However, the founders of Picuous saw a problem, or at least a limitation, with almost all of these services. The company cites the story of James Duncan, the TED photographer who took the now-famous photo of Bill Gates releasing (supposedly) malaria-infected mosquitos loose in the conference, as an example of a photographer whose photo was infringed widely because there was no easy way to share images on the Web.

Picuous, however, aims to fix that and it seeks to do so by being the “Scribd” or the “Vimeo” of image hosting, making it easy to share and embed images without actually transferring the file. Along the way, it hopes to offer both better analytics and better copyright enforcement.

But how well does Picuous work? I decided to give the service a test and find out.

How Picuous Works

The big idea behind Picuous is that other media types, including audio and video, have an embed feature that make them easy to share on other websites while ensuring the original author gets credit and, sometimes, revenue. However, images are usually just saved and reuploaded or hotlinked to get them on other sites. Along the way, both attribution and revenue opportunities are lost.

To fix this, what Picuous does is offer a simple HTML5-based means of embedding the mage on the other site. Though Picuous doesn’t use Flash, it’s a very Flash-like experience and one that users of Scribd and YouTube should be very familiar with.

The big idea is that others, if they see an image they want, they will be more likely to use this embed code than they will copy the image or hotlink it as this is easier, faster and more reliable.

So how does Picuous stack up? My experience was, in a word, mixed.

My Experiment with Picuous

by jonathan on picuous

In order to try Picuous, I attempted to upload and share a photo of my dog, Calico, deciding that he wanted to drive the park. To do that, I created an account, uploaded the image and pasted the embed code as-is in the first part of this section.

The registration and account setup process went very smoothly. It took only a few moments to sign up, get my beta invite and then log in. Uploading the image was easy as well as I was able to simply drag and drop the image from my computer and have it upload automatically.

However, I quickly found out that Picuous is fairly limited as an image host. Though it’s very simple to use, other than setting the license for your images, editing their names and embedding them, there strangely isn’t much else you can do with them. There are no folders you can put them in, no tags to organize them and no additional sharing tools. In fact, the embedded image actually has more features in that it integrates with Twitter, Facebook and Posterous, things that the backend of Picuous doesn’t do.

Still, the embed code was easy to grab though I learned quickly, as you can see above, that there is no easy way to make it flush left or right, thus forcing the image to sit awkwardly on a new line. There is also no way to resize the image should the default size be wrong.

Once again though, you can at least edit the size of the image when re-embedding the embedded version, though there is still no easy way to align it.

All in all, Picuous was extremely easy to use and worked great, but it has a limited feature set, at least at this time. Still, what it does, it does well and most of the limitations can be overcome easily with a bit of work, such as the (quick and dirty) fix I made below.

Is Picuous Worthwhile?

To be clear, Picuous isn’t going to stop infringement. Though it prevents people from being able to save your image directly, I can still screenshot images that Picuous stores or get around the protection by simply looking at the HTML code. However, it does make it more difficult and, at the same time, it provides a path of lower resistance, one that those who are interested in being even remotely legitimate with their use will likely take.

While I think that using Picuous would not be right for PT or similar sites where most of the images are either stock photos or screenshots, it might be appropriate for those who run photo blogs or post a large number of professional or semi-professional images.

That being said, Picuous is far from a Flickr or a Smugmug replacement. You’ll still likely need to use another photo sharing service as your “home base” as there are too few features and no social elements to Picuous (other than an RSS feed for the stream). Still, it might be a good way for getting photos into your blog if you want to encourage sharing without having the file itself passed around.

In short, it won’t stop infringement, but it will encourage healthier uses of your work and that may be worthwhile for some.

Bottom Line

At the end of the day, Picuous is still very much a beta service. This means that the service is limited at this time but that, possibly, many of the issues will be addressed before the final release.

Still, the big idea behind Picuous is a neat one and has a lot of potential. It’s similar to what Picapp has been doing for professional stock images but making the process available for smaller photographers and artists.

There’s definitely a lot of potential here and it’s a site photographers and artists should definitely both try out and keep an eye on. It may not be everything one needs right now, but it certainly has a lot of potential and can provide a useful, if somewhat limited, service already.

These changes have impacted nearly everything we do on the Web, from how we talk to friends (email vs. Facebook) to how we look up information (Google Books, Google Scholar, etc.)

However, these changes also have an impact on how we track and, at times, enforce our content. While, overall, the Web is becoming a much more open place and the tools for finding what’s out there are getting better, there are some technologies that are making things more difficult.

With that in mind, here are five of the bigger changes I’m seeing that are hindering content monitoring what what, if anything that can be done about them.

1. Walled Gardens

Walled gardens have been a problem for a long time but for much of the time I’ve been working the problem has been primarily limited to smaller message boards and communities. In some niches it was worrisome, but generally not a major problem.

However, with social networks closing off more and more of the Web and these sites becoming a go-to destination for many people who just want to create a quick Web presence, an increasing amount of plagiarism, infringement and legitimate content sharing a like are taking place where search engines can’t see them.

This creates new challenges in finding content, whether for enforcement purposes, for statistics gathering or to just participate in the conversation.

2. Content Delivery Networks

A Content Delivery Network, or CDN, is simply a group of server farms spread out all over the world to provide a closer point of access for content. For example, if you load an image from a CDN and you are in New York, you’ll likely get it from a server in the U.S. where someone who tries to load the same file from Hong Kong will likely get a Chinese server.

Content Delivery Networks are great in that they improve the speed and reliability of content delivery, but they also create questions regarding where the content his hosted.

This is because, where once most content existed primarily in just one location, it can now exist in dozens of locations at once, making it difficult to track.

Still, usually one DMCA notice can still remove content across an entire CDN, however, sometimes CDNs also sit in between sites and their visitors, as with CloudFlare, adding an extra layer to pierce. (Disclosure: This site uses Cloudflare).

Though CDNs are not new, they traditionally were expensive but with tools like Cloudflare and Amazon Cloudfront, they are now more than approachable to any webmaster.

3. Embedding

Embedding or hotlinking content has always been common but now it is virtually ubiquitous. With dozens, if not hundreds of image and other content hosts specializing in providing content hosting for other sites, often for free, it is a crap shoot as to whether or not the content within a page is hosted on the same server as the page itself.

The best thing you can do is check the URL of the actual image, audio or video file and look for the host of that particular piece of content, rather than the page itself. Though this is easy with YouTube clips and even most audio players, it can be a pain for images as you need to make sure to grab the image URL, not the page URL, when doing your checks.

4. Hyper Dynamic Content

If you’re tracking text works, especially shorter phrases or even names for trademark evaluations, you will likely run across sites that update so quickly that the content cycles off the page it is supposed to be on in the time between when the search engine crawls it and when you go to read it, even if the time gap is only a few hours.

Some sites, especially automatically-generated spammy ones, update so quickly that even Google can’t crawl them quickly enough. While these aren’t worrisome as they don’t usually make much of an impact with the search engines, they create false positives that can interfere with finding real results.

This is especially true as these domains often pop up multiple times, cluttering up reports with needless garbage that can’t be effectively tracked down or filed against.

5. Translation Software

Automated translation is by no means “good” but it’s gotten to a point where, most of the time, one can at least understand what is being said. That’s far enough for some spammers and plagiarists as well as those who simply want to legitimately share work.

The problem is, plagiarism detection software is very poor for detecting translated plagiarism and probably won’t be getting any better in the near future.

The best you can hope to do, if you suspect that someone may use such a tool to plagiarize your work, is to use it yourself and see if you can find any matches. It is a gamble to say the least, one not worth taking unless you have a good reason, but it can work in some situations.

Bottom Line

All in all, the Web is a more open place than it was a few years ago and content is much easier to track. However, not every advancement is going to make things easier on us and many, as with those above, will make things much harder.

Because of the changing climate, content creators have to adapt and learn, shifting their strategies to try and make the best out of the situation.

This isn’t limited to just content detection, but to license, business model development and much more. If you’re working on the Web, you can’t get stuck in just one mindset and you have to watch and grow. It’s the only way to survive.

Update 8/5: The issue mentioned below where the image was not aligning has been fixed.

Embed Anything, formerly known as EmbedArticle, has added a new feature to its service that makes images easily embeddable into other sites.

The new feature aims to encourage legitimate use of images on other sites while helping artists and photographers earn revenue from such embeds via advertising. It does this by making images available for embedding via YouTube-style JavaScript code, using a process that is very similar to what the company previously did, and continues to do, for text articles.

Given how widespread image misuse is and how quickly the issue is growing it is easy to see why a service such as Embed Anything may be very tempting. But is it the right service for artists seeking to protect and profit from their work? The answer greatly depends on the type of work you create and the kinds of reuse you wish to permit.

How it Works

The process of setting up Embed Anything on your site is very straightforward and requires only a few seconds. You simply give the site your email address and set a password to register for an account and, when logged in, you just add the applicable code to your site (Note: Be careful you are adding the image code and NOT the article code as they are two separate functions.)

Once you have added the code (or installed the WordPress plugin), images on your site will have an overlay that will appear once the user scrolls their mouse over the image. It’s a simple yellow box that says “Embed Image”.

Clicking that box sill open up a small popup that will provide the embed code for the image and offers a disclaimer about what the embed does.

The user then copies the code into their site or post and the image appears with an attribution line underneath and an ad overlayed on top of it.

Content creators can edit their advertising settings in their account options and, if they choose, will receive 50% of all exposures of the ad.

All in all, the process is extremely simple but it is worth noting that Embed Anything is NOT intended to offer any image protections. Users can very easily still right click the image to save it as the overlay does nothing to block any normal user interactions, other than adding the box on mouseover.

The Good

Focusing solely on the image functionality, with the article technology having been previously covered, there is little doubt that the setup and install is as simple as can be, easier than even the almost-as-simple article version.

All that you do is sign up for an account, add the JavaScript and go, the only potential complexity is adding your own ad code but you can do that easily after verifying your site. All in all, there is almost no reason the sign up and set up should take longer than a few moments.

The system also seems to work well. It is unobtrusive to visitors of the site using it, not interfering with any typical behavior, but still offers a clear and polite hint to embed the content via this method and not downloading and reusing, likely unlawfully.

On that front, once the code is placed into a visitor’s site, it seems to work very well, providing a text link back to the source and, when possible, overlaying an ad, which may or may not be appealing depending upon your goals.

In short, the system does exactly what it says it will do but there are several caveats and limitations to be aware of before placing the code on your site.

The Bad

In exchange for the simplicity of Embed Anything you sacrifice features and customization. There is no way to disable the ad, change the look and feel of the “Embed Image” box nor alter the images it appears on beyond using a special image class, class=”emba_no_img”, to indicate that you don’t want the overlay applied.

This means that, with Embed Anything, what you see is what you get. If you don’t like the way it operates, you are simply out of luck. There isn’t much more that you can do as even the WordPress plugin only has one option, to add the publisher ID.

As far as the ad goes, many aren’t going to want to display the ad and those who do may feel the 50/50 adspace split is a bit low. To make matters worse, it is unclear if and how this would work with Google Adsense TOS, especially if the images were placed on sites that violated some element of those terms.

Likewise, I am not sure how useful the link back will be. There is no way to alter the link text to prove attribution to your site. It simply says “See more images here…” and links to the source. There’s no mention of the site’s name or the who created the image.

Finally, there simply isn’t a great deal of intelligence within the Embed Anything system. Though ads won’t appear on images that are too small, the system will automatically apply to all images, regardless of size, location, etc. included in your site. There is no way to tell the system to only offer embeds for images of certain sizes, names, locations, etc. and images such as your logo will also have the overlay (as you can see above).

In short, the system works as advertised and do so very easily, but don’t expect any bells and whistles. This is meant to be a streamlined experience for both parties and, unfortunately, that comes at the price of options and features.

Bottom Line

Personally, I can’t see that many webmasters, bloggers and/or artists using this service as it is. Not only is it too limited in terms of customization, but it is just not a feature it seems many were clamoring for, at least outside of the mainstream media.

Granted, at least one photography group, Picture Group, has integrated Embed Anything into their site. However, they did it with a heavily customized version, not the code or features offered in the stock version.

So, unless you have a highly specific need for such embedding and the capability to customize it to make it work as you want, you likely aren’t going to find this service very compelling. That being said, for those whose needs fit what Embed Anything is offering, they will likely find this service to be a godsend.

As usual with these types of reviews, I’ve enabled Embed Anything’s image service on this article so you are free to play around with it, even though it seems a bit odd to use Embed Anything to embed screenshots of Embed Anything’s service.

Play with it and decide for yourself it is right for you, it is truly the best way to decide.

Update 8/4: Have now notices an additional problem with Embed Anything, it messes up image alignment, at least on my blog. You can see this at the top with the Embed Anything logo, which should be pushed to the left and, instead, has the equivalent of alignnone.

One of the most difficult things about protecting your content on the Web is finding ways to encourage legitimate sharing of content without encouraging less desired use. We almost all want people to Tweet, link to and quote our content but we don’t want to encourage spammers and we always want to make sure that proper attribution is applied.

There have been a slew of services that have worked to make exactly that possible. Ranging from licensing solutions such as Creative Commons to technology-oriented ones such as Emebed Article and Tynt Insight (formerly known as Tracer).

However, there is another service, Clp.ly, which hopes to make a dent in the field.

Clp.ly is both a bookmarklet and a button/JavaScript embedded into websites that make embedding content (or “clipping” content) extremely easy and elegant.

The idea is to make it simple and attractive to correctly cite content from various sites, including both pulling quotes and snapping images. This raises the simple question “How well does it work?” The answer, overall, seems to be that it does the job very well.

The Bookmarklet

The most common way one would likely use Clp.ly is via a bookmarklet installed in the browser. The bookmarklet can be used one of two ways.

First, if you select text on the screen and then click the bookmarklet, you are given the option to embed just that text. The quote can either be shared directly via a link on clp.ly’s server or it can be easily embedded into a blog post or any page with HTML. Here is an example taken from this page.

In April, @BadAstronomer, Phil Plait, moderated a panel

From Geeky Pleasures (share this quote)

All in all, the embed has three elements, the first is the quote itself, which is framed with large quotemarks and formatted to stand out, the second is a direct link to the source page (albeit masked by a short url provided by Clp.ly) and finally a link to share the quote via Twitter, Facebook and other services.

The other method for using the bookmarklet is to simply click the link without selecting text and Clp.ly will instead direct you to a page that will allow you to embed a formatted screenshot of the page via a screen like this:

Basically, the tool lets you select the relevant part of the page by moving the slider up and down the left-hand column and resize the image you want to make using the box in the center. From there you’re given an embed code for your site and a direct URL for the clip.

Here is what a sample image embed looks like, once again using the site above.

Clipped from: Geeky Pleasures (share this clip)

As you can see, it is a fairly powerful clipping bookmarklet and, if you register for an account, you’ll get the added feature of having your clips stored and remembered in your profile. This can make it somewhat useful as a research and bookmarking tool though, admittedly, Diigo is probably a better choice for that function.

But as nice as the bookmarklet is, it is only half of the equation. Clp.ly also offers an easy way to embed the service into your site, making it available for everyone.

Clp.ly for Webmasters

If you register for an account, you can also add your Web sites to the service and that will let you embed Clp.ly’s functionality into your site for all to use, whether or not the user has the bookmarklet installed.

The button works much the same as the bookmarklet, having the same functions on click, but the JavaScript that powers it adds a new feature, copy detection.

When a user selects and copies text on your site, they are greeted with a small popup similar to the one above.

Though the content is copied as is to the clipboard, the user is prompted to either format the content for embedding or take a screen capture if they want. Compare this to Tynt which, when it adds attribution to copied text, does so stealthily and without warning to the user.

This turns the attribution protection into more of a value-add for the person doing the copying as the formatted version is more attractive than plain text.

One feature I could not get to work in my testing is that the system is also supposed to warn visitors when they are attempting to copy too much text. If a user copies more than 100 words, they are supposed to get a fair use warning with a link to the Wikipedia article on the subject (though I would recommend this link instead). Likewise, if they copy a very small amount, they’re given a chance to search for the term.

To those who were uneasy about the way Tynt stealthily added the attribution line to content protected by it, Clp.ly will likely seem like a good compromise, pasting the content to the clipboard as is but offering the user the chance to have it preformatted for inclusion.

Drawbacks and Limitations

To be clear, Clp.ly is not a perfect solution and it does lack features that other services offer. For example, the service can not share images in the way that Embed Anything can nor does it offer the robust tracking of Tynt (though it does monitor “trackbacks” that pass through the service).

Also, during my use of the service I ran into a few bugs. For one, I received none of the emails I should have gotten from Clp.ly and instead received warnings the messages could not be sent. This made password recovery impossible after I lost my temporary password for my first account.

Likewise, some of the links to various clip did not work well for me, taking me instead to my clips when I was logged in.

However, for the most part, Clp.ly is a solid and effective service. It may not have all the features one could want but likely has the features that one needs and strikes a good balance between forcing attribution down a user’s throat and simply hoping for the best.

In short, it is not an ideal solution but for many interested in this type of protection it may be the best available.

Bottom Line

There’s a lot of features I’d like to see out of Clp.ly including more robust stats, direct links to source material (no Clp.ly short url when not needed) and an invisible button (meaning it is only activated on the copying of text) but the service is still very powerful and works very well.

Though I don’t think it’s going to sway large media companies who use Tynt at this time, largely due to the small nature of the company and the lack of invisible tracking, it shows a great deal of potential and may be perfect for small-to-midsize bloggers and webmasters who want to do a little bit more to encourage good copying of their text.

So if you are interested in this kind of functionality, give Clp.ly a look, you may find it to be perfect for you.

If you are curious to see how it works, I’ve enabled it on this article so feel free to play around with it for a bit.

No trackbacks yet

As more people create video content for the Web and more existing video producers begin publishing content online, there’s going to be an increasing number of copyright disputes over video.

We’re already seeing a lot of this on YouTube where clips are routinely pulled down for containing infringing material, some of it dubiously, and YouTube’s content matching system is getting a serious test of its effectiveness as the site parses 24 hours of video every minute.

But while many of the legal issues surrounding video are mired in messy topics such as fair use and confusing licensing schemes, other issues, quite frankly, aren’t. In fact, some of the issues are downright simple, even to the casual observer.

One such issue is the issue of embedding clips. Though there are some interesting copyright questions when embedding clips from YouTube that contain infringing material, many of which were expanded on by the EFF, embedding content legally uploaded to YouTube, or any other video service, should be a no-brainer if embedding is enabled.

Unfortunately, one copyright holder (who shall remain unknown to me and everyone else) thought differently and expressed concern over such use.

However, those who routinely embed YouTube clips need not worry. You are almost certainly covered under an implied license and have little to fear. Still, the issue warrants at least a brief look, just to put it to rest.

The Issue of Implied Licenses

An implied license is more typically an issue when dealing with purchased content. If there’s no written agreement between the parties, one has to look at what both sides intended, including what use was to be allowed/disallowed. These cases are routinely very messy in court and often hinge on emails and other correspondence between the parties before the agreement took place.

However, on the Internet, we grant implied licenses to our content all of the time. For example, by merely posting works to the Web without blocking access, you grant Google an implied license to index and cache the content, at least according to Field v. Google case.

The idea is fairly straightforward. By taking certain action with your content, such as posting it on the Web, and not taking steps to prevent certain foreseeable inevitable consequences, you grant an implied license for those uses.

The same holds true for video uploads. If you upload a video and don’t disable embedding, it seems logical that you are also offering an implied license to embed the content. As such, those who do so should have no fear of being sued or even threatened.

However, even if one disapproves of embedding clips, there is no reason to involve copyright in the dispute, instead, YouTube and most other video services make it trivial to disable embeds. In short, you can prevent embedding without sending a single threatening letter or taking any action at all, other than the changing of a setting.

All in all, it seems very simple, if you turn on video embedding, don’t get upset when others embed your videos.

Limitations on the Implied License

All of that being said, the implied license is not without limits. In fact, judges have traditionally interpreted implied licenses as narrowly as possible and Internet content is no exception.

First, and most obviously, it doesn’t allow embedding if embedding is disabled. Though several sites promote (mostly non-working) ways to embed blocked videos, such embeds may constitute a violation of the creator’s copyright as there is an actual license in this case saying that they do not wish embedding to take place.

Furthermore, even if embedding is enabled, if the owner gives some kind of clear indication they don’t wish to have their content used in such a way, it would once again be an actual license that would trump the implied one. That being said, it would also be stupid and very questionable to state you don’t want your videos to be embedded while simultaneously not disabling the feature.

Finally though, the implied license does not allow users to download YouTube clips, such downloading is technically forbidden by YouTube’s terms of service anyway (without a specific download link), nor does it allow the reposting of content through another player.

As discussed previously when dealing with RSS scraping, taking content out of a format and redistributing it, even if that format is easily distributed, removes protections and the ability of the creator to protect, market and profit from their work. Also, it is not widely considered to be a foreseeable and inevitable consequence of posting work online in any format, much less video.

In short, if embedding is enabled, it is perfectly legal to embed legally uploaded clips, but the implied license more or less ends there.

Bottom Line

With so many legitimately confusing and complicated copyright issues, there is little reason to make an issue as something as straightforward as embedding a legitimate YouTube clip.

Considering that this is something that can be trivially defeated by setting an option in your YouTube account, there is little reason to even mention copyright in the same sentence.

Instead, I think most creators would be better suited focusing their efforts on the plagiarists, spammers, and other infringers who can’t be so easily stopped and can have a much more drastic negative impact on your work.

Twitter, through its media blog, recently announced that it is making it easy to embed tweets into your site, the way many already add YouTube clips or audio from various sources.

The idea is fairly simple, you visit Twitter’s experimental “Blackbird Pie” page, paste in the full URL of the tweet (it ends with /status/########) and Twitter creates a block of HTML code that you paste into your site.

But is this something that users of Twitter really need? Though tweets are often cited in long articles, including this one pointed out by Twitter on ReadWriteWeb, the process has worked fine before and alternatives already exist.

Though I can’t say for certain how popular this feature will be, I can definitely see reasons why those who wish to quote and the Twitter users they pull from should cheer this move. However, there are also a few concerns that have me a bit worried about using this service.

How it Works

As mentioned above, all you do to use the service is find the URL of the tweet you want to cite, paste it into Twitter’s Blackbird Pie page and then insert the generated HTML into your post. Here are two samples.

First, the very first tweet from my significant other’s Twitter account for her new art blog.

Here is one from my friend and Copyright 2.0 Show co-host Patrick O’Keefe’s Twitter stream:

Finally, here is one twitter user @iLoveCopyright:

As you can see looking at the three samples, each one tries to keep the formatting of the original tweet but fails. The reason is it simply uses the background and color options from the last tweet on a page. If you upload multiple embeds to one page, the system breaks but it works fine for just one. In those cases, the embeds look the same as they look on Twitter’s site.

This is, or at least could be, the most powerful element of this new feature and reason enough for most people to consider using it. However, there are many other good reasons to embrace this new method for quoting tweets.

Advantages for Bloggers

Without embedding, the only three options for citing a tweet in your profile is to:

1. Link to the Tweet: This requires a user click and is often missed when reading a long article.
2. Take a Screenshot: Grabbing an image of the tweet requires more time and can be a hindrance to visually impaired visitors.
3. Copy the Tweet: Copying the tweet destroys the formatting and wreak havoc with attribution.

None of these options are ideal and all require at least some sacrifice, either to the reader, the Twitter user or the person doing the quoting.

Embeds are a truly elegant solution to this problem. It’s a simple copy/paste HTML code fix, the formatting/attribution is preserved (complete with clickable links) and it looks good (when only pasting one tweet).

In short, if you’re a blogger or a Web site that is looking to cite some tweets, this may be the best solution you have, at least if you only have one tweet you want to cite.

Advantages for Twitter Users

If you’re a Twitter user, this is good news as well. This system preserves the formatting and attribution of your tweets, offers clickable links to your tweet and your Twitter account and includes your icon/branding. In short, readers will know the tweet belongs to you instantly and can follow up on it easily.

The biggest advantage, however, is that it may make sharing tweets more common, increasing exposure. Since the copyright risks are minimal with a single tweet and the tool is not geared to easily copy all of the tweets from one’s account, it is simply an excellent opportunity for promotion.

However, there are also concerns that I have with this tool and, though I don’t consider these to be deal-brakers, they are all things I would like to see fixed before the service is considered to be an official “feature”.

Concerns and Problems

To be completely fair, the author of the Twitter Media blog, Robin Sloan, has made it clear that this is an experiment and not a feature. As such, problems are bound to creep up. But in addition to the formatting issue I mentioned before, there are a few other issues I would like to raise.

1. In-The-Clear Text: The embeds keep the text in the clear. While SEO concerns are minimal due to the short number of characters, this does mean that the person doing the embedding could alter the words to make the tweet say just about anything. Though you can click the links and verify the the tweet, few will likely bother with that and it is also possible to change the links to make it appear that the tweet was simply deleted.




I’m really just a robot.less than a minute ago via webJonathan Bailey
plagiarismtoday

2. Mangled Backgrounds: If you use a custom Twitter background, as I do, the script seems to mangle your embeds. It would be nice if the script could pull from the center of the background and not the upper-lefthand corner, but in lieu of that it might be wise just to have all embeds use the same background or a solid color related to the profile.
3. Lengthy Code: Shorter code is already on the future feature list but the length of the code is rather large, especially when compared to YouTube or other embeds. It has a lot of in-line CSS that causes the interference with multiple embeds in the same page and can be a real pain to edit.

While these problems are pretty nasty, they can probably be fixed in future iterations, especially if Twitter decides this is a good idea and invests time and energy in making a true embedding service.

Bottom Line

All in all, this is a neat service and, in my opinion, a good idea. Quoting tweets is a common practice and, due to the nature of tweets, almost always allowed by copyright law. These embeds just make it easier to quote properly and ensures that the original author gets credit.

With a few fixes, I could easily see this experiment being integrated deep into Twitter’s product and would welcome that change.

In the meantime, if you’re only quoting one tweet on a page, give it a try. Otherwise, you’ll probably want to look at an alternate method for citing tweets in your posts, as you can see above.

1: Embedding a YouTube Video May Cost You a Bundle in ASCAP Bills

Emboldened by a recent court victory that found YouTube liable for back royalties audio used in its videos, ASCAP, American Society for Composers Authors and Publishers, has in turn begun to hit up Web sites for royalties based upon their embedding of YouTube clips.

To be clear, ASCAP has said it will not be seeking licenses from those who embed YouTube clips in solely personal blogs, but those who embed such clips on commercial sites, such as Jason Calicanas’ Mahalo, might be expecting a letter in the mail.

The matter has already broke out on Twitter, where Calicanas first announce he had received the letter, leading to a new hashtag #ascapfail. Others have reproted receiving similar letters. Previously, YouTube told recipients of such letters to just direct ASCAP to YouTube but now it is much less clear if YouTube will be of much help.

2: Hackers Undermine Piracy Evidence With Hadopi Router

According to some hackers in France, the country’s new three strikes law, in addition to a constitutional hurdle that the new law is designed to overcome, may have yet another issue. According to the report on Torrentfreak, they have created a tool that is designed to crack passwords on secure wifi access points and use those for file sharing.

The law, as it is written now, allows a judge to file an Internet use up to 1,500 euros and disconnect them for four weeks if they are negligent in allowing their network to be broken into and use for piracy. This router, theoretically, would allow hackers to use the access of non-negligent wifi users, thus confusing things further.

3: Look Familiar?

Finally today, to end Friday on a lighter note, Brandon at iCodeBlog has a very amusing tale of copyright infringement.

As do many coding blogs, Brandon’s blog uses tutorials to help teach some of the basics. To that end, Brandon posted a sample of a very simple iPhone “Tennis” game with instructions on how to make it.

So imagine his surprise when he found that exact application for sale for 99 cents in the app store.

According to Brandon, a company by the name of BlaBlaIncTech uploaded his app as a wholly original work and was selling it. The application is no longer available in the App store, likely pulled due to the copyright issues.

Still, it says some pretty negative things about the iPhone App Store when a quick tutorial app can get put online and charge a dollar per download…

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today, we’ll 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 Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

As part of the second approach, I make it a point to seek out and highlight services that assist and encourage the legal reuse of content. In fact, on Monday I wrote a column for the Blog Herald detailing five sites/services that can help bloggers get images for their posts.

However, when I found out later that day about a new service called Lizzer, which supposedly “is the easiest way to add links and embed content on the Web” I was initially very excited. But as I used the service and saw first hand how it works, my optimism turned to horror as I realized that Lizzer does not enable legitimate reuse of images or content, but rather, encourages both copyright infringement and image hotlinking.

Lizzer, sadly, shares very little in common with the services that I featured in my Blog Herald article and, instead, gives Webmasters, especially those who work with images, a lot of reason to worry.

All Rights Reserved

When I first logged in to my new Lizzer account, I instantly noticed an issue with the service. From the very first page load I could start searching for content. But, while most of the content was innocent, YouTube embeds and links to articles, one of the options was to use a Flickr search.

While that sounds great, without knowing what licensing terms I wanted, the service had no means of telling which images I could use legally. As such, I knew that there was a decent chance it could return images not appropriate for my sites.

Still, I performed a search for the term “plagiarism” and opened up the Flickr dropdown. Below is a snapshot of what I saw, notice the first image, which is highlighted.

It seemed odd to me because I’ve done a similar photo search using Photo Dropper, which filters for my CC licenses, and have never seen this image in the results. After clicking the “Preview” button followed by the “Source” link, I was able to see why. I was taken to this page, where, at the bottom, I saw the following copyright notice.

The image is “All Rights Reserved” and is marked so clearly in the Flickr API. This image should never have appeared in these search results as embedding it could land a Webmaster in trouble should the owner of the image decide to complain.

However, Lizzer wasn’t done. There were still other features to explore and the worst was yet to come.

Hotlinking from Google Image Search

Though the Flickr issue seemed serious to me, it only affected a small number of photographers and artists, namely those who post all rights reserved images to Flickr, and, since Yahoo! was paying the bandwidth tab, it seemed unlikely many would complain.

However, as I looked through the service’s options, I noticed that I had the ability to add Google image search. I immediately cringed because I know well that the vast majority of images displayed in Google Image Search are protected by copyright. Though Google itself is protected by fair use, it is unlikely that any full-sized use of the content by a user of Lizzer would have the same benefit.

I performed a similar search for “plagiarism” and opened up the Google Search list. The results I saw are below. Again, pay attention to the first image, the highlighted image of Bart Simpson.

I once again followed the image to the source and was then taken to this page. Once again, there was no mention of Creative Commons or any other license to use the image. From a legal standpoint, copying and pasting the whole image is potentially very dangerous (Note: I’m completely ignoring the use of the copyrighted character in this work and treating it as a wholly original image for the sake of originality).

However, the real surprise came when I used the fake blog post to try and embed the image. Clicking the link caused the image to appear in the post, exactly as planned, but then I looked at the code that the embed feature created. I saw the following:

The image, as you see below, is hotlinked straight from the original server, in this case, pandemiclabs.com.

In addition to raising a series of issues about copyright infringement and content misuse, we now also have to worry about abuse of resources. If I were to actually use this image code, not only would I be using the image without permission, but I would be using their bandwidth and server resources to do it.

Obviously, a lot of Webmasters are not going to be happy about this. Not only is Lizzer making their content available for use when no license was granted but, in many cases, is encouraging bloggers to hotlink images straight from the original server without permission. The worst part is that, someone using Lizzer, might think that the service is like Photo Dropper or Zemanta and that they have permission to use everything they see.

Clearly though, that is not the case.

Defending Lizzer

In Lizzer’s Defense, the service is currently in alpha and the version that you see today will likely change before the final release. However, a bookmarklet is already available for wide use and works well with all major blogging platforms, including WordPress, Blogger, MovableType, Tumblr, etc. This means that Lizzer is currently in use by at least some bloggers, many of whom are likely unaware of the copyright issues.

Fortunately though, most of Lizzer’s functionality is centered around finding links and videos to embed. Due to the way YouTube sets up their service, disabling embedding is easy for those that chose to do so, an issue that Flickr has not been able to address.

Out of all the search features they offer, only the Flickr search and the Google Image search seem to have any serious issues. However, they are pretty big problems that are both very easy to see and even easier to avoid. Flickr offers an API that allows you to look for CC-licensed work and there are many ways to search for licensed images.

I’m not going to be so bold as to say that finding licensed images is a “solved problem” but it is clear to me that Lizzer is a step backwards from well-established solutions.

However, what is most disconcerting to me is that I emailed Lizzer on Monday to raise these issues. At that time, the Google Images search feature was not working correctly and the hotlinking issues were not present. Unfortunately though, as of this writing, no one has written me back and the Google Image search function has come back online.

Though I grant that Lizzer is currently very buggy, I experienced multiple issues trying to take these screenshots, it is more than usable and that is bad news for content creators, especially those who work primarily with images.

Conclusions

The simple truth is that Lizzer, in its current form, is very dangerous both for Webmasters who publish content and its members that use Lizzer to find content to embed. With so many great tools already available for finding and embedding licensed content, Lizzer not only seems risky to use, but also dated.

Hopefully Lizzer can correct these issues and make itself a respectable content location tool. However, in its current form it not only misses many of the best sources of licensed material, but leads users to embed things that they do not have the right to.

There simply is no reason to use Lizzer right now, there are much better services available. Granted, Lizzer is in an alpha state, but it has already shown a great deal of disregard for Webmaster content and the legal safety of their service.

Unfortunately, in my experience, these aren’t so much “bugs” as they are flaws in the thinking of the developers. Thus, they are much harder to fix.

Hopefully though, they will be able to resolve these issues, for their sake and ours.

One of the lesser-used features on the home page of the site is the “Most Popular” articles box. It contains a list of the current top five articles based upon a weighted system accounting for comments, trackbacks and visitors.

The current number one story, Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket has remained in the top slot since the new feature was added. The reason, 77 comments and a steady stream of traffic from the deviantArt crowd and from various art forums.

Clearly it still resonates with the artist communities.

Another one of the more popular stories is Why Your Copyright Protection is Second Rate, which makes some unfortunate distinctions between the U.S. and other nations when it comes to copyright law.

Finally, one of the articles is no longer true. Why I Embed My Images, though true when I wrote the article has not been the case for some time. Though I still strongly believe in the strategy and am actively seeking a good image host, speed issues forced me to pull back and use my own server, at least for the time being.

Expect more on that story later.

All in all, it is a great feature that regularly updates. However, I might do a clearing of the cache to allow other stories the chance to get some front page exposure.

Conclusions

Thank you all for your patience during this rather slow week. I hope you enjoyed this look back and I’m very excited about creating new favorite articles in the weeks and months to come.

Please feel free to leave your feedback and thoughts on these as well as any other stories here on Plagiarism Today.