Differences between the sites became clear as sites with more money, and thus better access to legal advice, had much more complete policies than those with more humble means.

However, social news is not the only growing segment of the Web. As digital photography and online artwork has become easier and more accessible, photo sharing and image hosting services have also grown rapidly in size.

However, the boon in online image hosting has also given birth to a sharp rise in image theft. Now, anyone with a Flickr account can trivially download an image and post it to the Web. There’s no need to have a Web site at all and the image can be embedded anywhere desired, including on social networking sites.

This has made the copyright enforcement policies of these image sharing sites especially important because, without cooperation from the major players, this type of plagiarism can go unchallenged.

So, I’ve decided to continue my analysis of DMCA policies on various sites by reviewing the policies of seven of the top photo sharing sites including Photobucket, ImageShack, Flickr and more. Here is what I found.

Format: Email
Email Address: abuse at photobucket dot com
Location of Policy: Copyright and IP Policy
Registered with USCO: Yes
Comments: Robust and to the letter of the law, Photobucket sets a very high bar for its competitors. Not only is its DMCA policy complete, including counter-notice information, but the site also offers similar policies for violations of trademark and privacy. The only complaint I can offer about their policy is that it is difficult to find. It is not included in their contact information, but rather, in the footer of their terms of service. A link to the policy, as well as information on reporting other abuse, should probably be located in an easier to find place. Still, the policy itself is very sound and offers great information for anyone looking to file a notice or counter-notice with the company.

Format: Form
Email Address: See Form
Location of Policy: None
Registered with USCO: No
Comments: In stark contrast to Photobucket, ImageShack completely lacks a formal DMCA policy. Though they provide a Web form to report infringing images, there is no other contact information (fax, email, address, etc.) and no guidance on filing a notice. Reports from others who have filed DMCA notices with Imageshack have indicated a spotty record on acting on infringing material when notified by this means. Worse, the default template of the abuse form is woefully inadequate to report copyright infringement in accordance with the law and, as of this writing, ImageShack has not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Though their relatively short terms of service mentions copyright three different times, their overall policy shows a general lack of planning.

Format: Email
Email Address: copyright at yahoo-inc dot com
Location of Policy: Yahoo’s Copyright and IP Policy
Registered with USCO: Yes
Comments: Owned by Yahoo, Flickr shares its DMCA policy with the search giant. Yahoo has had a strong and robust policy for as long as I can remember for both its search and other hosting properties. Flickr benefits greatly from that experience. The information provided is short but complete, the policy is easy to find, located in the footer on every page, and provides all of the necessary information. Though the lack of counter-notice information is somewhat worrisome, that is likely something they handle when communicating directly with individuals that have been served with DMCA notices. All in all, it is a well-rounded and simple DMCA policy that is more or less what you would expect from Yahoo.

Format: Email
Email Address: copyright at webshots dot com
Location of Policy: Copyright Violation Policy
Registered with USCO: Yes
Comments: Owned by CNET, Webshots has a very simple but effective DMCA policy. Located in the footer of each page, the policy goes through the basics of providing a DMCA notice to the site and offers up all of the necessary information to get in touch with the designated agent. The site is also registered with the USCO. The only concern I have with Webshots is that they repeat the information in their terms of use but provide different contact information (the TOU says “General Counsel” while both the USCO filing and the IP policy directs it to the agent). Also, the IP policy in the TOU omits the email address. However, that is likely an oversight and, in general, their DMCA policy is very complete and well done.

Format: Email
Email Address: copyrightagent at smugmug dot com
Location of Policy: “Copyright Complaints”, Terms of Use
Registered with USCO: No
Comments: The only paid service on this list, SmugMug has one of the most unusual copyright/DMCA policies. Buried in the terms of service, where it is very difficult to find, the policy can be best described as “short but sweet”. It covers the basics including the agent’s contact information and the required elements of the notice but doesn’t offer much else. Strangest of all, the terms of use do not make any mention about copyright infringement being a violation of their terms and, outside of the policy, the only mention of copyright at all revolves around the protection of their own works. Perhaps even more disheartening is that they place their own copyright warning above their DMCA policy, thus highlighting their own protections before discussing their DMCA information. This site is not registered with the USCO and, though the policy is complete, it seems, in general, to be more of an afterthought.
Update: I spoke with the general manager of SmugMug. He was very grateful for this review and has already sent off his application for USCO registration in response to it. Also, he pointed out that their terms of service does make mention of copyright under their “License Granted by Users” section. They were planning on reworking their terms before this article and will likely rearrange it to make it more clear. Still, not seeing that was my mistake and I apologize.

Format: Email
Email Address: infringement at snapfish dot com
Location of Policy: Copyright Infringement Policy
Registered with USCO: Yes
Comments: A very basic policy. Provides the information required including the contact information for the agent and the required elements for notification but doesn’t go out of its way to help either those submitting notices or those seeking put-back. There is no counter-notice information and the policy itself is buried as link in their terms and conditions. The site has registered with the USCO and, by all appearances, has done everything required to comply with the letter of the law. All in all, Snapfish’s policy is unimpressive in every regard.

Format: Email
Email Address: abuse at bbridgetech dot com
Location of Policy: Last Item, Terms of Service
Registered with USCO: No
Comments: The cool photo sharing site with a funny name has a less than cool DMCA policy with a less than serious approach to the matter. Though their DMCA policy provides the email address to contact their abuse department and the basics for submitting a complaint. It does not offer much else. Zooomr has not registered with the USCO as of this writing and provides no other means of contact such as snail mail, fax or phone. However, these limitations are representative of their entire terms of service, limited, unprofessional and done with haste. It seems that their entire abuse system lags well behind most other Web sites in this field.

Conclusions

All in all, of these sites, only ImageShack was truly lacking in its policy. All of the other sites have policies in place and provide the necessary information to file a notice. Though three, ImageShack, Zooomr and SmugMug had not registered with the USCO as of this writing, the other four had.

It appears that, while many of these sites have flaws and concerns, that most of them are interested in at least following the law as it is written and working with copyright holders.

However, this is not a complete list of photo sharing sites by any stretch. I can think of at least a dozen others that are not on this list. I will likely return in a few weeks to create a part two of this series, where I will cover seven more photo sharing sites.

Also, in a bid to make this a regular “Thursday” event, I will also be posting on the DMCA/Copyright policies of top social networking sites as well as video sharing sites.

If you have any suggestions for this series or know of any sites that you want covered, please leave a comment below. I would love your input on this.

This comes after Cybele, along with others, noticed that the site appeared to violating Flickr’s terms of use and posted about it in the Flickr forum.

In the replies to Cybele’s post, a Flickr staff member named “Kevin” posted a comment on Saturday clarifying that FeelImage was not using Flickr’s API but was instead doing a simple tag search. He closed his comment by saying that “We’ll try and put the kibbosh on them shortly.”

It appears that, whatever action Flickr took, was effective as results on FeelImage are completely devoid of Flickr results and are instead largely limited to results from Japanese photo-sharing site Zorg.

FeelImage, for their part, is on vacation until the 19th of this month but did post a brief statement on their blog asking anyone who does not want their photo displayed on the site to email them.

Though it is sad that FeelImage has been crippled so badly. especially just after obtaining such broad press exposure, any such search engine is going to have to follow the rules and standard practices in regards to indexing content and it appears that FeelImage was not.

Hopefully, in time, they can fix their system and repair the relationship with the offended Flickr users. It would be nice to have this technology available, but not if it creates more copyright issues than it resolves, as was the case under the old system.

Also, since Lightbox disables or limits access to most of the right click tools, including the “save image” attribute, some Webmasters have come to think of it as a way to prevent or reduce image theft.

However, Lightbox was never designed to stop or slow down image theft. Though it is a very beautiful effect and a very effective way to display images, it is not effective at preventing users from copying images. That was never the goal of it.

In fact, there are several simple and easy means of circumventing the protections Lightbox does provide, none of which require any special knowledge or expertise.

Easily Defeated

Lightbox, as widespread as it is, does nothing to prevent users from downloading the images in a gallery. There are at least three methods that any visitor can use to download the full-sized images to their hard drive.

First, on the gallery page itself, all the user has to do is right click the thumbnail of the image and then select “save target as”. Since Lightbox galleries link directly to the larger image, pulling the javascript on the click itself, this enables the user to download the full-sized image and completely bypass the javascript effects.

Second, after one has opened the image in the Lightbox frame, all one has to do is click the image itself and drag it to their desktop or an open folder. The trick to making this work is to click before the Lightbox frame has fully loaded. After the frame is completely open, this kind of drag and drop is, in most cases, disabled.

Finally, in the same vein as the second attack, it is also possible, while the Lightbox frame is loading, to right click the image and save it that way. In both cases, the best time is after the image has loaded, but before all of the surrounding items have opened up.

In addition to those methods, it is also possible to simply take a screenshot of the image and crop it out or switch off Javascript to completely bypassing the Lightbox effect.

The bottom line is that there are many different ways to copy full images hidden in a Lightbox gallery and any site that relies on Lightbox as part of its content protection strategy needs to realize that Lightbox does not provide any actual protection.

Securing Lightbox

Those who are interested in using and securing Lightbox can take several steps to help reduce the amount of content theft they experience.

1. Eliminate right click on gallery pages: Though very annoying to legitimate users, if you’re certain there is no valid reason to be right clicking on a page, you can disable right click on the gallery page to prevent people from saving the target. Use with great caution.
2. Require Javascript: Since the vast majority of browsers have access to javascript, you can require it to view the gallery page. Anyone who does not have it will not be exposed to the raw images after clicking through.
3. Use Modified Scripts: Using modified versions of Lightbox, you can embed the image in a flash file and let viewers see it that way. The prevents the full image from being exposed.

However, as powerful as those methods are, they can only address some of the ways to circumvent Lightbox. The only real way to secure Lightbox, or any gallery for that matter, is to ensure that the full image is never downloaded to the user’s computer by watermarking them before they are sent out, either on your machine or on your server.

Sadly, Lightbox, nor any other javascript gallery system, will be able to fully protect images, though they may create some frustration and confusion for lazy plagiarists.

Conclusions

None of this is intended to be a criticism of Lightbox. Lightbox never claimed to be nor was it ever designed to protect content. It is an interesting and practical effect, but not much more.

However, when it comes to image protection, Webmasters often times misplace their trust into techniques and methods that were never designed to stop theft. In a desperate attempt to abate very real and very reasonable worries about theft and plagiarism, some will turn to anything that even gives the vague appearance of offering protection.

Sadly, this kind of misguided trust is more dangerous than having no protection at all. If one is vulnerable and they know they are at risk, they can take precautions and seek out real methods to address the problem. If they put their faith in false protection, they do nothing but remain just as vulnerable.

Lightbox is a great script but it is important to note the limitations of it. Anyone who is relying upon it for image protection needs to be aware that it is nothing of the sort. Fortunately, there are real protection methods available and, if you wish, you do not have to remove your Lightbox effect to use them.

It just requires some advance planning and preparation.