guys can muster.
Tom
I always wanted to lie naked on a bearskin rug in front of a fireplace. Cracker Barrel didn't take kindly to it.
Several of you SmugMug guys have been saying "no images have been stolen", only scraped, hot-linked to, etc.
SmugMug says, if images were stolen, oh, rest assured we would be all over this because no doubt we would have liability here.
Well here you go SmugMug. 100% PROOF that my images were STOLEN from Dgrin!!!
It took me a whopping 10 minutes of effort to find this out. And remember, I'm just a simple man.
No doubt that if SmugMug had show due diligence, it would have quickly found the same thing out.
I believe you did, and you knew all along!
Three days ago (02/03/2015), I went into my SmugMug account and disabled external links to all my images. I pulled up my post history to check on the result only to find that some, not all images were blocked. Even post with multiple images from the same folder. Some images blocked, some not.
(Not Good!)
So, on this same date, (02/0302015), I went into 498 of my post and physically deleted all images from each post!
Now, according to all your expertise and rederick, my images should no longer show up on the thief's website, right?
Listed here are several of my images STILL DISPLAYED on the thieves website!!!
For you convenience, I've provided a link to the Dgrin post where said images were stolen.
Example of images still displayed even though it's deleted from Dgrin post.
Images deleted from Dgrin post: 02/03/2015
Admin Edit: Blog thief's site link removed by Dgrin forum administrators and moderators.
Disabling RSS would only be a band-aid, but at least it might help for the time being. They could certainly find other sources of scraping the internet (in this case dgrin) that doesn't use RSS (for example just reading the source code).
We would be able to tell very quickly if RSS is the source--if we turn it off and the harvesting continues, then it's not RSS. While there are certainly other ways to harvest content, if this guy is using RSS, chances are he'll just look for another forum to exploit rather than look for another way of exploiting Dgrin. I think it's worth a try.
We disabled RSS a short time ago and are watching ABC. I think it's too soon to tell whether that will solve the problem (or for how long), but for now it's looking good. We also don't know what the impact will be on legitimate RSS clients, and will need to evaluate that as well. But we're doing what we can and will keep you posted.
I just went to these two threads, both on DGrin and on that other site. I don't see your photos on any of them. I wonder if you were seeing it when you checked because the photos were cached on your browser.
This is very disappointing to say the least. Smugmug/dgrin of all people who run a photo business should know how important it is to protect one's photos. It should be #1 on your list of 'need to do's' when hosting websites for other photographers and hosting a forum for photographers.
To let this happen without notifing your forum members is beyond disbelief. Not something I expected from Smug/dgrin. In fact I expected the opposite to happen when a problem arose. If anyone would of asked me if Smug/dgrin would be upfront with issues I'd of told them 'Yes'. Maybe my expectations were too high, maybe I'm naive. but I've always thought of Smug/dgrin as being a very honest company.
I will not be posting any photos on dgrin till I know this issue has been resolved and if it were to occur again someone from Smug/dgrin would let all forum members know immediately. Not just those in Cool Shots, but on other threads within dgrin - The dgrin family as a whole. I'm sad in having to do this since I've just returned to taking photos again and posting them on dgrin.
Question for you - It concerns the RSS Feed that others are mentioning. My understanding of how things work in the internet world is slim, but our websites hosted by Smugmug do have the option for RSS Feeds. If someone is using that to view a website can they get photos off of it just like what may be happening here?
I just went to these two threads, both on DGrin and on that other site. I don't see your photos on any of them. I wonder if you were seeing it when you checked because the photos were cached on your browser.
No, before I posted those links, I cleared my browsers cashe, and also confirmed with three other non-related systems.
After I had deleted the images from my Dgrin post, I was checking the thief blog and some of my images were in-fact little X's. But not the ones that I linked to above.
Evidently disabling RSS had an impact.
But, that still does not detract from the fact that the display of my images anywhere that I don't give permission for, is theft under Federal Copyright Law.
Just because they are not being displayed now, does not mean that they were not stolen!
If you rob a bank, then take back the money, you still committed a crime.
Well, anything's possible, but I can't think of how disabling RSS could affect past posts on ABC. At best, it will prevent harvesting of new content. Even if no new content is harvested, I plan to file a DMCA notice daily for old content of mine on ABC until Google takes it down. I encourage everyone to do the same.
Well, anything's possible, but I can't think of how disabling RSS could affect past posts on ABC. At best, it will prevent harvesting of new content. Even if no new content is harvested, I plan to file a DMCA notice daily for old content of mine on ABC until Google takes it down. I encourage everyone to do the same.
Richard, I appreciate your efforts.
But, a very high level of concern here is why SmugMug did not notify us all when it knew that images were being stolen.
We can contemplate all day as to the technical reasons for this, (and I hope SmugMug does), but there is NO technical reason why SmugMug did NOT notify us all about this, so that WE, as copyright holders could make the decision whether to post more of our images or not.
SmugMug does not have that right!
Nor does this explain why SmugMug has done NOTHING about this until we've made such a stink about it.
But, a very high level of concern here is why SmugMug did not notify us all when it knew that images were being stolen.
We can contemplate all day as to the technical reasons for this, (and I hope SmugMug does), but there is NO technical reason why SmugMug did NOT notify us all about this, so that WE, as copyright holders could make the decision whether to post more of our images or not.
SmugMug does not have that right!
Nor does this explain why SmugMug has done NOTHING about this until we've made such a stink about it.
That's simply UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR!
Randy,
I don't speak for SmugMug. But speaking for myself, I have to ask, are you saying that SmugMug (or Dgrin) knew about this pirate before The Lazy Destroyer reported it here for all to see on Dgrin on 30 January? If so, how do you know that to be true? Seems to me you're making some serious allegations here and I, for one, would like to see some evidence.
Randy,
I don't speak for SmugMug. But speaking for myself, I have to ask, are you saying that SmugMug (or Dgrin) knew about this pirate before The Lazy Destroyer reported it here for all to see on Dgrin on 30 January? If so, how do you know that to be true? Seems to me you're making some serious allegations here and I, for one, would like to see some evidence.
You are correct -- we were not made aware of this until you brought this to my attention. Thank you for doing that! More on that below....
But, that still does not detract from the fact that the display of my images anywhere that I don't give permission for, is theft under Federal Copyright Law.
I'm not a lawyer and don't claim to be any kind of expert on Copyright Law, which means I won't be able to comment on the legal aspects of what this site is doing. I'm working with some of the folks here at SmugMug who do know more to get a better understanding of what the law is and what can be done about it.
There's been a rumor (and a number of posts) on here that SmugMug knew this was happening and ignored the issue and didn't inform its community. I want to dispel that: none of us were aware of this until yesterday when Richard brought this to my attention. Now that we are aware of it we're not just going to ignore this and hope it goes away. I'm working with ops, legal, and some others to see what we can do.
You may be asking "How could you not detect this?" The simple answer is that this is how the internet works. If External Embedding is allowed, anyone (including yourselves, which is how you're posting your photos to dgrin) can link to your images. We have no way of knowing if the intent of that link is malicious or valid. A large majority of SmugMuggers want their images to be found -- they're sharing them on other communities, social networks, etc. When Facebook, for example, takes a link from your SmugMug page displays the thumbnail, it's doing something similar: scraping the page for the link to the image.
We have industry leading tools in place for you to help stop this: disabling external embedding, reviewing the "referrer's" statistics, watermarking your images, enabling right click protection, disabling originals, etc (which you can read more about here: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1230107-how-can-i-protect-my-images-).
Lastly, in the short future you're going to start hearing about an overhaul to dgrin. We're going to be migrating away from vBulletin and upgrading DGrin to a new and much better piece of software. There should be better tools in place to prevent this from happening in the future. I can't guarantee that it won't but hopefully some of the new software will help thwart this issue.
I'll keep you all informed as we figure out what can be done.
Randy,
I don't speak for SmugMug. But speaking for myself, I have to ask, are you saying that SmugMug (or Dgrin) knew about this pirate before The Lazy Destroyer reported it here for all to see on Dgrin on 30 January? If so, how do you know that to be true? Seems to me you're making some serious allegations here and I, for one, would like to see some evidence.
Richard,
This issue of blogs/websites stealing images is not new to this particular instance. You know this.
Here is a link to a similar issue that you have many post in: 17 to be exact... Several Mods also have post in that thread. So what constitutes Dgrin "knowing" about the issue?
November 7, 2014
You have mentioned in your post that another similar issue was found out about a year ago and copyright owners managed to get that site pulled down.
There is a known history about this kind of illegal theft going on from Dgrin.
In this particular instance, when Dgrin found out about it, I guess if you want to say "Officially", they STILL, up to this very minute, have NOT NOTIFIED all affected members.
Please point me to the post, PM's, emails, phone calls, from Dgrin/SmugMug that this issue is going on, and members may want to review it before posting anymore images to the forum.
There was another instance/site that I linked to before doing the same.
Point is, this is historically a known issue on Dgrin. That I know of, no notifications to affected or potentially affected members has been declared.
I'm still waiting for a Copyright Expert to get back to me but in my own research I did come across the following ruling, which found that inline linking does not violate US copyright law according to the the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit during Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc.,[6]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking)
"Google does not...display a copy of ... infringing photographic images for purposes of the Copyright Act when Google frames in-line linked images that appear on a user’s computer screen. Because Google’s computers do not store the photographic images, Google does not have a copy of the images for purposes of the Copyright Act. In other words, Google does not have any “material objects...in which a work is fixed...and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated” and thus cannot communicate a copy.
The court also agreed that including an inline link is not the same as hosting the material yourself. So in the case of framing, while it may "appear" that Google was hosting infringing material, it was only hosting a link to the material which the browser interpreted should appear in a certain way
(For the record, this blogspot is inline-linking to your images hosted on SmugMug, or elsewhere. They're not actually downloading the image to their own servers).
Some of these decisions were based on the fact that the images being reproduced were thumbnail size. In this case, they're using our full-size images. I still need to figure out if that causes this to be different.
For those that don't understand all the ins-and-outs of the web, I'd like to add a little information which will hopefully add some more context. For those that already understand this, feel free to skip ahead. I'm trying to keep this simple so please don't get too wound up if I gloss over some items.
When you open your browser (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.) and point it to a site like DGrin, what you're doing is sending a request to that website to send you a file, or set of files. These files are typically HTML files or Hypertext Markup Language files. Their sole purpose is to describe the desired text, layout and formatting of the page. This is stuff like the actual text that's displayed, the colors, text formatting (font and size) and a bunch of other stuff. In some cases, the formatting includes references to images.
When you have text and images (virtually all pages here on DGrin), the HTML will usually include the textual information and something called an image tag that tells the browser where to find the image that's supposed to be displayed (think of it as the image street address). When your browser encounters one of these tags, it send a request to the site hosting the image (the address or URL), and the hosting site sends the image to your local computer (usually in a temporary holding spot) and then displays it on screen. Pretty straightforward so far?
Now the "beauty" of the internet is that multiple sites can reference those same images without having multiple copies, they just all reference the same address (or URL). This is what happens when we click on the image icon when we create a post and paste in the HTTP address for the image. For example, I could have an image that actually "lives", or is hosted by flickr (or smugmug or my own private site or anywhere else) and I can show that image on many different sites (here, Pinterest, Facebook, etc.). Now has the image been stolen by those different sites? I will let you come to your own conclusions.
For the site that's hosting the image (say SmugMug or flickr or ...), all they get is an address (IP address) to which they're supposed to send the image. These are the addresses of everyone who is viewing the image, regardless of the site that referenced the image. This makes it very difficult to determine if someone has referenced the image without your permission.
I believe what is happening is that the "pirates" are grabbing either the HTML or RSS and adding their own formatting. The images still reference back to the originating site. It would be pretty stupid to actually copy all of that data. The server needs would be huge and I believe they're just trying to get ad revenue.
Again, I'm not trying to stir things up more, but to add a little information into the discussion.
Back to your regularly scheduled discussion.
Mike
PS - if you're ever curious about what the HTML formatting looks like, you can choose "View Source" from your specific browser. You will see everything in all its gory detail.
flickr
I welcome your feedback, but leave the editing to me - thanks!
As Mike pointed out, when we receive a request to view your image, all we get an an IP address. This is called the "Referrer".
Currently if you turn External Embedding off the only site that can display your photos is SmugMug (referrer = SmugMug). We're going to add DGrin to that (referrer = SmugMug OR dgrin). If you turn External Embedding off you will still be able to post images to dgrin. When this blogspot site tries to display your image we will block it because the Referrer (BlogSpot) is not equal to SmugMug or DGrin. This should allow you all to continue posting to dgrin without fear that your images will be used maliciously.
black mambaRegistered UsersPosts: 8,321Major grins
edited February 6, 2015
This is extremely disturbing to me. Somehow I missed the thread that Randy linked to in his last post above. Having read through that thread now, it's abundantly clear that SmugMug/ Dgrin had full knowledge that certain parties were stealing my photos, as well as those of other forum members. That being the case, SmugMug had a moral obligation ( if not a legal one....and that will be determined very soon ) to make absolutely sure that I and every other paying client of theirs was alerted to that fact IMMEDIATELY. As far as I'm concerned, that is a despicable performance on SmugMug's part.
It's interesting to see all the subterfuge being bantered around.....such as calling these thefts by other sites " scraping " as opposed to " stealing ". I don't want to do business with people who will treat my interest with such alacrity. As far as I'm concerned, SmugMug ranks no higher than the thieves who were doing the stealing.
I despise an outfit that will try and hide behind legalese garbage ( TOS statements, etc. ) when the crux of the matter is exceedingly obvious: SmugMug knew that other Internet sites were lifting my photos from Dgrin. That knowledge was NEVER relayed to me. Had they had the common courtesy to consider my interest, I could have taken protective measures way before now. A sorry situation, to say the least.
Tom
I always wanted to lie naked on a bearskin rug in front of a fireplace. Cracker Barrel didn't take kindly to it.
I'm still waiting for a Copyright Expert to get back to me but in my own research I did come across the following ruling, which found that inline linking does not violate US copyright law according to the the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit during Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc.,[6]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking)
(For the record, this blogspot is inline-linking to your images hosted on SmugMug, or elsewhere. They're not actually downloading the image to their own servers).
Some of these decisions were based on the fact that the images being reproduced were thumbnail size. In this case, they're using our full-size images. I still need to figure out if that causes this to be different.
Still investigating what we can do....
This is all accurate and has been pretty extensively adjudicated. This is why I referenced sites like Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and Facebook in my earlier post.
This does not mean that there isn't a copyright violation here, but it's not the photos, it's the text. You are the author of your own text and you own the copyright unless it's a work for hire.
Mike
flickr
I welcome your feedback, but leave the editing to me - thanks!
Question for you - It concerns the RSS Feed that others are mentioning. My understanding of how things work in the internet world is slim, but our websites hosted by Smugmug do have the option for RSS Feeds. If someone is using that to view a website can they get photos off of it just like what may be happening here?
Yes. RSS is also able to reference images.
You (or your browser) have the address (URL) of every image that's displayed on your screen. If that address is available then it can be used elsewhere.
Mike
flickr
I welcome your feedback, but leave the editing to me - thanks!
This really saddens me. I hope your experience with SmugMug so far is that we're a company extremely passionate about photography. Our founders were passionate when they started SmugMug and all of our employees are extremely passionate, myself included. We care very deeply and if you've ever interacted with our Support Heroes you'll know that providing amazing customer support is extremely important to us.
Let me dive a little bit deeper into your thoughts:
Having read through that thread now, it's abundantly clear that SmugMug/ Dgrin had full knowledge that certain parties were stealing my photos, as well as those of other forum members.
Running DGrin is a full time job, especially if we thought 1 person could do it. They can't. We want to focus on making SmugMug even better and therefore we've enlisted the help of a number of amazing people that aren't SmugMug employees (Denise, Richard, David, Ian, the list goes on and on) to be moderators. They're not SmugMug employees but they are passionate people who love to discuss photography and help with the community. Just because they respond does not mean that SmugMug is aware of any issue. The first time I was made aware of this issue was yesterday when Richard finally messaged me about it. I then alerted the ops team, the management team, and we've enlisted some copyright experts to understand the implications. We're reacting as fast as we can.
That being the case, SmugMug had a moral obligation ( if not a legal one....and that will be determined very soon ) to make absolutely sure that I and every other paying client of theirs was alerted to that fact IMMEDIATELY. As far as I'm concerned, that is a despicable performance on SmugMug's part.
If it turns out that there is Copyright Infringement we certainly would do the heroic thing and contact you. The indication so far has been that there is no Copyright Infridgement. Are you asking us to notify you any time any place on the internet calls your images? This would essentially mean that any time Google points someone to your site/images we'd need to notify you. Any time you post a photo to facebook or dgrin or put a link on your own blog, we would need to notify you. We have no way of determining of the intent of the image load is malicious or valid. Is that what you're requesting?
It's interesting to see all the subterfuge being bantered around.....calling these thefts by other sites " scraping " as opposed to " stealing ". I don't want to do business with people who will treat my interest with such alacrity. As far as I'm concerned, SmugMug ranks no higher than the thieves who were doing the stealing. I despise an outfit that will try and hide behind legalese garbage ( TOS statements, etc. ) ...
I'm also frustrated that my images could be used for this guy to make a profit. We need to step back for a second and not let our emotions get the best of us. The internet is filled with linking. We link to things all the time. Linking is what makes the images on this page load -- it's what makes all your webpages look the way they look. It's how google directs people to see and purchase your photos. When you post your photos to dgrin you are "scraping" the image from SmugMug into dgrin. I mentioned this fact because we all need to understand how the internet works so that we can try to tackle the problem. I'm not hiding behind any legalese garbage. I'm just trying explain why the solution to this is not trivial.
SmugMug knew that other Internet sites were lifting my photos from Dgrin. That knowledge was NEVER relayed to me. Had they had the common courtesy to consider my interest, I could have taken protective measures way before now. A sorry situation, to say the least.
Unfortunately there's no way for us to determine if the image requester (the "Referrer" as we mentioned in the previous post) is malicious or not. There's a number of common ones like facebook and dgrin and flickr, etc, but there's a lot of uncommon ones, like "http://blog.yourphotosite.com" in which you want to display your own SmugMug photos on your blog. We certainly would do the heroic thing if we are aware that there's malicious intent.
The best course of action is to put our collective hats on and determine a viable solution. Disabling External Embedding on your images is one such thing. We're going to allow External Embedding of your images on DGrin (as I mentioned in a previous post) so you can disable External Embedding on your images and still continue to post on here. I think that will solve a lot of the problem as it will block the images from the blogspot but allow your images to remain here.
You (or your browser) have the address (URL) of every image that's displayed on your screen. If that address is available then it can be used elsewhere.
Mike
Thank you Mike for answering my question. Would it be in the best interest of a photographer with a website to have RSS Feed's disabled?
Unfortunately, while this can be considered fair use, and it would really nail it if you were credited with it, the story does not end here.
Even with the fabulous "Disable Right-click" JS insert on smugmug -- nothing whatsoever prevents anyone from saving an image through a screen-shot, and it will have totally blank and totally editable metadata, including the copyright field. And there's nothing dGrin or anyone can do! Anyone can save the screen, the rest is just plain cropping and editing the info in PS or Lightroom.
I'm having an even worse experience right now.
Consider these two public posts on instagram and Facebook, and.. AN EXHIBITION:
The poster on the right is mine. It is copyrighted in DC. I have the copyright certificate. It is now displayed in Arlington, TX. And there's no attribution to me whatsoever, never mind a symbolic payment.
There's no protection, Randy. What's on the net -- is everybody's, unless you filed the image and are prepare to sue. Then you might get $25k per instance. If you are willing to go through the hell of litigation, and if the violator actually has the funds. I just stopped worrying about it. After all, if someone is stealing my images -- they must be good!
Why not do the honorable thing:
Put notifications about these issues up in every forum on Dgrin.
Let the members decide for themselves, if they want their images showing, God only knows, where.
Our images showing up at places we never gave permissions to may, or may not be legal. That would be the role of attorneys and the courts. The more this unfolds, it has all the earmarks that SmugMug/Dgrin is posturing for a legal defense strategy.
I feel pretty confident that a large percentage of posting members will find this issue very distressing, legal or not.
IMHO, if SmugMug/Dgrin had immediately and proactively notified all about the potential misuse of their images, and that all resources had been availed to address the issue, I think most would have had an understanding attitude.
It is unfortunate that you try and mask SmugMug/Dgrin's lack of action on this moral (good faith) front with technical wrangling. You responded to Tom's concerns with a series of technical reasonings.
Why not just post (1) one "Official, Important - Please Read!), notice on each Dgrin forum to educate all users of this risk?
We know why you won't, just wonder if you will say the words.
Surprise me, I'll gladly give you credit when you do, and I'm sure most other members will too.
Let's use a little common sense. Ask members, if they know that when they post their images here, that they will wind up on these low life's sites. But then go the next true step. Tell them that it can be just as likely that the image of their daughter could wind up on a child pornography site. Then just say, hey, that's how the Internet works! What do you REALLY think they are going to say, or do?
What about the members who post images of that big wedding that they shot. What do you think might happen if their clients find their wedding images in a place they find very distressing. You think there may be major repercussions for the photographer/member here who posted those images on Dgrin?
We can keep going down this path indefinitely.
I'll leave it up to all the experts to decide the legalities of this particular issue, but let's quickly look at the "case law" that you referenced. It was with regard to Google. Without all the other case facts, you appear to conclude that Google had no legal responsibility because no copyright law had been broken. If that is indeed the case, then why does Google take down sites like Richard noted, if no laws have been broken?
Just doesn't add up, does it?
Do the right thing: Notify all Dgrin members about the risk this issue poses to them.
If you are a smugmug user, all this external linking activity is available on your stats page for external referrers. If you are posting images on DGrin from another host, I imagine that information is available there as well. This was very easy for me to find because I have so few external referrers to list. When I posted the first blogspot link, I ignored the RSS feeds because I didn't think they were really a problem. Smugmug DOES make this information available for every account holder.
SMUGMUG-
How hard would it be to provide an option for each account to individually specify the valid potential referrers?
Randy, why are you hot-linking to the thief's site here? (post #37) You do know that makes your stolen images even more stolen, and also rewards the thief. You've proved your point. Can you please remove them?
My Smugmug
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
Randy, why are you hot-linking all of your images here? (post #37) You do know that makes your stolen images even more stolen, and also rewards the thief. You've proved your point. Can you please remove them?
David, can you see my images when you follow the links?
Comments
That's one option but the con to that is that we'd be cutting off a large number of legitimate users who are using RSS readers to follow DGrin posts. Give me some time to see if dgrin gives me any usage info on how many people view dgrin through RSS readers. If it's small, it makes this option much more appealing. If it's large, then less so. Ultimately the decision to do this would be more than just something I decide as the dgrin admin. I'll discuss with the ops team / management when I have some of the RSS data.
Disabling RSS would only be a band-aid, but at least it might help for the time being. They could certainly find other sources of scraping the internet (in this case dgrin) that doesn't use RSS (for example just reading the source code).
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
Finally,
Smugmug graces us with a communication!
My first issue is with the thieves, but since I can't speak to them, I'll move on to my second issue.
Why did SmugMug et al make the conscious decision to NOT INFORM me, and all other posters, that our images were being stolen from your forum?
What exactly gives SmugMug the legal and moral right to keep knowledge of that illegal activity from the photographers whom owned said images?
SmugMug should know about federal copyright law. SmugMug should know that each image is protected by said federal law, and that image theft is a federal offense.
SmugMug should know that ANY KIND of unauthorized copying or reproduction of copyrighted images is a federal crime.
It should be beneath SmugMug to try and suggest that copyrighted images that are displayed in any manor or fashion without the expressed consent of the copyright holder, is simply not theft, therefore SmugMug holds no responsibilities to the copyright holder. This is inaccurate and untrue.
Why did SmugMug willingly allow the continued theft of federally protected images to continue?
Why did SmugMug not immediately notify all posters that continual image theft was happening on Dgrin?
Technical difficulties in no way hampers nor impedes the moral and legal responsibility to inform Dgrin patrons that their images are regularly being stolen from this forum.
Please, do take this open forum to explain SmugMugs actions.
Now, to the technical side.
Was it SmugMugs decision that to address this issue technically, it was willing to for-go implementing even a short term stop gap fix until a long term solution could be reached?
If so, why?
Why have you just now asked your people to look into this?
At this point, there have been hundreds of federally protected images knowingly (by SmugMug) stolen from Dgrin.
Please, do take this open forum to address EACH of these issues and questions.
I ask now in advance, that you not take a common approach and simply bloviate to try and dodge answering each and every question.
I realize that this may take some time and effort, but I feel these are VERY SERIOUS issues, and we as SmugMug patrons deserve answers!
Randy Wells
Finally.
I'm glad to finally see SmugMug address this issue.....albeit in a very delayed time frame. The fact remains that SmugMug, as I understand it, knew these transgressions against its paying clients had been going on and failed to timely apprise us of the situation. I don't seek to fathom why SmugMug followed this course of action but, in doing so, it clearly fell short of its duty to protect our interest. As onerous as it may have been, SmugMug should have alerted its clients immediately when these activities were uncovered.
If I didn't perceive it as such a serious issue, I would probably laugh at the semantic warfare going on. We're told that we haven't been robbed....only scraped. Hell, by the sound of it I think I'd rather be robbed. You can call this thievery whatever you want; the fact remains that a crime has been committed. You say that if we had been robbed, there was a chance more could be done. The Federal laws of copyright are very clear. We have been victimized and I expect to see the most comprehensive, aggressive plan of action you guys can muster.
Tom
I'm tired of all the excuses and untruths here.
Several of you SmugMug guys have been saying "no images have been stolen", only scraped, hot-linked to, etc.
SmugMug says, if images were stolen, oh, rest assured we would be all over this because no doubt we would have liability here.
Well here you go SmugMug. 100% PROOF that my images were STOLEN from Dgrin!!!
It took me a whopping 10 minutes of effort to find this out. And remember, I'm just a simple man.
No doubt that if SmugMug had show due diligence, it would have quickly found the same thing out.
I believe you did, and you knew all along!
Three days ago (02/03/2015), I went into my SmugMug account and disabled external links to all my images. I pulled up my post history to check on the result only to find that some, not all images were blocked. Even post with multiple images from the same folder. Some images blocked, some not.
(Not Good!)
So, on this same date, (02/0302015), I went into 498 of my post and physically deleted all images from each post!
Now, according to all your expertise and rederick, my images should no longer show up on the thief's website, right?
Listed here are several of my images STILL DISPLAYED on the thieves website!!!
For you convenience, I've provided a link to the Dgrin post where said images were stolen.
Example of images still displayed even though it's deleted from Dgrin post.
Images deleted from Dgrin post: 02/03/2015
Admin Edit: Blog thief's site link removed by Dgrin forum administrators and moderators.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=251251
Admin Edit: Blog thief's site link removed by Dgrin forum administrators and moderators.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=251250
This post even has my image captured in a reply:
Admin Edit: Blog thief's site link removed by Dgrin forum administrators and moderators.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=251382
Admin Edit: Blog thief's site link removed by Dgrin forum administrators and moderators.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=251191
Admin Edit: Blog thief's site link removed by Dgrin forum administrators and moderators.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=251309
Admin Edit: Blog thief's site link removed by Dgrin forum administrators and moderators.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=250623
Admin Edit: Blog thief's site link removed by Dgrin forum administrators and moderators.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=250622
Admin Edit: Blog thief's site link removed by Dgrin forum administrators and moderators.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=250560
Admin Edit: Blog thief's site link removed by Dgrin forum administrators and moderators.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=250559
Admin Edit: Blog thief's site link removed by Dgrin forum administrators and moderators.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=250272
Admin Edit: Blog thief's site link removed by Dgrin forum administrators and moderators.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=249548
What say you now SmugMug?
Still want to play word games?
So, disabling RSS solved the issue, or did you do something else?
Inquiring minds want to know...
We disabled RSS a short time ago and are watching ABC. I think it's too soon to tell whether that will solve the problem (or for how long), but for now it's looking good. We also don't know what the impact will be on legitimate RSS clients, and will need to evaluate that as well. But we're doing what we can and will keep you posted.
http://www.moose135photography.com
To let this happen without notifing your forum members is beyond disbelief. Not something I expected from Smug/dgrin. In fact I expected the opposite to happen when a problem arose. If anyone would of asked me if Smug/dgrin would be upfront with issues I'd of told them 'Yes'. Maybe my expectations were too high, maybe I'm naive. but I've always thought of Smug/dgrin as being a very honest company.
I will not be posting any photos on dgrin till I know this issue has been resolved and if it were to occur again someone from Smug/dgrin would let all forum members know immediately. Not just those in Cool Shots, but on other threads within dgrin - The dgrin family as a whole. I'm sad in having to do this since I've just returned to taking photos again and posting them on dgrin.
Question for you - It concerns the RSS Feed that others are mentioning. My understanding of how things work in the internet world is slim, but our websites hosted by Smugmug do have the option for RSS Feeds. If someone is using that to view a website can they get photos off of it just like what may be happening here?
www.Dogdotsphotography.com
No, before I posted those links, I cleared my browsers cashe, and also confirmed with three other non-related systems.
After I had deleted the images from my Dgrin post, I was checking the thief blog and some of my images were in-fact little X's. But not the ones that I linked to above.
Evidently disabling RSS had an impact.
But, that still does not detract from the fact that the display of my images anywhere that I don't give permission for, is theft under Federal Copyright Law.
Just because they are not being displayed now, does not mean that they were not stolen!
If you rob a bank, then take back the money, you still committed a crime.
Richard, I appreciate your efforts.
But, a very high level of concern here is why SmugMug did not notify us all when it knew that images were being stolen.
We can contemplate all day as to the technical reasons for this, (and I hope SmugMug does), but there is NO technical reason why SmugMug did NOT notify us all about this, so that WE, as copyright holders could make the decision whether to post more of our images or not.
SmugMug does not have that right!
Nor does this explain why SmugMug has done NOTHING about this until we've made such a stink about it.
That's simply UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR!
Why will nobody address this part???
I've asked several times without answers.
I don't speak for SmugMug. But speaking for myself, I have to ask, are you saying that SmugMug (or Dgrin) knew about this pirate before The Lazy Destroyer reported it here for all to see on Dgrin on 30 January? If so, how do you know that to be true? Seems to me you're making some serious allegations here and I, for one, would like to see some evidence.
You are correct -- we were not made aware of this until you brought this to my attention. Thank you for doing that! More on that below....
I'm not a lawyer and don't claim to be any kind of expert on Copyright Law, which means I won't be able to comment on the legal aspects of what this site is doing. I'm working with some of the folks here at SmugMug who do know more to get a better understanding of what the law is and what can be done about it.
There's been a rumor (and a number of posts) on here that SmugMug knew this was happening and ignored the issue and didn't inform its community. I want to dispel that: none of us were aware of this until yesterday when Richard brought this to my attention. Now that we are aware of it we're not just going to ignore this and hope it goes away. I'm working with ops, legal, and some others to see what we can do.
You may be asking "How could you not detect this?" The simple answer is that this is how the internet works. If External Embedding is allowed, anyone (including yourselves, which is how you're posting your photos to dgrin) can link to your images. We have no way of knowing if the intent of that link is malicious or valid. A large majority of SmugMuggers want their images to be found -- they're sharing them on other communities, social networks, etc. When Facebook, for example, takes a link from your SmugMug page displays the thumbnail, it's doing something similar: scraping the page for the link to the image.
We have industry leading tools in place for you to help stop this: disabling external embedding, reviewing the "referrer's" statistics, watermarking your images, enabling right click protection, disabling originals, etc (which you can read more about here: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1230107-how-can-i-protect-my-images-).
Lastly, in the short future you're going to start hearing about an overhaul to dgrin. We're going to be migrating away from vBulletin and upgrading DGrin to a new and much better piece of software. There should be better tools in place to prevent this from happening in the future. I can't guarantee that it won't but hopefully some of the new software will help thwart this issue.
I'll keep you all informed as we figure out what can be done.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Richard,
This issue of blogs/websites stealing images is not new to this particular instance. You know this.
Here is a link to a similar issue that you have many post in: 17 to be exact... Several Mods also have post in that thread. So what constitutes Dgrin "knowing" about the issue?
November 7, 2014
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=250553
You have mentioned in your post that another similar issue was found out about a year ago and copyright owners managed to get that site pulled down.
There is a known history about this kind of illegal theft going on from Dgrin.
In this particular instance, when Dgrin found out about it, I guess if you want to say "Officially", they STILL, up to this very minute, have NOT NOTIFIED all affected members.
Please point me to the post, PM's, emails, phone calls, from Dgrin/SmugMug that this issue is going on, and members may want to review it before posting anymore images to the forum.
There was another instance/site that I linked to before doing the same.
Point is, this is historically a known issue on Dgrin. That I know of, no notifications to affected or potentially affected members has been declared.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking)
(For the record, this blogspot is inline-linking to your images hosted on SmugMug, or elsewhere. They're not actually downloading the image to their own servers).
Some of these decisions were based on the fact that the images being reproduced were thumbnail size. In this case, they're using our full-size images. I still need to figure out if that causes this to be different.
Still investigating what we can do....
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
When you open your browser (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.) and point it to a site like DGrin, what you're doing is sending a request to that website to send you a file, or set of files. These files are typically HTML files or Hypertext Markup Language files. Their sole purpose is to describe the desired text, layout and formatting of the page. This is stuff like the actual text that's displayed, the colors, text formatting (font and size) and a bunch of other stuff. In some cases, the formatting includes references to images.
When you have text and images (virtually all pages here on DGrin), the HTML will usually include the textual information and something called an image tag that tells the browser where to find the image that's supposed to be displayed (think of it as the image street address). When your browser encounters one of these tags, it send a request to the site hosting the image (the address or URL), and the hosting site sends the image to your local computer (usually in a temporary holding spot) and then displays it on screen. Pretty straightforward so far?
Now the "beauty" of the internet is that multiple sites can reference those same images without having multiple copies, they just all reference the same address (or URL). This is what happens when we click on the image icon when we create a post and paste in the HTTP address for the image. For example, I could have an image that actually "lives", or is hosted by flickr (or smugmug or my own private site or anywhere else) and I can show that image on many different sites (here, Pinterest, Facebook, etc.). Now has the image been stolen by those different sites? I will let you come to your own conclusions.
For the site that's hosting the image (say SmugMug or flickr or ...), all they get is an address (IP address) to which they're supposed to send the image. These are the addresses of everyone who is viewing the image, regardless of the site that referenced the image. This makes it very difficult to determine if someone has referenced the image without your permission.
I believe what is happening is that the "pirates" are grabbing either the HTML or RSS and adding their own formatting. The images still reference back to the originating site. It would be pretty stupid to actually copy all of that data. The server needs would be huge and I believe they're just trying to get ad revenue.
Again, I'm not trying to stir things up more, but to add a little information into the discussion.
Back to your regularly scheduled discussion.
Mike
PS - if you're ever curious about what the HTML formatting looks like, you can choose "View Source" from your specific browser. You will see everything in all its gory detail.
I welcome your feedback, but leave the editing to me - thanks!
As Mike pointed out, when we receive a request to view your image, all we get an an IP address. This is called the "Referrer".
Currently if you turn External Embedding off the only site that can display your photos is SmugMug (referrer = SmugMug). We're going to add DGrin to that (referrer = SmugMug OR dgrin). If you turn External Embedding off you will still be able to post images to dgrin. When this blogspot site tries to display your image we will block it because the Referrer (BlogSpot) is not equal to SmugMug or DGrin. This should allow you all to continue posting to dgrin without fear that your images will be used maliciously.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
It's interesting to see all the subterfuge being bantered around.....such as calling these thefts by other sites " scraping " as opposed to " stealing ". I don't want to do business with people who will treat my interest with such alacrity. As far as I'm concerned, SmugMug ranks no higher than the thieves who were doing the stealing.
I despise an outfit that will try and hide behind legalese garbage ( TOS statements, etc. ) when the crux of the matter is exceedingly obvious: SmugMug knew that other Internet sites were lifting my photos from Dgrin. That knowledge was NEVER relayed to me. Had they had the common courtesy to consider my interest, I could have taken protective measures way before now. A sorry situation, to say the least.
Tom
This is all accurate and has been pretty extensively adjudicated. This is why I referenced sites like Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and Facebook in my earlier post.
This does not mean that there isn't a copyright violation here, but it's not the photos, it's the text. You are the author of your own text and you own the copyright unless it's a work for hire.
Mike
I welcome your feedback, but leave the editing to me - thanks!
Yes. RSS is also able to reference images.
You (or your browser) have the address (URL) of every image that's displayed on your screen. If that address is available then it can be used elsewhere.
Mike
I welcome your feedback, but leave the editing to me - thanks!
Let me dive a little bit deeper into your thoughts:
Running DGrin is a full time job, especially if we thought 1 person could do it. They can't. We want to focus on making SmugMug even better and therefore we've enlisted the help of a number of amazing people that aren't SmugMug employees (Denise, Richard, David, Ian, the list goes on and on) to be moderators. They're not SmugMug employees but they are passionate people who love to discuss photography and help with the community. Just because they respond does not mean that SmugMug is aware of any issue. The first time I was made aware of this issue was yesterday when Richard finally messaged me about it. I then alerted the ops team, the management team, and we've enlisted some copyright experts to understand the implications. We're reacting as fast as we can.
If it turns out that there is Copyright Infringement we certainly would do the heroic thing and contact you. The indication so far has been that there is no Copyright Infridgement. Are you asking us to notify you any time any place on the internet calls your images? This would essentially mean that any time Google points someone to your site/images we'd need to notify you. Any time you post a photo to facebook or dgrin or put a link on your own blog, we would need to notify you. We have no way of determining of the intent of the image load is malicious or valid. Is that what you're requesting?
I'm also frustrated that my images could be used for this guy to make a profit. We need to step back for a second and not let our emotions get the best of us. The internet is filled with linking. We link to things all the time. Linking is what makes the images on this page load -- it's what makes all your webpages look the way they look. It's how google directs people to see and purchase your photos. When you post your photos to dgrin you are "scraping" the image from SmugMug into dgrin. I mentioned this fact because we all need to understand how the internet works so that we can try to tackle the problem. I'm not hiding behind any legalese garbage. I'm just trying explain why the solution to this is not trivial.
Unfortunately there's no way for us to determine if the image requester (the "Referrer" as we mentioned in the previous post) is malicious or not. There's a number of common ones like facebook and dgrin and flickr, etc, but there's a lot of uncommon ones, like "http://blog.yourphotosite.com" in which you want to display your own SmugMug photos on your blog. We certainly would do the heroic thing if we are aware that there's malicious intent.
The best course of action is to put our collective hats on and determine a viable solution. Disabling External Embedding on your images is one such thing. We're going to allow External Embedding of your images on DGrin (as I mentioned in a previous post) so you can disable External Embedding on your images and still continue to post on here. I think that will solve a lot of the problem as it will block the images from the blogspot but allow your images to remain here.
My next question is "what else can we do?"
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Thank you Mike for answering my question. Would it be in the best interest of a photographer with a website to have RSS Feed's disabled?
www.Dogdotsphotography.com
To be fair, the link you posted as "stolen image" (at least the one I checked), refers right back to you as:
http://www.randywellsphotography.com/photos/i-c3p3nqM/0/M/i-c3p3nqM-M.jpg
Unfortunately, while this can be considered fair use, and it would really nail it if you were credited with it, the story does not end here.
Even with the fabulous "Disable Right-click" JS insert on smugmug -- nothing whatsoever prevents anyone from saving an image through a screen-shot, and it will have totally blank and totally editable metadata, including the copyright field. And there's nothing dGrin or anyone can do! Anyone can save the screen, the rest is just plain cropping and editing the info in PS or Lightroom.
I'm having an even worse experience right now.
Consider these two public posts on instagram and Facebook, and.. AN EXHIBITION:
http://instagram.com/p/yvT9GUNLRu/
https://scontent-b-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10922705_10152611281736109_87617237531210543_n.jpg?oh=48a8d3cf4fe6008f61126f895554915c&oe=554F1235
The poster on the right is mine. It is copyrighted in DC. I have the copyright certificate. It is now displayed in Arlington, TX. And there's no attribution to me whatsoever, never mind a symbolic payment.
There's no protection, Randy. What's on the net -- is everybody's, unless you filed the image and are prepare to sue. Then you might get $25k per instance. If you are willing to go through the hell of litigation, and if the violator actually has the funds. I just stopped worrying about it. After all, if someone is stealing my images -- they must be good!
Cheers,
Alex
Be my guest: Alex Braverman Photography
Good question!
If need be, I'll tell you.
Why not do the honorable thing:
Put notifications about these issues up in every forum on Dgrin.
Let the members decide for themselves, if they want their images showing, God only knows, where.
Our images showing up at places we never gave permissions to may, or may not be legal. That would be the role of attorneys and the courts. The more this unfolds, it has all the earmarks that SmugMug/Dgrin is posturing for a legal defense strategy.
I feel pretty confident that a large percentage of posting members will find this issue very distressing, legal or not.
IMHO, if SmugMug/Dgrin had immediately and proactively notified all about the potential misuse of their images, and that all resources had been availed to address the issue, I think most would have had an understanding attitude.
It is unfortunate that you try and mask SmugMug/Dgrin's lack of action on this moral (good faith) front with technical wrangling. You responded to Tom's concerns with a series of technical reasonings.
Why not just post (1) one "Official, Important - Please Read!), notice on each Dgrin forum to educate all users of this risk?
We know why you won't, just wonder if you will say the words.
Surprise me, I'll gladly give you credit when you do, and I'm sure most other members will too.
Let's use a little common sense. Ask members, if they know that when they post their images here, that they will wind up on these low life's sites. But then go the next true step. Tell them that it can be just as likely that the image of their daughter could wind up on a child pornography site. Then just say, hey, that's how the Internet works! What do you REALLY think they are going to say, or do?
What about the members who post images of that big wedding that they shot. What do you think might happen if their clients find their wedding images in a place they find very distressing. You think there may be major repercussions for the photographer/member here who posted those images on Dgrin?
We can keep going down this path indefinitely.
I'll leave it up to all the experts to decide the legalities of this particular issue, but let's quickly look at the "case law" that you referenced. It was with regard to Google. Without all the other case facts, you appear to conclude that Google had no legal responsibility because no copyright law had been broken. If that is indeed the case, then why does Google take down sites like Richard noted, if no laws have been broken?
Just doesn't add up, does it?
Do the right thing: Notify all Dgrin members about the risk this issue poses to them.
If you are a smugmug user, all this external linking activity is available on your stats page for external referrers. If you are posting images on DGrin from another host, I imagine that information is available there as well. This was very easy for me to find because I have so few external referrers to list. When I posted the first blogspot link, I ignored the RSS feeds because I didn't think they were really a problem. Smugmug DOES make this information available for every account holder.
SMUGMUG-
How hard would it be to provide an option for each account to individually specify the valid potential referrers?
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
David, can you see my images when you follow the links?