The extension connects to PicScouts ImageIRC database of licensable images and scans images that the browser is loading to see which, if any, can be licensed for reuse through the services PicScout represents.

The goal of the new user interface is to make it easier for a designer or other person interested in buying rights to an image to locate photos for their desired use and, though the change is largely a cosmetic one, it actually addresses one of the major concerns I had with the extension when I first reviewed it back in December.

What’s New with ImageExchange

As mentioned above, the changes are primarily cosmetic and designed to make the extension much easier to use. The biggest change is that the new interface gets away from the use of “i” in the corner of licenseable images and, instead, creates a sidebar of images that can be purchased or otherwise be made available for reuse.

This makes it easier and quicker to distinguish images that can be licensed from those where no information is available and it makes quicker to glance through the images that are available without going through the entire content of the page.

The change is currently only for the Firefox version of the plugin though Picscout is planning on updating the Internet Explorer version as well and introduce similar extensions for other browsers (Google Chrome, Safari, etc.) down the road.

An Interesting Trick

Shortly after the announcement, photographer David Sanger pointed out to me an interesting potential use for the extension, tracking down where a site gets its images from.

All one has to do is install the extension, visit Google Image Search and then search for “site:domain.com” to pull up the images on the domain and then have ImageExchange sort through them and see where they came from.

For example, if you perform the search using Plagiarism Today, you’ll quickly learn that this site uses a lot of CC-licensed images. For other sites, you may be able to use this to backtrack the images and see what stock photo sites they favor.

Certainly not a groundbreaking use in helping one track their own content, but a potentially enlightening tool nonetheless.

Bottom Line

The change fixes the major usability issue of ImageExchange, not being able to clearly see which images were available and which weren’t. Though, in my experiments, it didn’t find significantly more images than before, I certainly found it easier to locate the ones that it did.

It remains to be seen how widely adopted this extension will be by graphic designers and others who are interested in licensing images, but by making it easier to use, they certainly increase the likelihood that a broader range of potential customers will jump on board.

Hopefully, that is exactly what will happen and, more than anything, this extension can be a tool to get creators thinking about the importance of licensing and the value of doing so.

1: Apple Says Jailbreaking iPhones Is Illegal

Late last week it was discovered that Apple had filed comments with the U.S. Copyright Office countering where it publicly stated that, in its opinion, jailbreaking iPhones is illegal.

Every three years the USCO holds a round of public comment over potential exemptions in the DMCA anti-circumvention clause. Currently, unlocking phones, such as the iPhone, is not an exemption of the rule. The EFF filed comments supporting such an exemption and the Apple comments (PDF) were in response.

Though Apple has been aware of jailbreaking, process that can both unlink the iPhone from its carrier and allow non-Apple-approved applications to run on the phone, it has not taken any official stance on the legality of it. The only action taken, up to this point, has been releasing firmware updates that have broken the jailbreaking process.

2: Music Copyright ‘Pension Extension’ Moves Forward

A 45-year extension of the music copyright term in the European Union has passed a critical committee hurdle in the bureaucracy that is the EU. The proposal includes a review at the end of three years with further review every four years after that to ensure that it is having the desired impact, the helping of musicians. However, with the administration of the extension handed over to collecting societies, it is difficult to say how many musicians will benefit.

There is also now discussion about a similar extension for video copyrights within the EU.

3: The Pirate Bay trial to begin in Sweden

Finally, in the trial that has everyone talking, four of the men behind the well-known Bittorrent site The Pirate Bay are having their trial begin today. The Pirate Bay was famously raided and the men were first questioned back in May of 2006 following a criminal complaint filed by the MPAA in 2004.

The Pirate Bay admins have said that the site will go on, no matter what the outcome of the trial is, and said that they will be unable to pay any fines that they are charged.

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.

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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.

The goal is to not simply help bloggers discover if and where their content is being scraped, but also give them information to help them track down the scraper and, when used in conjunction with plugins such as Antileech, stop the infringement outright.

It is a potentially exciting plugin that could replace a other extensions that are currently available, effectively combining the functionality of at least two indispensable plugins into one, and holds a lot of potential to help WordPress bloggers stop infringement and prevent spam bloggers from taking their content.

How it Works

Copyfeed is something of a swiss army knife when it comes to extending your feed. It has several different functions, many of which are already available.

First, the plugin can add a digital fingerprint to the plugin and provides easy links to search for copies of your work. In that regard, it works a great deal like MaxPower’s Digital Fingerprint Plugin and can serve much of the same purpose.

Second, the plugin adds a customized feed copyright notice, similar to Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter Plugin. This plugin, however, takes it a step farther making it easier to add your custom copyright information and then and even making it possible to add HTML to the footer.

However, where the plugin goes above and beyond the currently available tools is by adding the ability to include the IP address of the feed reader in the feed itself. This means that, if the feed is scraped, the scraper will also be publishing the IP address of the computer they used to scrape the feed, making it very easy to either block the address, or input it into Antileech for redirection.

Finally, Copyfeed also offers the ability to whitelist certain domains from seeing the above information. This means that it is would be possible to protect your regular feed, but allow BlogBurst or another desired syndication service to bypass that content without having to point them to a separate feed.

It’s a very powerful set of features that, when combined with Antileech, can provide almost total protection of the feed from scrapers and spammers. All of this also says nothing about the other attributes that Copyfeed can add, including comments and related posts, that have nothing to do with content theft preventions.

Some Problems

However, this isn’t to say that the plugin is perfect, there are several issues with it that may stop it, in some cases at least, from being ready for full use.

First off, both the plugin and the site are currently only available in German. Though you can use tools to translate the site, the plugin administration panel rests in the admin area of the WordPress install and can’t be easily viewed by such tools.

Fortunately, Bueltge has promised to include a translated version of the plugin with his next release, along with “more features” but it has not been released as of this writing.

Second, it is uncertain how legitimate readers will feel about having their IP address printed on their feed’s entries. Some, especially those who are unaware of how the Internet works and what an IP address really is, might cite privacy concerns. Others, especially those who use Web-based readers, might be confused as the IP address would not be theirs, but that of the site they read the feeds on.

It would be up to the user of the feed to explain these issues if they chose to use that feature.

Finally, aspects of the plugin, obviously, will not work well with FeedBurner. Though the copyright notice and the digital fingerprint will both work correctly, the IP feature will not. The plugin would just report the IP address of FeedBurner and not the person reusing the feed, making it useless in that case.

However, there are many people that will still likely find the plugin very useful and many more will do so once the plugin has been translated into other languages.

Conclusions

All in all, this plugin is an impressive effort to stop feed scraping and will almost certainly become an essential tool once translations of it are offered. In fact, it is possible with just a few extra features that it could become something of a one-stop shop for battling feed scrapers in WordPress, becoming almost the only plugin needed.

However, until the translated versions are released, all most of us can do is sit and wait in anticipation for the tool to become available.

It seems almost certain that this plugin, for many WordPress users, will be a nice step forward in protecting their feed. Hopefully, once I am able to use it, it will live up to those expectations.

In the meantime, I’d be very interested in hearing comments from those who are using Copyfeed on their sites. I’d love to hear how it is working out for you.