It is Friday again and that means that it is time for another episode of the Copyright 2.0 Show.

With Patrick on the road and unable to record last week, we have a lot of catching up to do as there’s two week’s worth of news to get through in just one hour. However, the biggest stories all came from the most recent week including the closure of BTJunkie and “used” music reseller Redigi living to fight another day. However, we also get caught up on the ongoing stories such as the ACTA protests and the Oracle/SAP lawsuit just to name two.

It’s definitely an episode you don’t want to miss, especially if you like Coca Cola (long story).

This week’s stories include:

• BTJunkie Voluntarily Closes
• “Used” Music Seller Redigi Fights On, Avoids Injunction
• After Protests, Three Countries Put ACTA Ratification on Hold
• Oracle Seeks New Trial in Lawsuit Against SAP
• Pirate Bay Sentences are Final, Supreme Court Denies Appeal
• Much, Much More!

You can download the MP3 file here (direct download). Those interested in subscribing to the show can do so via this feed.

Show Notes

About the Hosts

Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey (@plagiarismtoday) is the Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today (Hint: You’re there now) and works as a copyright and plagiarism consultant. Though not an attorney, he has resolved over 700 cases of plagiarism involving his own work and has helped countless others protect their work and develop strategies for making their content work as hard as possible toward their goals.

Patrick O’Keefe

Patrick O’Keefe (@iFroggy) is the owner of the iFroggy Network, a network of websites covering various interests. He’s the author of the book “Managing Online Forums,” a practical guide to managing online communities and social spaces. He maintains a blog about online community management at ManagingCommunities.com and a personal blog at patrickokeefe.com.

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Appeals Lodged Against Optus Copyright Ruling

First off today, in a move that will likely surprise no one, the Australian football (soccer) leagues NRL and AFL have filed appeals in their case against local mobile service provider Optus. The case stems from Optus Now, a service that lets Optus customers stream television, including league matches, to mobile devices within minutes of them being aired and recorded on a DVR-like service. However, the leagues struck a exclusive deal with Optus’ competitor, Telstra, to stream the matches via their service, a deal they felt was jeopardized by Optus Now. However, a High Court judge ruled that Optus Now was a legal service since it was the user doing the recording. This has already prompted calls for copyright reform in the country but, in the meantime, the leagues are now appealing.

2: Government Denies Reviving Site-Blocking Law Plans

Next up today, in the UK, the government is denying recent claims that it was looking into new site blocking legislation. Though the Minister of State for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said that such a proposal was in the works, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which is handling the actual proposal, said it wasn’t. The reason is that a recent court ruling enabled copyright holders to get an injunction against ISPs to order the blocking of Newzbin2, showing that the legislation isn’t necessary and would be “duplicate”. The discussion comes as many are decrying what is seen as excessive influence by Google in the copyright reform process.

3: Music Labels’ Joint Venture, VEVO, Shows Pirated NFL Game At Sundance

Finally today, music video service VEVO, which is owned by Sony and Universal and is supported by EMI, has found itself the subject of criticism for illegally streaming a football game, specifically the Patriots vs. Raven playoff game, at a party during the Sundance Music Festival. According to reports, VEVO’s Powerstation event streamed the game illegally from the site tutele.tv, obtaining it from ESPN America, which is a UK-only channel. The incident comes at a time when the record labels have been deeply criticized for their anti-piracy efforts leading many to call this a case of hypocrisy.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

The reason is simple: Plagiarism detection systems don’t detect who actually wrote the paper, just that the paper is unique compared to the other works it has seen. If an essay mill sells a truly unique paper to a student, then that paper will appear to be unique. End of story.

But are essay mills truly something to be worried about? Should educators be making essay mills a priority or worrying excessively about them? The answer is probably not though the “Why?” is much more complicated to answer.

The Resurgence of Essay Mills

Last month, I talked about how hired plagiarism has made a comeback and essay mills have been seeing new life due to better plagiarism detection and cheaper labor, in particular offshore.

While all of this is true, it’s also true that essay mills are not a new phenomenon. They’ve been advertising in the backs of magazines and newspapers long before there was an Internet.

However, as was also discussed in that article, it isn’t just essay mills that are resurging as a source for plagiarized content, it’s also freelancer sites, forums and more that are becoming places to obtain plagiarists-for-hire.

But just because a method of plagiarism is on the rise doesn’t mean that it’s effective or that it can’t be easily defeated. Essay mills have a lot of problems that limit their usefulness as plagiarism tools and their impact on academics.

Essay Mills Do Garbage Work

As I talked about in my article about in my article on industries with surprising content theft problems. Essay mills do garbage work.

Simply put, to attract customers essay mills have to churn out work quickly and cheaply while often talking about highly specialized subjects. As Dan Ariely found when he purchased a series of essay mill papers for a survey, the papers themselves were almost gibberish in many cases and even showed heavy signs of plagiarism.

While some essay mills probably offer decent work, there is so much garbage in the industry and little way to know which companies will provide good papers and which will provide bad ones. This is especially true since it can vary from topic to topic and author to author, as most essay mills employ a wide range of writers to fill requests.

This problem is furthered by the fact that essay mill authors aren’t (usually at least) in the class. They don’t know what the instructor wants and are limited to to guidelines set by the buyer (the student), which are usually limited in nature. There’s almost no way an essay mill can cheaply and quickly produce a great paper for a student, especially on an advanced assignment.

At best, buying a paper from an essay mill is like playing Russian Roulette with five bullets in the gun. The odds are against the cheater and the consequences for losing dire. Only a fool would play.

Even if a student is able to get a decent essay, it’s going to require a great deal of editing and revising to make it presentable so it isn’t as if a student can forward the essay mill paper directly to their instructor and expect an A. An essay mill is barely a shortcut at all, even when things work out well for the plagiarist.

Essay Mills Are Easily Defeated

But even if a student is able to a good essay mill that produces an “A” worthy paper, an instructor can easily defeat the plagiarism by taking simple steps such as being aware of the student’s writing style/capabilities and asking questions of a student to understand their knowledge level of the topic.

Simply put, no essay mill is a substitute for knowledge and that’s what instructors should be looking for.

However, that’s not nearly as effective as crafting pointed, detailed assignments that are unique and original. Essay assignments that ask students to compare things or write about personal experiences are much more difficult to fake than ones that simply deal with recalling information.

You can also craft assignments to limit resources that are available, such as requiring use of the classroom textbook, or require examples from in-class lectures.

In short, the less an assignment focuses on things that can be easily Googled, the better it is for preventing all types of plagiarism, including from essay mills.

Bottom Line

Are essay mills a problem for schools and universities? Yes. They can and do enable cheating and they have a negative impact on the education of all students, not just the plagiarists.

But that being said, essay mills aren’t the nuclear weapon that will defeat plagiarism detection and bring chaos to written assignments in the classroom. They’ve been around for decades and haven’t done so yet, they aren’t likely to take over now.

In fact, the increased competition among essay mills, especially on price and turnaround, seems to be driving quality down. While more and more students are turning to such sites, they most likely either aren’t turning in what they get (realizing it’s garbage), are receiving a poor grade for turning in shoddy work or are being caught as if they were a traditional plagiarist.

The much bigger threat, at least in the short run, is from students finding classmates to write papers for them. That classic tradition puts an end to a lot of the problems essay mills have, such as not knowing the instructor, the assignment, etc. and can reasonably assure high-quality work. Still, as mentioned above, crafting smart assignments and asking questions can help with this problem as well.

All in all, students who use essay mills for plagiarism, most likely, don’t come out much better than those who use Wikipedia. They usually just come out a great deal poorer and more frustrated.

Student Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Apple’s iTunes Match (aka iMatch): The First Royalties Are In

First off today, Tunescore founder and CEO Jeff Price has publicly released information about the first royalty checks his label has received from iTunes Match: Specifically over $10,000 in the first two months. iTunes Match is a new service by Apple to let users synchronize their music via the cloud. Apple charges users $25 per year for that feature and pays a portion of that money as royalties to labels. Tunecore is an Internet-based label dedicated to helping unsigned and independent artists get their music on iTunes and similar stores. Price did not say how much of the royalties were going to his artists and how they would be divided up but said that it seemed like “magic money” that was not there before.

2: High Court Confirms Pubs’ Rights to Screen Football Matches

Next up today, in the UK a High Court judge has ruled that pubs in the country will be allowed to stream football (soccer) matches using foreign decoders as long as they do not charge an admission fee and only play the live game. The issue has been the center of two now-joined lawsuits that both featured pub owners using cheaper foreign decoders to access football matches. In both cases the FA Premier League (FAPL) sued the owners and one of the cases went before the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which found that, while it was legal to stream the games using a foreign decoder, it was still a public performance that the league had a right to control. However, the High Court in the UK, basing its ruling on the ECJ’s ruling, found that the FAPL had no such right when no admission is charged, opening up the opportunity for other pubs to do the same. This, if upheld, would put a severe limitation on the FAPL’s rights to restrict streaming of matches to pubs and other venues.

3: New York Times Busted for Violating Copyright Bill Keller Defended

Finally today, The Boston Phoenix is calling out The New York Times claiming that the newspaper published a PDF of a 1976 article from The Real Paper about the Death of Football. However, though The Real Paper is defunct its rights were bought by The Boston Phoenix’s publisher and that, according to the paper, makes the use a likely infringement. Though they have no plans on taking legal action, The Phoenix points out that the PDF appeared the same days as an op-ed by former NY Times Editor Bill Keller, who was advocating for stronger copyright enforcement and taking a strong pro-SOPA/PIPA stance.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

However, the answer wasn’t to publish a new set of guidelines, institute a new plagiarism checking service or even hold a new training session. According to Poynter, the response came in the form of a short, five-question quiz designed to test how well reporters understood attribution and how they handled difficult areas.

The goal of the quiz, which you can see here, is simple: To both determine which reporters may have misconceptions about attribution and to get reporters on record as knowing right from wrong.

According to the company’s director of community engagement, Steve Buttry, this method was chosen over more traditional means of handling a rise in plagiarism issues, such as holding staff meetings, to both ensure 100% attendance and to target the attention on reporters who need the most help.

Basically, the survey is designed to address how to correctly attribute material in five different scenarios and raise a lot of gray area questions such as how to use press releases, cite competitors and so forth. The survey is required of all staff of the company and those reporters who missed just one question are required to attend a training session on plagiarism and attribution.

But is this a good approach? It’s tough to say but it certainly is a novel one and one that other media companies are likely to mimic.

My Thoughts on the Quiz

All in all, looking through the quiz and trying it for myself, it certainly seemed to be a good summary of the issues a journalist might face in this area, at least as much as can be put in a 5 question survey.

However, the multiple choice survey seemed to be a bit too easy. The range of options always had a clearly best or at least safest answer. Even if I knew almost nothing about attribution I would be able to get the right answers just by making the safest choice possible.

The other problem, and one that the company admits, is that this quiz can’t weed out bad actors and people who know better but maliciously plagiarize. How many cases of journalism plagiarism are mistakes versus malicious remain to be seen, but this might help us get a better idea, especially if more cases of plagiarism pop up at the company.

In the end, this is a novel approach. I like how easy it is to get to all of the employees and the questions themselves are pretty good, if a bit easy to answer (at least to give the “safest” answer). Mostly though, it gets the reporters thinking and reengaged on this issue and, as was pointed out, gets them on record as knowing right from wrong.

While I’m unsure what impact it will have without other action, such as plagiarism spot checking, it will definitely be a useful case study to follow, especially over the next few years to see if the problem of plagiarism arises again at the company.

Quiz Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Mobile Broadcast Ruling Prompts ALP to Consider Copyright Changes

First off today, in Australia the country’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has vowed to “urgently consider” changes to the country’s copyright following a recent high court win by the mobile carrier Optus. Optus was sued by various sports leagues and competitor Telstra over its DVR service that allows users to stream TV to their phone within minutes of it being recorded. The verdict calls into question millions of dollars in licensing paid by Telstra to the leagues for the sole rights to stream matches via mobile devices. The move has caused legislators on both sides to seek changes to the law to protect mobile streaming rights, though opposition leaders seem to feel that any legislation should be extremely narrowly-focused.

2: New MEP Appointed to Head up ACTA Dossier

Next up today, British Labour MEP David Martin has been called to serve as the European Parliament’s rapporteur for the upcoming report on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The agreement, which was signed by the EU, US, Japan and over 20 nations, seeks to harmonize enforcement on copyright and other intellectual property matters. However, the treaty has been the subject of massive protests in the past weeks, prompting three nations in the EU to put on hold their internal ratification process. Martin replaces French Socialist Kader Arif, who resigned last week after blasting how the treaty was negotiated and handled.

3: Silicon Roundabout Asks For Copyright Overhaul

Finally today, the UK’s equivalent of Silicon Valley has sent an open letter to it’s government asking for broad copyright reform. The letter, which was signed by Computing Society (BCS), Coadec (The Coalition for a Digital Economy), TechHub, Bootlaw and the BIMA asks for adoption of various proposed reforms including enabling format shifting, enabling the licensing of orphan works, working with the European Commission to craft cross-border licensing schemes and more. The letter follows on the heels of the Hargreaves Report, which made many of the same recommendations.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Pretty much anything you’d find in your spam folder would seem like a good candidate for content misuse, especially by spam bloggers. This includes topics like pharmaceuticals, pornography, SEO services, etc.

However, in talking with other content creators in a variety of industries, the problem of content misuse online is not limited to traditional spam-friendly keywords. In fact, many industries you wouldn’t expect problems from actually have rampant issues of content misuse including plagiarism of marketing copy, unauthorized reuse of blog posts, copied images and more.

WIth that in mind, here are just five of the industries I’ve had dealings with as part of my copyright and plagiarism consulting work that have surprised me with the amount of infringement sites within it have seen.

1. Law Offices / Legal Services

If there were one group that you would expect to know better than infringe copyright, it would be lawyers. Unfortunately, history has sown that to be not the case.

Plagairism and content theft by law offices is widespread and even gains semi-regularly media attention due to it’s nature.

Why it Happens: Law offices are often times just one or two attorneys and, maybe a paralegal or receptionist. In short, they are very small businesses without a lot of expertise in content writing and website development. Many contract out to third parties, often on a very small budget and other times attempt it themselves with no real expertise.

To further the problem, copyright is a very niche area of law and many lawyers don’t know a great deal about it, even as they are violating it.

2. Review Sites

Review sites run the gamut in terms of the topics they cover from candy sites, like long-time reader Cybele May, to electronics and beyond. However, nearly every review site seems to have a significant problem with its content being plagiarized, including sites built off of reader reviews.

Why it Happens: The problem is simple, for every product for sale one of the most popular search terms is for a reviews of it. Spammers have seized upon this as a great way to target popular but less-competitive keywords.

However, the problem is compounded by the fact both positive and negative reviews are often copied with and without attribution by people wanting to make a point about the product. Also, images taken of products for the review are also often lifted instead of using provided promotional photographs or taking new ones.

3. Financial Services

Though some financial services firms are already somewhat predictable targets for content theft with spam-friendly keywords such as mortgage and credit card being within the industry, the issue runs much deeper including a great deal of B2B misuse, in particular with smaller businesses.

Why it Happens: Financial services firms often have the same problem as law firms. They are often small businesses, just one or two people, and lack any real Web /copyright expertise. This includes accountants, debt consultation firms and more.

However, depending on the particular type of business, the barrier to entry may be much lower than with a law firm from a legal standpoint. This can open the floodgates for almost anyone to participate in the field, including more than a few plagiarists.

4. Gaming

The rapid rise in popularity of gaming has opened a floodgate to sites and blogs that want to talk about gaming and tap that new audience. It’s also created a slew of new companies, including many small startups, aimed at making, promoting, distributing, reviewing and talking about video games.

With this explosion has come a swath of allegations of content misuse, plagiarism and copyright infringement, ranging from plagiarism in video games themselves to re-writing reviews.

Why it Happens: I talked more about the reasons for the spike in plagiarism in video games in my previous article, but the issue goes well beyond just the games themselves. Already-embattled Ocean Marketing was hit with a series of plagiarism allegations and plagiarism among video game blogs also appears to be on the rise.

Simply put, the growth and expansion of the industry attracts new businesses of all types, good and bad, creating a climate ripe for content misuse.

5. Essay Mills

The old saying “There is no honor among thieves” holds true when it comes to essay mills. Students often turn to essay mills to get custom-written assignments that won’t be detected by traditional plagiarism checkers. However, as one survey showed, those essays are often plagiarized themselves from various sources. At least one such case of plagiarism ended up in a lawsuit.

Why it Happens: The problem is simple. For the price paid and the time given there is simply no way a paper mill can churn out a high-quality, plagiarism-free paper. Either the mill has to cheat, the quality has to be gibberish or both.

Yet just another reason why essay mills are a bad move for students looking for an easy way out.

Bottom Line

All in all, if you think plagiarism or content misuse issues are limited to a few sectors and you don’t have to think about it, you’re probably wrong. Remember, I got my start in this industry as a poet, a field of writing that highly values originality, so pretty much any industry and any site can be victimized by bad actors.

How you respond is up to you, but it’s importnat to understand that the risk is out there, that it can affect you and that there are ways to respond if you wish.

In the end, always remember that no industry is safe from plagiarism and content theft issues, so it pays to take a look at your site and your content specifically as every creator is different and every site is in a different position.

Panic Button Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Oracle Seeks New Trial in Suit Against SAP, According to Court Filing

First off today, Oracle, which is suing competitor SAP over alleged infringement by SAP’s TomorrowNow division, is now seeking a new trial rather than taking the reduced damages of $272 million from the first trial. In that first trial, the jury awarded Oracle $1.3 billion in damages, the largest award in a copyright lawsuit, but the judge quickly reduced the damages by over $1 billion citing a lack of evidence. Rather than accepting the reduced judgment, Oracle is now seeking a second trial and what it calls “clarification” on the law. SAP has admitted to the infringement but disputes the amount of damages it owes.

2: Central Europe Backs Out of Copyright Deal After Protests

Next up today, three central European countries have announced that they are putting ratification of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on hold. Those countries include Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, all of which saw anti-ACTA protests following its signing a few weeks ago. The treaty, which is an attempt to harmonize copyright, trademark and patent enforcement across all countries, was signed by most of the EU though some countries are delaying ratification due to public outcry against the treaty.

3: Judge Denies Initial Effort To Shut Down 'Used' Digital Music Seller ReDigi

Finally today, ReDigi, a startup that sells “used” digital tracks has won an early round in its case against Capitol Records, which sued the company for copyright infringement. However, the judge in the case, in denying Capitol Records’ earliest attempts at an injunction against ReDigi, has decided that there is a great deal at stake with this case and is wanting to hear more arguments before making any decisions. The judge had previously blocked Google’s attempts to file briefs in the case but may have taken some of the issues raised by Google to heart. The case now moves forward, possibly to a full trial.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

The reason for the problem is that most search tools, including image search tools, don’t actually look at image, they look at the text around it. So unless the title of your work or the file name remain the same, there isn’t much hope for spotting a duplicate via traditional means.

However, in 2008, Tineye changed the game by introducing an image-based image search engine that would fingerprint images found online and match them against files uploaded to their service.

But, while Tineye’s matching technology is and always has been great, it’s been limited by Tineye’s rather small database. While that database has grown over 2x since I first wrote about the service (currently at just over 2 billion images), it hasn’t kept pace with the images being uploaded to the Web (Photobucket alone has 9.5 billion images).

However, last year Google entered into the fray, adding the ability to search for images by uploading or linking to another one, as with Tineye. The feature, which was initially an extension of Google’s previous Similar Image Search function, wasn’t very successful at first. However, over time, it appears Google has gone a long way to improving the tool as, in a recent spate of tests, it drastically outperformed Tineye in finding matching images consistently.

So, for artists looking to find their images on the Web, there seems to be a new king in town and it’s the same one authors have been using for years.

How to Use Google Search By Image

The easiest way to use Google Search By Image is to install either the Firefox
or Chrome extension, which simply enables you to right click an image to search for it.

However, barring that, you can simply visit Google Image Search and click the camera icon in the search bar.

That will open up the window that prompts you to either upload an image from your computer or provide the URL for one already online.

After you submit your image, Google will present a set of results. However, rather than being a “grid” like a regular Google Image Search, the results are ordred, first by exact matches and then by similar ones.

For example, I uploaded my recent image of the cover of Ocean’s Donkey Kong unlicensed port (from my recent article on video game plagiarism) and Google returned not only my article but other images containing that exact image.

In some cases, if there are multiple versions of the images but at different sizes, Google may suggest you look for alternate sizes of the image, as it did with the Limbo of the Lost cover from the same article.

If so it’s worth clicking the link to get a good breakdown of the other sizes (and places) the image appears. However, the real results, especially for images that have been widely copied, are below and you can see them by going through the various pages, as you would with a regular Google search.

But while Google Search By Image is cetainly easy to use, how well does it stack up against Tineye? The answer, is very well.

Comparison Tests

To test the two services head-to-head, I decided to have them both look for five different images used in recent articles on Plagiarism Today. These images are all either freely-available stock photos or are widely-used cover art for video games or records.

With that in mind, here’s the results of the tests:

Test 1: Angry Farm Image

Tineye Results: 1
Google Results: 558 (about)

Test 2: Generic Chart Image

Tineye Results: 4
Google Results: 555 (about)

Test 3: Facepalm Image

Tineye Results: 21
Google Results: 850 (about)

Test 4: Skull on Grave Image

Tineye Results: 1
Google Results: 3 (Not counting matching “Very Similar” results)

Note: Google’s “Very Similar” results were useless in this case as it just found other black and white photos without much regard for things that looked like the original.

Test 5: Bing Crosby White Christmas

Tineye Results: 173
Google Results: 883 (about)

Please note that the greatest limitation of this test is that I had to rely on both search engines to self-report how many matching images they had. However, I checked several pages of results with each test to make sure that the results were as accurate as possible.

Clearly though, the winner is Google, which found, in many cases, over 100x more matching images than Tineye. My suspicion is that, while Tineye’s matching algorithm is better (much fewer false positives), Google’s large database simply makes up the ground and then some, making it a much more valuable tool for image detection.

However, this doesn’t mean that Google’s perfect, there are still a few concerns and problems I have with it.

Limitations of Google

The biggest problem with Google is that, currently, there is no way to do a bulk search for a lot of images nor is there a way to do a recurring search. Though Google has an API for its Google Image Search, it doesn’t appear to work with Search by Image. Likewise, Google Alerts doesn’t allow you to create an alert for a Google Image Search at all, text or by image.

In short, there are no tools to make such searches easier and there aren’t likely to be any in the near future.

Meanwhile, Tineye has a very robust and well-established API that enables toe construction of just such tools.

Still, given how simple it is to use Google Search By Image, even with having to do the searches by hand, it’s still faster and easier than most methods, it’s still free and, in the end, just more effective, even more so than many paid-for tools.

There’s little reason not to integrate Google Search By Image into your checks and to use it at least some in your searches.

Bottom Line

When Google first launched this product, I tested it and found it to be less-than-useful. The algorithm was too flawed (based on the earlier and more limited “similar” search feature) and the number of false positives simply too high. Clearly, Google has made some great strides in the last six months and pushed this service to the point where it’s database and accuracy combine to make it the most useful image search tool available to the public, especially for free.

In the end, while I like Tineye as a company and as an offering, their database is too small and too limited to compete right now. Hopefully though, this competition will motivate both companies to improve their offerings and create a set of solutions that make things much easier on photographers and artists everywhere.

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Torrent Search Engine BTJunkie Voluntarily Shuts Down

First off today, popular Bittorrent search engine BTJunkie has voluntarily closed, taking the site offline with just a brief notice to users. The site, which made it easy for users to find and download files via Bittorrent was one of the most popular file sharing sites on the Web and one of the top Bittorrent sites. BTJunkie, despite its size, was never directly targeted by law enforcement or copyright holders. However, according to one of the founders, the recent legal action against Megaupload and The Pirate Bay helped prompt the move.

2: Tycoon to Aid “Pirate” Legal Fight Against Extradition to the U.S. on Copyright Theft Charges

Next up today, UK citizen Richard O’Dwyer, who was the former administrator the site TVShack, a site that specialized in providing links to illegal streams of copyrighted content, may have found an unusual ally in his fight to avoid being extradited to the U.S. Alki David, most famous in copyright circles as the founder of video steaming service Filmon, which was recently ordered to stop streaming content from several major TV networks, has offered to pay his legal expenses both in his extradition fight and in the U.S. if he loses. O’Dwyer lost his first appeal to avoid extradition and faces an 10 year prison sentence in the U.S. for criminal copyright infringement even though his alleged crimes aren’t against the law in the UK.

3: Chrysler Hits Possible Copyright Snag with NFL Over Super Bowl Commercial

Finally today, Chrysler struck a cord with it’s 2-minute Super Bowl commercial “Half Time in America”, which starred Clint Eastwood and spoke about a comeback for both Detroit and America. However, the YouTube version of the commercial was pulled down, according to YouTube due to a copyright request from the NFL. Chyrsler said they had no idea why the commercial was pulled, indicating they had no hand in it, but quickly uploaded another version of it and encouraged others to link to it.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

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