However, no two artists are in the same position. A strategy that works for Metallica is not going to work for an upstart blogger. So, nearly every tool out there, no matter how insane it might seem, probably does at least some good for someone.

But then there are the copyright ideas that just don’t do anything or, in extreme cases, actually do much more harm than good.

These are ideas that need to be shot down and put away so better ideas can take their place. However, even though some of these have been around (and debunked) for decades, they continue to linger.

So what are those ideas? There are many out there but here are the ones I’m seeing the most and would like to see finally done away with.

1. Badges and Buttons Everywhere

It seems that nearly every copyright-related service out there is offering badges, banners and buttons for others to use. Though many of these companies do great work and provide a valuable service, the badges and buttons are a complete, or at least near-complete, waste of time.

The problem is simple: Few, if any, would-be plagiarists are going to be deterred by such buttons (if they even notice them) and with so much of the copying taking place via automated means, especially RSS scraping, your infringer likely never even saw the site.

These buttons are just a means to generate links back to the companies. Nothing more.

Better Approach: Instead of using badges and buttons, make sure your copyright notice is in check and that it has all of the required elements.

2. No Right-Click/No Select Text Scripts

There are hundreds of scripts that block right clicks and text selection on a site and they, for the most part, do their job. However, the issue with these scripts isn’t that they don’t stop at least some infringement, but that they do much more harm than good.

My own experiments with Tynt have shown that the vast majority of copying is for use that’s clearly non-infringing. Far more people copy content to share legitimately than to infringe.

Couple that with how easily these systems are defeated and there is literally no reason to use them.

Better Approach: Tynt, if used correctly, can track your copied content and help you understand what’s being used. Be careful though not to use it to mess with the copy/paste function, only to track it.

3. Self-Written Licenses

I covered this in greater detail previously but it bears repeating: Never write your own copyright license.

Not only is it legally risky unless you are an attorney, but such licenses rarely get read and almost never change behavior.

Besides, you don’t need a license to require others to ask permission to use your work. Also, if you want to give permission, there are a slew of professionally-written and free licenses that you can apply at your leisure.

Better Approach: Either stick to “all rights reserved” and handle permission requests one at a time or, if you want, choose any one of the other, professionally-written licenses out there.

4. Fake “Copyright Registration” Services

Though there are some great non-repudation services out there such as Myows and Safe Creative, there are a slew of other services with insane pricing schemes and scare-tactic marketing strategies.

Some of these services will cost up to $20 or more to register one file. Worst of all, these services don’t even register the file with the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO), which is a requirement in the U.S. in order to have full legal protection.

Instead, these services just accept a copy of your file, print you a certificate as to when they got it and take your money.

Better Approach: Non-repudiation services can be helpful but Safe Creative and Myows are both free and provide a slew of additional features. Even advanced certification services, such as EastTimestamping charge well less than a dollar per registration. Never pay more.

5. EXIF Data

Theoretically, this should be a great idea. EXIF, or EXchangeable Image File format, lets you embed text-based information in a jpg file. This includes information about the camera, the date it was taken and even the GPS coordinates. It can also include copyright holder and author information.

The problem isn’t the format itself, which works very well, but that the data is stripped almost everywhere it’s uploaded. In short, nearly every time that you or a plagiarist posts the photo online, including Facebook and Flickr, that information is ripped out as part of the compression process.

Basically, most sites remove the information in a bid to make file size smaller and reduce bandwidth. An unfortunate decision, to say the least.

Better Approach: Image watermarking, either visisble or invisible, is your best approach to protect and track your content. EXIF data just doesn’t get passed along reliably enough to be useful.

Bottom Line

Though I would love to live in a world where I could give the same, simple copyright advice to everyone, that’s not the reality we face. However, there are a few things that I can definitely tell creators to avoid using or, at the very least, avoid relying on.

Whether it’s snake oil salesmen trying to separate you from your money or people with good intentions dealing with unfair realities, some ideas just don’t work.

It’s best to move away from those as quickly as possible so we can find the ideas that do work and focus our energies or productive ways to protect ones work.

Disclosure: I have done paid consulting for both Safe Creative and Myows.

As previously covered, image matching company PicScout recently launched its Image IRC, a database of fingerprinted images with licensing data that is publicly accessible, and ImageExchange, a user-facing program that accesses the Image IRC and finds matched images on the Web.

Currently, ImageExchange is only available as a Firefox extension (though other extensions are planned) and is in the very early stages of public testing. Aimed mostly at buyers of stock images, such as designers, ImageExchange and the Image IRC currently have access to millions of images, including from many of the largest microstock and stock photo agencies.

With all of that in mind, I wanted to take a look and see how well ImageExchange performed both to see what it was doing well and to see what might need improvement in later versions.

Here’s a look at my experience with the extension and what my early impressions are.

The Experiment

For my limited test I decided to simulate what a potential searcher for stock photos might do, I visited Google Image Search and experimented with different search terms to see how many images were found and to make notes about the usefulness of the extension.

All in all, I conducted 35 searches. The first 25 were for a variety of semi-random terms a stock photo searcher might look for, ranging from vague to very specific. Five searches were for terms in the first 25 but with the words “stock photo” added. The final five were for the same terms but with the words “clip art” added.

From there, I checked the first three pages of Google and counted how many matches were found. The results are below (click to enlarge):

Matching

As you can see in the chart, the matching isn’t exactly going to blow anyone away. Many of the searches produced no results with Google Image Search, in my test, showing 18 results per page, the highest any one search found on one page was 6, or 1/3. None generated more than 17 matches out of the 54 total images.

That being said, the results were interesting. The more specific the search, the better ImageExchange did. Searches with “stock photo” added also did better most of the time.

However, to be clear, when it was struggling to find matches it isn’t because ImageExchange wasn’t matching images correctly, but because the top pages within Google were filled with user-generated content and other images that aren’t indexed at this time. That will likely change as the database grows.

On that note, I fully expect these numbers to go up in the coming weeks in months as PicScout adds both more stock image providers, new sources of user-generated content and the existing sources continue to add images.

In short, the matching isn’t great at this time but it shows a lot of promise and, considering that it is a free service that runs in the background, it is still a worthwhile install.

Usability

ImageExchange is pretty much a “set and forget” extension. The installation is nothing special if you’re familar with Firefox extensions and, as you can see in the image to the right, the settings are pretty basic, the most important being the ability to manually search for just the images you ask.

My biggest gripe on the usability front is that the “i” that indicates whether an image is a match or not is a bit difficult to see, though it would be easier in regular Web surfing, it got lost in Google Image Search’s already cluttered results pages. I had to be careful to go through image by image when counting to make sure I didn’t miss any.

However, once clicked, the “i” did a good job directing me to the correct licensing page. In a sample of the found images, I never had an issue finding the correct licensor and understanding how to obtain the image.

All things considered, it’s a simple extension that seems to work well and not require any real intervention from the user. It’s a “set and forget” application that does its job well.

Speed

I wouldn’t call ImageExchange lightning fast but I wouldn’t call it slow either. On my computer, it took about 4-5 seconds after the page loaded to complete its matching.

The timeframe isn’t outrageous but there is no clear indication as to when ImageExchange is done working other than the icon in the toolbar. Since many of the “i”s loaded before ImageExchange had finished checking all of the images, it was very easy to try and click to the next page too soon sometimes.

The time wasn’t nearly as long during regular Web surfing. It is only during these images searches that the delay was as noticeable as it was.

Potential Uses

Considering that ImageExchange is both zero-cost and zero-thought, there’s really no reason not to install it. Yes, it has flaws but they are all ones that can either be addressed or are being addressed now. It is important to note though that, right now now, it is not aimed at laypeople, but at buyers of stock images, a crowd that will be well-served by this service.

My hope is that the service is able to grow in both scope and usability to reach out to a broader market, something PicScout has said they are working on. It would be nice to see average bloggers and Web designers using this tool to find licensable images on the Web as they surf.

It certainly is an improvement over those who use Google Images as a clip art library.

Bottom Line

The $10,000 question is whether or not you should install this extension. To that, the answer depends on what you intend to do with it. If you’re a buyer of stock images or routinely do searches for reusable photos, the answer is probably “Yes”. It’s free, easy and, even though it isn’t as effective as it could be, it works well enough to probably help you find what you need.

On the other hand, if you’re a blogger or someone that only looks for images more casually, especially if you’re looking for ones for free use, it’s not the right tool yet. That being said, do keep an eye on it as improvements could easily change that.

All in all, ImageExchange is really a no-cost service to use and, if you’re the type of user who might gain any benefit from it, I would consider signing up to use it. Though there are imperfections, they don’t outweigh the benefits and they especially do not outweigh the potential.

The image detection field is changing rapidly. For years I’ve been predicting the growth in image searching and it appears that is finally coming to be. Not only has PicScout has begun public testing on its newest offerings and other announcements are in the works.

As such, over the next few weeks and months, it seems almost certain that I’ll be posting articles about new technologies and advancements in this field as it continues to heat up and prices begin to drop. This means that many photographers, including smaller ones, will be confronted with the question about how to best protect their images and track their usage.

Three years ago, this was almost unthinkable. Limited options and high prices made such tracking attainable only to large companies but now we’re preparing to enter a very different age for visual artists when it comes to following their work on the Web.

With that in mind, I wanted to take a moment to briefly revisit the two schools when it comes to image detection, watermarking and fingerprinting, discuss their pluses and look at which solution may be right for you.

Hopefully, by the end of this, you’ll be better prepared to decide on your own image protection scheme and know which technology to watch for.

The Two Schools

The challenge in finding copies of images on the Web has always been, to put it bluntly, that they aren’t text. Search engines, including image search engines, look for text as it is what is easiest to search for. Computers don’t understand what is inside an image (the reason CAPTCHAs are reasonably effective) and they have a hard time comparing one image to another. Scale that problem to the billions of images on the Web, and this issue becomes clear.

Solving the problem hasn’t been easy nor has it been perfect. However, there have been two different approaches that have been tried, both with great success but different ideal uses.

1. Watermarking: Though most think of image watermarking as the placing of a visual mark over an image, usually a logo or name, Watermarking in this sense involves placing either an invisible or nearly-invisible watermark over an image that can only be detected by a machine. This method is used by Digimarc and C-Registry.us (Note: The latter uses both for various purposes).
2. Fingerprinting: Fingerprinting is an automated process that takes an existing image file, hashes it and converts it to a unique fingerprint. That string is, in turn, compared to other fingerprints for potential matches. This method is favored by PicScout and Tineye.

As you can see, the two systems are fundamentally different in terms of how they work and what they can do, these differences have an impact both in terms of how they are used and the situations they are best suited for.

Watermarks

The advantages of using a digital watermark are many-fold. First, they provide much more reliable detection. Where a very similar image by a different artist can trigger a fingerprint match, only copies of your actual image will trigger a watermark match. This also greatly helps with providing evidence for a potential court case since it can be shown exactly which image was copied from.

Watermarks can, typically, also survive great modification by users. Often images with watermarks can be detected even after cropping, rotation and distortion that would have caused a fingerprinting system to miss it (though fingerprints are getting much smarter about this as well). Some need only a few pixels to remain intact.

Also, additional information about the creator can be hidden in the watermark or stored in a database. This can help greatly with the worries surrounding the orphan works bills, which may allow certain uses of works if the author can not be reasonably identified.

In short, it works like image metadata in that it is invisible and is buried within the image, but it is much harder to remove and travels with the image even after it is modified and resaved.

However, watermarks can’t do anything to protect an image that’s already “in the wild”. Though you can re-release an image with a watermark, any copies of the non-watermarked image will not be detected. Also, watermarking systems tend to be expensive to use and, since one company usually controls the watermarks and the system for detecting them, they’re vulnerable to being rendered useless if the company closes.

Fingerprinting

The biggest asset of fingerprinting is that it works on any image, including one already on the Web. There’s no need to watermark the image or do any preparation work at all before publishing it, the technique works from the image itself.

Fingerprinting has become more and more accurate over the years, now competing with watermarks in that area, and is largely cheaper, including a free, effective offering from Tineye.

Also, since there are many fingerprinting systems in place and all work roughly the same way, its likely that you’ll be able to continue to match your images this way for many, many years to come. One company closing does not destroy your copyright protection system.

That being said, Fingerprinting does not, by itself, address the orphan works issue nor provide any proof of ownership, which is why PicScout recently released the Image IRC, nor is it always 100% reliable. Similar images, such as photos of similar subjects, have been known to trip fingerprinting matches, though the problem is nowhere near as severe was it was.

So Which to Use?

When deciding which to use, the easiest answer is to just say “both”. Since you can fingerprint a watermarked image, there’s nothing, save perhaps cost, that will prevent you from using both systems. Many already view watermarks as more of a copyright verification tool than an image detection one, making the two a natural combination.

However, duplicating efforts doesn’t make much sense. Due to refinements, both systems can do an extremely good job at finding matches, what is more important than the method is the individual system and how well it works. If it can find good matches and work as advertised, it’s probably a keeper, regardless of the system.

That being said though, you can’t even consider using a watermarking system if your images area already on the Web unprotected. It is only used, ideally, for new images as much of the usefulness is lost with unprotected copies being passed around. However, the added protections provided by watermarks make them worthwhile in many cases, especially when there is tight control over distribution and the images haven’t been leaked.

In short, if you have images that you are waiting to put on the Web or routinely put up new ones (and can justify the expense both in money and time), watermarking is likely a good solution due to its added benefits. For those who have their works online already or don’t wish to invest the time/money required, fingerprint matching, via Tineye, is free.

However, even that distinction is being blurred by PicScout’s Image IRC, which is a database of fingerprinted images, which provides something of a “best of both worlds” solution. The problem though is that it, right now, is targeted solely at large stock agencies. We’ll have to see later how approachable it is by smaller artists once it is finally released.

Bottom Line

In the end, any robust image protection system will likely use at least some of both. If your images are valuable, trusting any one solution by itself to handle detection and orphan works prevention is risky. Multiple tools are, most likely, the way to go when practical.

But the most important thing, as mentioned above, is not that the system works, not the technology behind it. If it works well, it doesn’t matter if it uses fingerprints or watermarks. That is where the real challenge lies for these companies.

So, with that in mind, I’m looking forward to, over the next few months, talking more about developments in this field and how they might impact visual artists of all kinds and all backgrounds.

Imagine if you could open up your browser, search for an image using Google and instantly know who produced every image that came up and how you could license it for reuse. Likewise, as an artist, imagine that you could index your works into a database and everyone would know who the creator was and be able to license it from you, no matter where they saw it on the Web.

That’s the future that Picscout is trying to bring about with a pair of new initiatives , Image IRC and Image Exchange.

But while this brave new world likely sounds very enticing to visual artists, the framework of it has just been announced and it has many hurdles to overcome before it becomes a part of most artist’s daily lives.

Still, it is an interesting idea with a great deal of promise.

How it Works

The system consists of two parts which are both required for it to function:

1. Image IRC: This component is essentially a very large database of Images that PicScout has collected information on. The images are fingerprinted to make them easily identified and are then paired up with their metadata, which includes information about who owns the image and where it can be licensed.
2. ImageExchange: This is the component that is end user facing, allowing Web surfers to automatically locate and license images contained in the Image IRC. One example is a planned Firefox extension that will be released that allows users to automatically find out if images they see on the Web are licensed via the Image IRC.

The result is that, if a user is surfing the Web with the ImageExchange addon running, they will see an “i” over images that are in the Image IRC database.

Users can then click on one of the “i”s and will get a popup like the one below with more information about the image.

From there, they will be given the ability to correctly license the image, including the ability to click through and purchase a license if needed.

Currently the Image IRC includes “tens of millions” of images, including some 7 million CC-licensed images from Flickr. PicScout is also opening up to agencies, professional photographers and photo-sharing sites that can provide bulk image delivery.

PicScout hopes to open up the platform to smaller copyright holders and sites in the near future.

Why It’s Important

What is interesting about these new tools is that image matching and fingerprinting has typically been used as a one-way street. Creators have used the technology, often PicScout’s, to locate copies of their own works. The idea is to take the process and put it in reverse.

Rather than scanning one image to find its copies on the Web, one now automatically scans the images they see to find which are available for use. It is the same technology but, rather than starting from a known source and locating unknown matches, you’re starting with unknown sources trying to locate known matches.

This has the potential to be a boon for those who regularly license images. Rather than going through stock photo libraries to find the right image, they can have their browser (or a third-party site using the API) passively scan images as they surf the Web, allowing them to use the broader Web and better search tools.

These tools could also, foreseeably, have an impact on the orphan works issue, or works with unknown authors. By creating a database of easily-identified images, it decreases the likelihood an image’s creator might become unknown. Though PicScout is careful to not guarantee its service will be part of a “reasonably diligent search”, which was the language of the previous orphan works bill when determining whether a work was an orphan or not, it is easy to see how it could be useful in such searches.

However, this service does have a lot of obstacles in its way and there may be at least one problem that it can not solve with technology alone.

Problems and Concerns

Obviously, since the service has not been unveiled publicly, there isn’t much that I can say about it. However, there are several areas of concern that need to be addressed before this system can be called a success.

1. Database Size: Though the database should swell in size as testing begins, tens of millions of images is not an impressive sample. Tineye has over a billion images and is growing very rapidy and, even then, it doesn’t escape criticism from me for not catching all infringements. While it is true that the Image IRC database doesn’t have to be as large as Tineye’s as it is only indexing originals of images, not their copies, if the database is too small, it will not be useful for performing image searches and that will make it useless for everyone.
2. Licensing Limitations: All of the images in the Image IRC must be made available for licensing either as a commercial work or under one of a few CC licenses (according to a representative from PicScout, the image must be licensed for non-commercial use at this time). There’s no way to use the Image IRC to say that you do not want your images used. This limits the usefulness to photographers who have no interest in image licensing.
3. The Wrong Audience: While this will be seen as a great product for those who routinely purchase photos online, it remains to be seen how well it will be adopted by those who misuse images, either through ignorance or malice. Those who don’t know or don’t care if they are violating copyright are unlikely to download a Firefox plugin to start buying images they see on the Web. If that’s the case, the actual impact on getting users to license images could be small.

However, the gravest concern I have is that this tool could create even more confusion when it comes to licensing. Given the current level of copyright understanding on the Web, it is conceivable some could use this tool and think think not that they can license the images with the “i”, but that those are the ones they have to pay for and the others are free.

In short, without proper education about how the tool is to be used and without proper groundwork on copyright education, it is conceivable that this product could actually backfire, especially against those not in the Image IRC system.

That being said, these are issues that can and should be addressed as the product development rolls along. Right now we have a very brief glimpse at a promising new tool that could, if it is able to grow to a large enough size, could revolutionize the way people buy stock images and the way people find works for their various projects.

Bottom Line

There is no doubt that PicScout’s matching technology is among the best in the industry and its ability to use fingerprints of images rather than watermarks (visible or invisible) to track works enable it to track a much wider range of material. There is also no doubt that this application of their technology can have a lot of benefits to copyright holders of all kinds.

The questions that remain unanswered is how will this system be developed and how will it be used. If PicScout is judicious and wise with how they build this service, it could become an incredibly powerful tool for users and a major coup for visual artists, who have struggled with being found since the dawn of the Web.

If it is developed unwisely, it will likely remain a niche product, used primarily by those already in the business, that does little to improve the overall copyright climate. At worst, it could even introduce additional confusion and headaches.

Without a doubt, this will be an offering to follow over the next year or so. No matter what, it seems destined to make an impact.

Full Sample Image

Click for full size.

What do you call someone who not only sues someone trying to help them, but does so with terminally flawed legal arguments? An idiot.

There’s really no “nice” way to say it. Using the courtroom as a club against people trying to help you is just plain stupid, even if you have a disagreement with them.

However, that is exactly what children’s book author Elaine Scott is doing to document-sharing site Scribd, suing them for trying to help her better protect her work.

It is a strange and bizarre case not only tests the limits of one’s imagination, but also one that bears a closer examination as it may have an impact on the rights of smaller content creators everywhere.

Background

The case began when Scott found one of her earlier books, financial advice work entitled “Stocks and Bonds, Profits and Losses”, available illegally on Scribd. She filed a DMCA takedown notice and the work was removed but Scott was not satisfied. She filed suit against Scribd with two different accusations.

First, according to Scott, the site itself is a violation of copyright because it “Shamelessly profits from the stolen copyrighted works of innumerable authors” and the creators “Have built a technology that’s broken barriers to copyright infringement on a global scale and in the process have built one of the largest readerships in the world.”

However, it is the second claim that has become the most attention-grabbing. Scribd employs a “takedown stay down” system that prevents infringing works from being reuploaded to the site and her book, once the notice was filed, was added to that database. Scott now also claims that this copyright filtering service is an infringement and that “Scribd doesn’t have the authority to ‘help’ me with anything…. The filtering system is Scribd’s way of asking for forgiveness, rather than permission.”

What ends up tying this entire lawsuit together into a big ball of copyright strangeness is that Scott is being represented by Kiwi Camara, who became famous in copyright circles for his defense of Jammie Thomas in her retrail, which saw her being found liable for $1.92 million in damages for sharing some 24 songs.

When Ashby Jones at the Wall Street Journal called this case a “head scratcher”, he was being polite. This case is, without a doubt, one of the strangest and most befuddling I’ve ever seen.

Analysis

Legally, the case seems to be a non-starter. On the first complaint, the facts of the case line up very closely with the Universal v. Veoh case where the video sharing site Veoh was sued by Universal for enabling users to publish copyrighted content. However, the court threw out the case in September after finding that Veoh had complied with the DMCA and qualified for its safe harbor protection.

Though the ruling in the Veoh case was very specific to the company itself, the facts largely seem to line up. I can attest that Scribd has always responded swiftly to DMCA notices and its copyright filtering system is a further sign of good faith. Scribd is not a popular site among authors and publishers, but that doesn’t make it illegal.

Given that red flag takedowns are virtually meaningless and useless, it is almost certain the courts will favor Scribd on this case. That is, barring a surprise in discovery that shows Scribd had some unexpected level of knowledge or ignored DMCA notices.

The second argument, the one involving the copyright filtering system, also looks to be equally doomed. If the Scribd copyright filter is anything like every other such filter I’ve seen, it operates on fingerprints and not the work itself (doing otherwise requires exponentially more computing power). As such, the facts of that case mirror closely the Turnitin lawsuit, which iParadigms, the makers of Turnitin, won handily.

Turnitin is a plagiarism checking service commonly used by high schools and colleges to look for matching text in student’s paper. As part of the service, it stores a fingerprint of every essay scanned to match against future works. Four students in Virginia objected to this and sued the company but lost with the judge saying that the use of their work was transformative and a fair use.

Even Camara’s argument that “They are building up a valuable asset that nobody else is going to have by taking work from authors without sharing with them the profits,” falls flat. iParadigms is actively selling access to this database and does so to many thousands of institutions. In short, Camara’s worst fears have already been realized in the iParadigms case and the judge still found it to be a fair use.

Whether you agree with that verdict or not, it is clear that it seems to put the Scribd case in a very bad spot.

To be clear, I am not an attorney but these counter-arguments only took me a minute or two to think up. They are patently obvious, especially considering the Veoh case was thrown out mere days before this suit was filed, and it makes this case look doomed to fail. However, that doesn’t mean it won’t have an impact on the copyright climate.

The Real Problem

Copyright filtering services are for the good of both the hosts that offer them and for copyright holders. Hosts don’t have to spend manpower and time removing works via DMCA that can instead be blocked at the gate and copyright holders don’t have to file notices for the same works over and over again.

Though there are some cases where a copyright holder would not want to be in such a database, for example if they only wanted to stop plagiarized uses, not attributed ones, this wasn’t the case for Scott. Since the only use a fingerprinting system has is matching one work against another, for example plagiarism detection or copyright filtering, pretty much any commercial use Scribd had found for its database would have also been beneficial.

However, Scribd has taken no such steps and expressed no intent to do so. It’s matching database, much like YouTube’s, is proprietary and closely guarded. The mere fact that they could do something doesn’t warrant a preemptive strike, especially when what they are accused of possibly doing was found to be a fair use in another case.

What this case might do, however, is make other companies more skittish about developing “takedown stay down” systems. This would likely be a major blow to the smaller artists who lack the resources to file takedown notices on every single misuse of their work but still license their works in a way where such a system would be practical.

This also might have an impact in discouraging companies from entering into areas where takedown notices might be frequent. Faced with the choice of having to spend the manpower to remove every work subject to takedown notice or being sued for a filtering system, some will likely just walk away. This, in turn, could give rise to more legally dubious sites.

After all, if showing good faith either bankrupts your startup or gets you sued, there isn’t much point in showing it at all. It may be more attractive to move to a country with more relaxed regulations and avoid the problem all together.

In short, by suing the people who tried to help her, she may be hurting every other copyright holder in the world.

Bottom Line

In the end, most copyright experts, including Ben Sheffner and Eric Goldman (who many more reasons why the outlook is bleak for Scott) are skeptical about the suit’s future.

Pretty much all of the recent case history goes against Scott in this matter but, more importantly, logic itself is against her.

Though it is understandable that authors and artists want to protect their work and profit from as many uses of their content as practical, suing a company for infringement when they are trying to prevent your work from being infringed is a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. It makes no sense and will only cause more problems, most of them for other copyright holders.

This case is most likely doomed but the sooner it is thrown out the better. The more fear Scott can sew into the providers who act in good faith, the more room others have to grow.

Some time ago I predicted that image matching technology would become both cheaper and more effective, making it possible to search for duplicate or near-duplicate images the same way that writers do with text while keeping the price affordable. Tineye was, and remains, a major step in the right direction on that front but its limited database, about 1.2 billion has hindered its ability to be comprehensive (Facebook, Photobucket and Flickr alone combine for over 18 billion images).

Corrigon, however, hopes to bring something new to this field. According to them, they’ve developed new technology that makes it faster and cheaper to search for copies of images, that will not only enable them to launch a service targeted at individuals later this year, but provide results in near-realtime.

I recently sat down with Corrigon’s CEO, Avinoam Omer and CTO Einav Itamar to talk about their service and their future plans. They gave me a demo of the product and showed me some of its promising new features.

What Corrigon Does

What Corrigon does is similar to the services that stock photo agencies have been using for some time. Users provide a collection of images that are then put into a database. The service then crawls the Web, looking for matching images.

What makes Corrigon unusual is that it doesn’t store the images, but rather, fingerprints them and compares the fingerprint against other matches it finds on the Web. This is very similar to what C-registry.us is doing with its matching technology. However, where C-Registry is more geared toward preventing works from becoming orphans, Corrigon is more about image search (though C-Registry has added image search)

The advantage of this system is simple. By not having to store the images or search against them, Corrigon needs much less space and processing power. This both takes less resources, thus cutting costs, and speeds up the process.

Though I was unable to take screenshots of the demo of since corrigon asked me to keep the identities the image owners secret, the matching seemed to be very near realtime Several of the matches were for stories posted that same day and new ones seemed to be constantly discovered. Though not quite realtime in the sense that Twitter or Facebook provide realtime search, it was definitely much faster than similar services, which often take days or weeks to find results.

In the demo provided me, this was especially well-used in tracking uses of images on news sites, blogs, etc.

As for the matching itself, it seemed to be very solid. The examples on the public site involving the mona lisa are good examples of the flexibility of the service. It was able to detect matches where the copy had been used in a package (with writing over it) modified to make a new image, etc. Though very interesting, it seemed to mirror closely what other services, including Tineye and C-Registry have been able to do in that area.

However, the real selling point for the service seems to be speed and price, something they are making a major play on.

Future Plans

Though Corrigon is currently targeting larger companies, it is planning to offer a solution to smaller users sometime later this year, likely in the 3rd quarter. Though there isn’t much to be certain about pricing, they are also planning on introducing a resolution system that helps resolve cases of copyright infringement, either by obtaining licensing from users or seeking removal of the content, depending on the needs of the user.

Needless to say that many of the plans are unsettled as of yet, but this is clearly a market that they plan on targeting soon.

Some Concerns and a Request for Help

The biggest concern I have is that, without an actual analysis, I can’t say exactly how comprehensive or accurate the matching is. The samples and demo I viewed were impressive, but how that translates into the real world is hard to say. So, while I am impressed, I am cautious as well.

Since I am not a visual artist and do not have a body of work to test the system with, I’m limited in what I can do. However, I am getting in touch with photoraphers and other artists I know to see they would be interested in having their work used for at least a limited test, mostly to give Corrigon feedback but also let me know how effective the system is.

If you think you might be a good candidate, namely a smaller artist with a large amount of reuse of their work, please let me know. I can not make any promises but would like to hear from you.

Bottom Line

There’s little doubt that Corrigon shows a great deal of promise in this field. All that remains to be seen is how that promise translates to real-world application.

However, Corrigon is not the only company entering this market. Another is preparing to drop its prices and reach out more to individual blogers and artists with an improved technology.

I’ll have a write up on their efforts closer in to their launch.

The main thing is that, when you look at the bigger picture, you see services such as Tineye, C-Registry, Corrigon and others bringing image matching to the masses. This has a huge impact on how visual artists track their works and also works to mitigate the orphan works issue.

Hopefully we’ll soon be reaching a point where artists of all stripes can find their content as easily and as cheaply as writers do today. This will have a profound impact on both the protection of copyrighted images, but also in empowering the legal use of said images through proper licensing and a sheer understanding of how one’s works are used across the Web.

It will be a better world for artists, that much is certain.

That company, a Japanese organization called Gazopa produced a technology that seemed to be very similar to Tineye at first glance.

However, after using and experimenting with the service, I can safely say that it was not built for this kind of searching and, at this time, it not ready to be used as a means to detect image copyright infringement.

How Gazopa Works

In terms of how one uses Gazopa, it actually works very similar to Tineye. The user either uploads or points the search engine to an image on the Web and Gazopa then searches the Web for similar images.

However, Gazopa does offer two additional options. First, it allows users to search for images based upon a keyword, thus making it more like a traditional image search engine, or via a drawing that the user makes on an electronic whiteboard.

If you upload an image or use a drawing, Gazopa then searches its database of approximately 50 million images (Note: Tineye currently has approximately 900 million) for images that are similar to it. But rather than using fingerprinting to perform the matching, it is based on more vague elements such as shape, color and face.

The concept is interesting and it would seem to have a lot of potential for detecting heavily modified image copying, such as images that were severely cropped or distorted.

However, after experimenting some with the service, it appears that the service is not quite ready for such use, at least not at this time.

Limitations of Gazopa

The problem with Gazopa is that, no matter what I search for, the site does not seem to return exact duplicates of the image or even modifications of it. Rather, it returns images that feel like the original, but actually have little in common.

A good example is what happens when I search for the Layered Tech logo using Gazopa. As you can see in the image below, none of the top results are copies of the logo, though many exist on the Web.

Though Gazopa returned 1000 matches, none of them, at least on the first five pages, were direct copies of the Layered Tech Logo.

However, when I punched the same image into Tineye, I was given much different results. Even though Tineye was only able to pull one result down, it was a perfect match for the original logo.

The result is that, where Gazopa produces far more results per item, most of them are questionable in terms of being a direct match. However, when you consider that Gazopa has a feature to prevent direct matches from appearing in the results, it is clear that isn’t the goal of the service.

Better Uses

At this time, Gazopa does not appear to be well-geared toward detecting image copying. Though I can see a lot of usefulness for the search engine, this doesn’t appear to be one of the better applications.

I would be more fond of this search if I were a designer looking for ideas or wanting to see if there was anything extremely similar, not identical, to a work I had created.

Likewise, with the drawing feature, I might be able to see if an idea I came up with has been done before or how unique a new logo I got really was.

It is a great idea for an image search engine, it just doesn’t fill this one function. Though that may change as the database grows, it is still barely 1/20th the site of Tineye’s limited database, it still seems as if the technology is not well geared toward this kind of use.

There is a lot to be excited about in Gazopa, but unfortunately, this kind of detection is just not what they are good at. There are many other reasons to try it out, but copy detection isn’t one of them.

Conclusions

Overall, I like Gazopa. It has a slick interface, a fast search and seems to return some interesting results. However, it doesn’t meet the needs for myself and others like me who are trying to track how their work is being used on the Web.

Still, I definitely recommend giving Gazopa a try. Not only might it work better for you, but it is just something that is fun to use and to play around with as well as something that can be useful.

It may not be the end all solution to finding copied images on the Web, but it certainly can help in other ways.

But, even in the face of that, artists have many reasons to want to exert reasonable control over their work. Even those that are comfortable giving away certain rights still don’t want their work to be plagiarized, scraped in its entirety by spammers or otherwise leeched off of.

Even in the era of free culture, there is still a place for copyright enforcement and it still has a role in protecting authors as they post their works online. However, enforcing copyright, for your average author, is no small challenge.

Simply put, the technology is not there, the law is not accessible and, even after three years of working in this field, the improvements have been slim.

If individual and smaller copyright holders are going to be able to protect their works at all, there are going to have to be improvements. The bad guys are not getting any fewer and the technology they use is developing rapidly as they compete with search engines to get their work ranked well.

In short, we’re caught in the cross-fire of a different war and we lack the means to protect ourselves. That is something that has to change soon.

The Issues We Face

When a new artist or Webmaster seeks to persue an infringement of their work, the learning curve is steep and the stakes are very high. Many refuse to start simply because it is too intimidating and I am hard pressed to fault them.

This learning curve is exasperated by a collection of inadequacies and problems that Webmasters have to endure and work around. Those problems include the following:

1. Copyright Law is Confusing: Even if one discounts the slew of copyright myths, copyright law is confusing and vague. It is so bad that many lawyers call it “unreadable” and few touch if they can avoid it. Laypeople have almost no hope of navigating it successfully, especially when it comes to issues such as fair use.
2. Lack of Detection Tools: It is a simple fact, there are no tools currently available to the average consumer designed, from the ground up, to track content copying. There are ways to use existing tools for that purpose, such as with Google Alerts, but these are hacks designed to turn a generic search engine into a content detection tool. Even services such as Copyscape and Bitscan are search engine hacks in and of themselves, just significantly more user-friendly and elegant in nature. Sadly, despite improvements, this simplicity comes at the expense of accuracy.
3. Networking is Hard: Assuming one can navigate copyright law and locate an infringement they are prepared to act upon, finding out who to write can be difficult. Determining the host of the site is no easy task in many cases and, though new tools have come forward to help with that, the accuracy can leave something to be desired.
4. Hosts are Uncooperative: Even if you can find the host and determine who to contact, there is no guarantee that they will be helpful. Many hosts are uncooperative in these matters and refuse to remove infringing works, even if the law is very clear. Even those who are cooperative can throw up unnecessary roadblocks and create huge delays.
5. The Process Doesn’t Scale: Though the process gets easier every time you do it, Keeping track of your information gets harder as you grow. I’ve used databases, spreadsheets and even Word files to keep track of the cases I’ve handled, However, every solution has been both inefficient and incomplete.

With these problems in mind, it is very easy to see why so many either avoid pursuing infringements of their work or stop soon after they start. It is an intimidating process and one that can grow into a tremendous time-sink very easily.

Fixing this problem is going to require more than just more changes to the current system, it is going to require a full solution that addresses these issues by creating a completely new set of tools, ones built from the ground up.

Fixing What’s Broken

If we assume that the current system is broken, or at least not functioning very well, we then have to look at what we can do to fix it.

Unfortunately, some things can not be repaired, at least not anytime soon. Copyright law is not going to magically become intelligible nor are we going to be able to consistently make locating a host easy. Though we can improve these problems with knowledge and technology, some element of these problems will remain.

Fortunately other elements can be addressed.

1. A Centralized Solution: Currently detection and cessation are two different functions requiring very different tools. Unifying these elements would not only make the process faster, but easier to track. This would make it much less intimidating for new comers and streamline the entire process for veterans.
2. Better Searching: The problem with relying on Google, or any other search engine, is that they routinely ban and remove sites that appear to be spam-like in nature. Sadly, these are the exact sites we are sometimes trying to find. Furthermore, any site that relies on Google for searching will make trade offs between simplicity and accuracy, either missing matches or requiring more human filtering of results.
3. Real Image Searching: Image searching right now is a failure. There is no way for a visual artist, especially a smaller one, to effectively search for copies of their work on the Web. Fingerprinting technology exists, but is only available to those with deep pockets.
4. Better Host Accountability: Hosts often ignore DMCA notices and spam reports because they realize that there is very little chance of them being sued. Though much of this is due to the nature of copyright law in the United States, one would hope that there would be other methods of holding hosts accountable other than lawsuits. Though I made an attempt of that with my Host Report, my status on the Web combined with limited sample size and lack of time hamstrung the effort. Such a project would have to be larger than just this site.
5. Integration: Though it is a cliche, we are in Web 2.0. However, the tools are decidedly from the old Web. RSS feeds, widgets and APIs open up a new world of possibilities and ways to simplify the process. New tools should both be aware of these elements and take advantage of them.

Though this sounds like a mammoth task, and it is, much of the work has already been done. Large copyright holders already have tools capable of many of these things, they are just yet to be made available to the public at large.

Fortunately, there may be help on the horizon.

A New Interest

Though the tools and technology have not changed much in the past few years, what has shifted is that there is now a growing interest in creating them. At least two companies, Attributor and Blogwerx, seek to bring many of the features above to the table.

Attributor, for its part, seems to be farther along, already doing beta testing and having signed up both the AP and Reuters, among others. They’ve also announced plans for a “self serve” version of the service aimed at bloggers.

Hopefully, we will see fruits from that later this year.

Also, there are rumors of other companies looking to set up and provide similar services, including at least one company that may be producing a stand-alone software application that will provide much of that functionality.

However, no matter what company it is that makes the big leap, this is an area that is ripe for a great deal of innovation in the months and years to come.

Conclusions

In the nearly three years that I have been running this site, precious little has changed for small copyright holders. Even as new tools have helped deep-pocketed corporations protect their works, often to the point of waging an unreasonable war, those same tools have passed over the rest of us.

However, the powers that be have started to see the potential for making the technology available to the rest of us. This has the potential to not only help us protect our content, but further the copyright dialog by bringing about a greater understanding about the frequency and ways that content is being reused.

Right now, for the most part, we are all just feeling around in the dark, hoping to get an idea of what is going on outside of our site. Even those who are against copyright enforcement have to agree that more knowledge is never a bad thing.

Hopefully, that time is coming soon.

According to Attributor, the system “works by allowing publishers to register and digitally fingerprint each piece of content” and then checking for uses of that content that violate previously determined rules for use. The system can then take action against any misuse of the content, including requesting a link back or filing a takedown notice.

The enterprise version, which is what Attributor is taking customers for at this time, costs tens of thousands of dollars per year to operate according to TechCrunch. A different version of the service aimed at individuals and bloggers should be available some time in 2008.

Also, according to the TechCrunch article, Attributor is currently indexing over 100 million pages per day and has already indexed over 15 billion. The current system only works with text but an image detection system is in early beta and audio/video detection is also planned.

Clearly, Attributor could be a game-changer in this industry and this will be a product to keep track of and follow as it grows.

Content Analysis

In a separate announcement, Attributor unveiled the results of an analysis the company did on the copying and pasting of song lyrics.

The results of the analysis found that song lyrics are copied widely on lyric sites, fan sites and blogs and that very few are officially licensed. What was surprising was that the only official source studied, Yahoo! Music, was ranked behind all of the unofficial copies in Google and almost all in their own search engine.

Other tests done by Attributor, including one revolving around the recipe site Epicurious, have found similar results. In that study, over 10,000 copies were found and over half had a higher search engine rank than the originals. Also, over half of the sites had ads on the pages and 60% failed to link back to the source.

Though these results are not likely to be a surprise to anyone who reads this site regularly, it is an embarrassment for Google, which has repeatedly said that it can distinguish between copies and originals. In a blog post in December 2006, they said, “Though annoying, it’s highly unlikely that such sites (scrapers) can negatively impact your site’s presence in Google.”

Apparently Google’s accuracy in this area leaves a great deal to be desired. This may explain some of Attributor’s harsh words for Google, calling it “unacceptable to publishers”, and why some feel that an Adsense lawsuit is on the horizon.

Conclusions

Attributor has the potential to be a major game-changer in this field. It is already making its impressions on the enterprise level and has signed on many prominent customers, including both the AP and Reuters, but it remains to be seen what impact it will have to individuals and bloggers.

Since the single user version of Attributor is not slated until some time in 2008, we will have to simply wait and see.

In the meantime, we are forced into a choice between paying high dollar for an enterprise or academic solution and using a hodgepodge of limited but free services. Though it is possible to track and monitor one’s content very well using the currently available means, it is growing more and more time restrictive as the Internet, along with the misuse of content, grows by the minute.

The value of a system like Attributor is not just its ability to detect more reuse of content, to organize it in a way that is maintainable and offer solutions that are practical. If Attributor can do that, then real progress will be made in protecting content on the Web.

Regardless, this is a company to follow and to watch.

Disclaimer: I am a consultant for Attributor.

Navigating these waters can be tough and, as the latest episode of the Copyright 2.0 Show indicated, even the brightest in the field can be tripped up.

However, in honor of that confusion, I’ve decided to take a close look at two of the terms that have been giving headaches to many in the field, myself included, digital watermarking and digital fingerprinting.

Though the two terms sound very much the same and serve the same end goal many times, they are actually very different in the way that they operate and the protections they provide.

Confusing the two terms is very easy, for obvious reasons, but distinguishing between them is very important.

Watermarking

If Wikipedia is to be believed, then digital watermarking “is a technique which allows an individual to add hidden copyright notices or other verification messages to digital audio, video, or image signals and documents.”

The important element to remember is that, when watermarking something, you are adding information to an existing product. That information could be visible, such as those provided by Visual Watermark, or invisible, such as those provided by Digimarc.

Either way, the effect is the same. You are taking an existing work and embedding new information into it in order to make the work more easily identified as yours. This identification can be done by a third party, by you or by an automated tool.

It is that act of altering the content that is crucial to remember because, as you will see, it distinguishes itself from how fingerprinting works.

Fingerprinting

Fingerprinting has at least two definitions when it comes to protecting content. The first deals with taking each copy of your content and making it unique to the person who receives it. This way, if the work is shared, you know exactly which person spread the work initially.

A variation of this technique is used by the CopyFeed plugin, which embeds the IP address of the feed reader into every entry. Thus, if the feed is scraped and reposted, the person doing the scraping can be identified and blocked.

However, the more common definition deals with a technique, as Wikipedia puts it, “in which sophisticated software identifies, extracts and then compresses characteristic components… enabling that video [or other content] to be immediately and uniquely identified by its resultant ‘fingerprint’”.

In short, what fingerprinting usually does is take the content, use some kind of software to convert it into a unique number or string of characters and then use that string to match it against other content out there.

It basically does to the content what a fingerprint scanner does to your fingerprint. The principles are very much the same.

The simplest and best-known form of fingerprinting is SHA Hashing. This is how downloaders verify they received the complete file and how Numly matches content against its database.

However, hashing can be thwarted easily by the alteration of just one character or byte. Since that changes the hash for the entire content, it will not return a match even if everything else is the same.

More advanced fingerprinting technology, such as what is employed by major media corporations and is under construction for YouTube via the “Claim Your Content” site are much more accurate and can detect snippets of material as short as a few seconds. These fingerprints are available for video, audio, image and even textual works. However, they are less commonly used with text due to other readily-available search methods.

In short, digital fingerprinting is something that you do to an original work that does not modify it, but makes it easily searchable by compressing the content into a string which is both unique to it and can easily be compared against other works.

If you’re confused, well, things are about to get even worse.

Exceptions to the Rule

Right now, the rule seems simple enough. Watermarking is anything you actively embed into your content to aid in detection or identification, fingerprinting is something you do to your work to make it easily searchable and comparable to other works by using some element of programming.

However, watermarking is a strange term in that it is usually applied only to multimedia works. You can watermark a movie, an image, an audio file or even a downloadable document, but the term is almost never used to describe something done to clear text.

For example, the Digital Fingerprint Plugin actually works more like a watermarking plugin. It embeds a unique string into the RSS feed, one selected by the user, to make the work more easily identifiable. It fits the description of a watermark almost perfectly but calling it the “Digital Watermarking” plugin would have created a great deal of confusion.

The reason is that watermaking is usually associated with some kind of visual or audible change in the work. It might be invisible to the naked eye, but it is supposed to be a modification to the look or sound of the work. At the very least, it is a modification to a file, such as a Word document. For whatever reason, embedding a new line of text or adding an signature is called by many things, but not watermarking.

The term fingerprinting has been expanded to encompass just about anything done to text to make it uniquely identifiable including traditional fingerprinting and some of what we might call watermarking. This has been going on since long before the Digital Fingerprint Plugin and is likely to carry on deep into the future.

That is, unless linguists suddently decide it is possible to “watermark” a textual work.

Conclusions

When you look at these two terms and how they overlap and intertwine, it is easy to see how and why there is so much confusion regarding them. Even this lengthy article is not by any means a final report on the differences between the two and I’m already looking forward to the discussion in the comments.

But if you need a simple way to remember the two, try this. If I needed to prove that your thumb belonged to you, I could either A) Tattoo a unique symbol onto it, that would be a form of watermarking, or B) I could put your thumb up against a scanner and let analyze the lines and curves of your thumb, making sure it was unique to you. That would be, quite predictably, fingerprinting.

Though that analogy isn’t perfect by any stretch, at least it brings some clarity to the table.

Now, if we could only deal with the dozens of other misnomers and confusing names, we might actually be able to have a serious conversation on these topics.

Perhaps another day.