A combination of copyright infringement, increased competition and the large amount of free images available on the Web legally have combined to make things very difficult for photographers who want to earn a living from their work.

To respond to these challenges, photographers and companies that support them are seeking out new approaches to doing business and Scoopshot is one such company. This Helsinki-based company thinks it may have an approach that photographers can use to earn money from their work and it starts with a free iPhone app and a global workforce of photographers.

How Scoopshot Works

There are two major ways a photographer can use Scoopshot.

First, amateur photographers can download the Scoopshot app for either their iOS or Android device and then take pictures of newsworthy events or other things publications might be interested in. You can then set a price for the photo and upload it to the site. The photo will be available for sale for 48 hours before it will rotate off.

Second, more professional freelance photographers can upload a portfolio to the site and get themselves hired by publications seeking photos. For example, a newspaper in one country could hire a photographer in another rather than either using wire photos or other stock images.

Both professional and mobile users can respond to various tasks posted by publications seeking specific images.

For journalists, the service works one of three ways:

1. Sifting through the collection of uploaded works for sale.
2. Posting an assignment for the community and crowdsourcing the needed images.
3. Hiring a freelancer directly.

In the end, the main goal of this system is simple: Bring together people with cameras who are in a position to take photos of interesting things and the people who might want to buy those photos. This is done in an enclosed ecosystem that both minimizes copyright infringement and ensures a (relatively) unique product.

Benefits of Scoopshot

Since the ecosystem of Scoopshot is enclosed, meaning that only sellers and confirmed buyers can look at the images, photographers are reassured that the risk of copyright infringement is much less and journalists are reassured that the images are unique and that they are getting clear rights to use them.

This is in stark contrast to the more open ecosystem most stock photo sites offer, where anyone can view and browse images, including those who might be looking for free images to just take.

In short, Scoopshot offers a private, simple and streamlined way for photographers and buyers to interact and trade early publication rights before the larger Web sees the image and begins to spread it far and wide.

However, it doesn’t solve a lot of the critical problems that come with being a photographer and it isn’t a perfect solution, leaving a few critical gaps in the protection it gives photographers.

Limitations of Scoopshot

Scoopshot has two fairly sizable limitations that photographers need to be aware of if they choose to consider it.

1. For Photojournalists Only: The 48-hour timeframe for new photos limits the service’s functionality to those who want to do less time sensitive work.
2. Can’t Help Once Photos Are Licensed: Once a photo is licensed and placed in a publication and, most likely, its site, there’s not much that Scoopshot can do to prevent infringement of it. In short, Scoopshot gives you that first sale but can’t help much after that.

These limitations are, most likely, acceptable to photographers who mostly do photojournalism. In many of these cases, there’s no market for an image after 48 hours so the infringements of it past that point don’t matter. But those who have work that has value long after that window has closed will continue to face great challenges.

In short, this is meant for photographers such as Matti Matikainen, who found a photo he took of Teija Vesterbacka, the wife of Rovio founder Peter Vesterbaka, who was wearing an Angry Birds-themed dress. The photo spread like wildfire, even appearing on several major news outlets, but only handful sought permission and only one paid a licensing fee.

Photographers focusing on more artistic work or that are creating content more in line with traditional stock photography, photos that have a longer shelf life, likely won’t see much benefit from Scoopshot.

That being said, it is easily imagined an invite-only stock photography platform that would work much the same way but without the 48-hour limitation and targeted at larger media buyers rather than just journalists.

However, that system would also not be able to deal with the images after they were legally purchased and it is difficult to say if such a system could be viable as it would require a large number of purchasers. That being said, some services do provide something like this, but usually by acquiring all rights to the images involved and selling them to clients as a complete library, rather than piecemeal as with Scoopshot.

Bottom Line

All in all, Scoopshot is an interesting idea but it’s by no means a silver bullet. Though the company has done some €112,335.94 ($148,000) in business with 33 publications, it’s not yet a large enough player to make a major dent in the photo market. Also, with most of its clients situated in the EU, specifically Finland, Sweden and neighboring countries, there likely won’t be much those outside of the region can do with it (though they can participate).

In the end, the idea is fairly promising and the model that Scoopshot follows, the one of an enclosed marketplace, may be of greater importance to photographers in the years ahead, but it won’t solve anything by itself.

As with most great ideas, it’s just a piece of a larger puzzle, but it is a piece that many photographers should be interested in.

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.

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.

All of these tools are designed to overcome the same problem: While there are thousands upon thousands of images available for easy reuse under Creative Commons Licenses in Flickr, properly attributing those images is time-consuming and can be very confusing.

However, Wylio takes things a step farther. Rather than just making it easy to add attribution to an image, Wylio helps by resizing and formatting the image for easy inclusion in your blog.

But is Wylio really worth using? The answer really depends on your situation and what you’re trying to accomplish with CC-licensed images.

How Wylio Works

photo © 2007 Rich Anderson | more info (via: Wylio)

For anyone who has used a tool like PhotoDropper or even just a basic Flickr search, using Wylio should be pretty simple as the process is pretty much the same. To illustrate this, I’m going to walk you through the process of creating the image you see to the right, including resizing and adding the attribution.

First, one has to pull up the Wylio home page and then perform a basic search for the image that they are looking for. This works the same as any other image search, including Flickr’s.

Once that’s done, you then get a grid view of images that Flickr has returned and you can select the image that you want.

Once you do that, you are then greeted with a popup that presents several options for formatting the image including the ability to justify the image left, right or center, a slider to resize the image and, for premium users, a textbox for setting an absolute width of the image.

Once you’re done formatting the image you simply click “Get the Code” and then copy and paste that code into your post, being careful to not post it in between any existing HTML tags.

The process is fairly straightforward and usually only takes a few moments per image. That being said, more advanced users may want to look at Wylio’s premium account, which is $3 per month and enables downloading of images with attribution written to the image file itself (great for print use), the ability to customize credit colors and change many of the default settings.

With that being said, there’s a lot to like about Wylio and a lot of reasons to call it the best tool for inserting Creative Commons images into your blog.

What Wylio Gets Right

Having spent much of this morning toying with Wylio, there’s a lot that I like about it and a lot of reasons I’m very tempted to make greater use of it.

1. Resizing Feature: Wylio is the only tool of its kind that I’m aware of that lets you resize images on the site before embedding rather than choosing from broad sizes such as “Small” and “Medium”. This gives Wylio much greater layout flexibility and makes it a lot easier to use, especially with its preview feature.
2. Image Download: A compelling premium feature, the ability to download images with the attribution burned onto the file itself is very handy for those wanting to make print use of Flickr images. (Note: Sample downloaded image below.)
3. Search Results: Though this is more a product of Flickr than Wylio, the image search results on Wylio do appear to be very good, returning a reasonable number of results with decent accuracy even for strange terms.
4. Speed: The process of using Wylio was fast, with almost no learning curve, good results and snappy response times. I was making my first embed within a minute of visiting the site.
5. Good Pricing: $3 per months is definitely not a bad price point, not if the service works well. Though not free, as with similar tools, it’s a reasonable price if it can be justified.

All of this being said, Wylio is far from a perfect service and I certainly have my concerns/objections and they too have to be weighed.

Where Wylio Falls Down

With any new startup, especially considering they just launched the existing version of Wylio a few weeks ago, I would expect a few snafus. Still, they might be good reasons to avoid using the service, at least until the kinks are straightened out.

1. Incomplete CC Attribution: When using the embed code, Wylio omits including a link to the license itself, which is a requirement under Creative Commons. The license is present on the downloaded version.
2. The Wylio Link: Every downloaded image and every embed, regardless of whether you are a premium member, carries a link to Wylio.com. It would be trivial to remove this link from the HTML, but Wylio’s TOS forbids it. Considering that the link is “dofollowed”, repeated use of Wylio on your site might be seen as spammy by Google. Considering that the Wylio link is not part of the attribution for the image, it seems strange to be forced to link to them, even when paying.
3. No Non-Commerical Images: Finally, since Wylio is a for-profit venture, they do not enable you to search for non-commercial licensed images, likely limiting the number of images available to you. That being said, Wylio does raise some interesting questions about the non-commercial clause in Creative Commons and how it applies to middle men, such as Wylio.
4. Ugly HTML Code: The HTML code provided by Wylio is effective but it’s fairly ugly, you can see for yourself when you view the source of this page.
5. Image Loads from Wylio: Finally, the images that you embed load from Wylio’s servers, which makes me nervous. Though I’m not against embedding images, Wylio is still a new service that hasn’t yet proved itself in this area.

Of these issues, the first two are the most disconcerting but also the easiest to fix. The rest are, for the most part, problems that are going to be inherent with using a service like Wylio and likely won’t be major issues but also can’t be easily avoided.

Bottom Line

Currently, I have six more days in my free trial of Wylio premium and, most likely, I’m going to cancel before that time is up. While I think that Wylio has some great features and is very compelling in many ways, the lack of a proper CC attribution and having the Wylio link forced on every embed is disconcerting. I can’t recommend using Wylio until those issues are corrected.

Even with those problems corrected, I doubt that I’m going to shift from making Morguefile my default image search site. By using a license that doesn’t require attribution, Morguefile avoids the issue altogether and offers a similar resizing tool that helps me get the image into the site easily.

Furthermore, I’m really fond of WordPress’ media uploader and like that Morguefile makes it easy to resize and download images for easy upload for free. While Wylio can do that, it’s a premium service and the attribution makes it harder to size appropriately.

In short, Morguefile is just easier and prettier when it’s all said and done and it avoids the thorny issues Wylio raises.

That being said, if you’re committed to using CC-licensed work on your blog, and there are many good reasons to be, Wylio is likely your best choice. PhotoDropper works well, but the flexibility provided by Wylio is just much greater as is the speed and ease of use.

For those wanting to embed CC images, Wylio is likely the best choice, especially if they are able to fix the issues I noticed. It may not be perfect, but it’s definitely a leap ahead.

Sample Downloaded Image

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.

The new tool, entitled Xpert Attribution, searches for CC-licensed images on both Flickr and Wikimedia Commons for images related to the search term. Once a suitable image has been found, Xpert Attribution makes it easy to apply the correct attribution to the image and even provides HTML code for pasting it into your site.

As a big supporter of CC-licensed content and tools to make using it easier, including Photodropper and the Flickr/CC bookmarklet, I was interested to give the tool a try to see what I thought.

What I found was something of a diamond in the rough, a tool with a great concept and tons of potential, but a few rough edges that seem to limit its usefulness.

How it Works

The basic premise of Xpert is fairly simple, you perform a search for the type of image you want, for this illustration I used the word “Plagiarism”.

You’ll get a grid of results for the term from all the sources it searches from. Under each image will be an option to either select it or view it on the original site.

If you choose select, you will be given a popup window that will allow you to use the image in different ways.

This, in turn, is where Xpert Attribution shines. The first option, to get the image with attribution in its original size, provides the image in its original size but adds a bar across the bottom of the image that contains the license button, the attribution, the date/time and the URL to the original. In short, it has all the requirements to complete the CC license. (Note: I am using a reduced size below)

The second option, to get the image with attribution in a smaller format, reduces the image to a more Web-friendly size and adds the attribution bar to it as well. The third option allows you to embed it in a Powerpoint presentation, a feature I wasn’t able to test, and the fourth, “embed code” gives you HTML that you can use to add it to your site, though in this case it pulls it directly from the source rather than adding the attribution bar.

Below is the result of the HTML code for the image:

Taken from http://farm5.static.flickr.com/1439/4732885512_9bf97a8838_b.jpg on 2010-10-06
Original URL – http://www.flickr.com/24612276@N05/4732885512/ created on 2010-06-25 03:49:36
jobadgeCC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Once you’ve done added the image however you want it, the next step is to simply start the process over again and look for whatever other images you might need.

The Good

Right off the bat, I really like the way Xpert adds the attribution to the image itself. This makes CC-licensed content easy to use in a variety of scenarios that other tools would not be able to help with. This is a great way to to incorporate images where text attribution is not possible.

Though it might not be the best way to integrate CC images in a blog post or a presentation, there are plenty of places I could see using it, such as in printed materials.

Beyond that, the system simply works. I tried it with dozens of images and saw no major formatting problems, even with the resized images and the search was reliable and produced good results, even for relatively strange keywords. It even handled non-CC-licensed work well too, such as this image in the public domain.

In short, it served its purpose very well and opened up a variety of images for use on this site with very easy attribution.

The Bad

That being said, there were some rough edges and missing features that keep me from being too enthusiastic about Xpert Attribution at this time.

First, there is no way to search for images based on type of license. If you want to make sure an image is available for commercial use, you have to go through the results one by one. This is likely because the tool is aimed at educators with one use condition in mind, but this simple feature could greatly expand the usefulness of the system well past that audience.

Second, the sizing options weren’t exactly the most useful. The original for most images is huge and the reduced size, as you see in the images above, is a good size for a major image in a blog post but it wouldn’t work as a wraparound. However, that likely would mess up the visual attribution, meaning there might be a need for a PhotoDropper-style image/text attribution hybrid, where the image isn’t tagged, or tagged differently, and is combined with a plain text attribution.

Finally, using the embed code version of the image produces a very wordy attribution line. Though it is definitely a complete attribution, seems to be longer than needed, especially considering it is HTML and the URLs could become links. However, according to Creative Common’s original post, they use the attribution code CC provides with some licenses, meaning it is likely something that could be tweaked on that end.

But while these drawbacks certainly limit my enthusiasm for Xpert Attribution at this time, they don’t prevent me from seeing the potential and being very excited about the ideas on display.

Bottom Line

Personally, I still find PhotoDropper to be a much more elegant solution, you can search by license types, the attribution line is very clean, while still being complete, and it just works better.

However, there are many cases where PhotoDropper doesn’t work, namely any site that doesn’t have a self-hosted version of WordPress, and it also doesn’t search Wikimedia Commons. Other tools, such as Zemanta, do but have more questionable attribution offerings for CC-licensed works. Furthermore, some readers have reported problems with PhotoDropper, making alternatives like Xpert Attribution all the more appealing.

With some beautification and a few additional features, Xpert Attribution could be a very powerful tool for bloggers or anyone else seeking to use CC-licensed images. As it is now, it’s mostly limited to being useful for educators, which is admittedly the site’s target audience.

Still, the idea is good and someone else could easily run with it and make something great. I can’t openly recommend it today, mostly due to the inability to search by license, but I can definitely see myself endorsing a slightly modified/improved version down the road.

That is because, in 2007, Coton got a message through the art site deviantArt (dA) that someone had recognized her image on the cover of a DVD. Though only seventeen when, she had already been growing in notoriety in photography circles, in particular on dA, and it was one of her followers there who gave her the link.

It was that link that kicked off one of the most bizarre cases in recent copyright history and one of the more important ones for smaller content creators. With the case concluded, we’re going to take a look back at the lawsuit, how it started, how it was battled and what the outcome means.

As you’ll see, the case was a long, winding and at times emotional road but one that may have direct implications for smaller content creators all over the globe.

Strange and Angry Beginnings

As Coton began to investigate the DVD on her own, she quickly learned that it was a pornographic DVD and, specifically, a re-release of the 1982 film Body Magic (link SFW).

After contacting Hustler, who was selling the DVD on their site, she found out that the video had been released by a Houston-area company named TVX Films. TVX and its owner, Robert Burge, specialized in wholesale rereleases of “classic erotica”. As part of this, they re-release old films with new covers and had chosen Coton’s photo for their release of Body Magic, likely because the original cover had a photo of a woman in a top-hat.

When Lara Jade contacted Burge, what she received was a nasty reply, written in all caps and littered with spelling and punctuation errors. One famous passage read (capitalization his):

“I’M SURE BY THE END OF THE MONTH YOUR FACE WILL BE HISTORY. WE HAVE STOPPED SELLING THE DVD UNTIL COVER IS REPLACED. WE HAVE FURTHER CHECKED OUT YOUR NAME AND ITS NOT LIKE IT’S A HOUSE WHOLE NAME. ACTUALLY, REMOVING YOUR IMAGE WILL HELP IMPROVE THE SELL OF THE DVD….. SO FAR IT BOMBED”

Burge also claimed that the company that created the cover did their research and that the image was in the public domain. He accused Coton of “scheming” to set him and that, on the question of compensation that Coton was “Silly”.

Despite this, Burge did begin the process of recalling the DVDs and removing Coton’s image from the cover. Coton, not satisfied with Burge’s response, began contacting solicitors in her area. However, it proved to be largely a futile exercise.

“Since I was from the UK and the company was in Texas, the solicitors wanted tens of thousands of pounds to take the case. My parents couldn’t do it, I don’t come from a wealthy family,” Coton said.

It was then that Coton took her case to the Web, posting on dA about the incident. The case not only became the talk of the dA community, but quickly spread to other sites, including several mainstream media outlets.

“I didn’t expect the reaction to happen that way,” Coton said, adding that others seemed to react to the case very strongly

However, for a while it didn’t seem as if anything would come of it beyond some negative press for Burge and TVX and some additional media attention for Coton as there was still no hope for filing a lawsuit with no attorneys willing to take the case.

An Offer to Help

According to Richard Harrison, it was on a “gossipy” blog that he first heard about Coton’s plight. A Tampa-area attorney, Harrison he reached out to Coton and agreed to take on the case at no cost her, accepting only a contingency fee, saying that it was something that meant a lot to him and his firm, Allen Dell, to take on.

However, the case almost never got off the ground. Harrison ordered several copies of the DVD only to find that the cover had already been changed. With no evidence, there was little that could be done in pushing the case forward. The DVDs sat, unopened in his office for some time before he decided to take one out. There, on the DVD itself, he found Coton’s image.

With this new discovery, on July 31, approximately two months after he first reached out to Coton, he filed suit in Tampa District Court.

The initial complaint (PDF) listed Burge and TVX as defendants and also included two other media companies involved in the distribution of the DVD, both of which eventually settled out of court and had their cases voluntarily dismissed. Burge initially protested the lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds though, in April 2008, his motion to dismiss was stricken (PDF) after his attorney failed to follow procedure and be admitted to the court. Eventually, in October of the same year, the two parties agreed to voluntarily consent to the jurisdiction of the court (PDF).

But it was the delays and procedural problems that defined much of the case. According to Harrison, at least two attorneys attempted to represent Burge and TVX though both were not able to continue on procedural grounds. Burge represented himself for most of the case (pro se) but since corporations can not represent themselves and TVX failed to find a representative, it was found in default (PDF) in October 2008. Burge himself, largely due to his lack of timely and proper filings, was found in default in February 2009.

However, this didn’t stop Burge from making filings in the case. He would often file long, rambling petitions filled with inaccuracies about copyright law. Many of his motions included pages of “evidence” that, often times, just included different copies of the image he’d found on the Web. One of his motions, filed at the end of the trial, included a tirade against the VA healthcare system (PDF) and openly insulted the court for not allowing him the time he felt he needed. This, in turn, would force Harrison to respond to the motions and usually have them stricken from evidence.

Despite the odd filings from Burge, the defaults set up the trial earlier this year, which was on the issue of damages alone. Though Burge had not attended any hearings in some time, there were rumors that Burge might come into Florida for the trial.

“It was very scary,” Coton said, “I was very worried he was going to show up,” saying that her one face-to-face meeting with Burge during depositions was far less than cordial and Burge seemed to her to be a very “angry” man.

However, the worry was for nothing as no one represented Burge or TVX. Coton and Harrison were able to present their evidence to the judge without opposition, thus bringing an end to the trial.

In the end, the judge awarded Coton nearly $130,000 in damages, including $100,000 for defamation and $25,000 for misappropriation of image. The rest was for the copyright infringement claims.

It brought an end to the now three-year old case, but certainly hasn’t ended the questions and debates the case raised.

Far From “Over”

Though the decision is certainly an important win for Coton and for photographers everywhere, the case is far from over. With judgment in hand, there is still the issue of collecting on it, a matter that could prove to be very difficult.

Given that Burge’s native Texas is what Harrison calls “a debter’s heaven” it remains to be seen what, if any, assets Burge has that can be collected on. Though Harrison has pledged to attempt to follow Burge “to his last breath” in an attempt to collect for his client, he admits to being skeptical that he will see most of the judgment.

“I would be shocked if we get another nickel out of this case,” Harrison said.

In addition to the question of collection, according to Harrison he and his firm have donated “well north of $100,000″ in fees to the case. If this case were not pro bono taken on a contingency fee basis, even if Harrison were able to secure complete collection of the judgment, most of it would be eaten up by fees and Coton herself would only see very little, if anything, from it.

This would be especially true if it were not for the fact that the photo in question was a self-portrait. With $125,000 of the nearly $130,000 in damages being for the defamation and misappropriation of image claims, less than 4% of the damages came from the copyright claim. The reason for this is that Coton, as a UK photographer, had not registered her works with the U.S. Copyright Office and, though she could file suit, she could not seek statutory damages and attorney’s fees.

In short, without Harrison and his firm’s free legal help willingness to take the case on a contingency basis at a loss, this case most likely would not have been practical to pursue. But even with his help, without it being a self-portrait, there is almost no way that this case would have seen the kind of damages that it did generate.

That being said, there is little chance of an appeal from Burge. Since he is in default, the odds of an appeal being successful are slim to none and the likelihood of him filing such an appeal are equally small. So, other than collection, it seems likely that this case is over.

Effects From The Case

With the case done both Coton and Harrison have been looking back over the, at times, very wild ride.

For Coton, it has been something of a mixed bag. Though the media attention has helped her with her career in some ways, the fact her image was on a pornographic DVD has hurt her.

“I’ve been scared of clients finding out about this,” Coton said, “It isn’t good for any big clients to be associated with porn.”

One job in particular, a project that would have the camera company Canon sponsoring her has been put on hold pending the resolution of the case.

The biggest problem Coton had been that, since the image was used on the cover of a pornographic DVD that many, incorrectly and without seeing the image, assumed it was a nude photo. This, according to her, has hurt her reputation as both a photographer and a model.

Still, Harrison and Coton both are very happy with the outcome of the case. According to Harrison, “Everything our client wanted to accomplish, we accomplished, we protected her image, we protected her reputation and we protected her copyright.”

He also said that the damages awarded were “fair” saying that, as is typical for such cases, they had presented multiple legal theories on damages were not allowed to double dip. Also, he knew that much of the punitive damages were a “stretch” given that, at the time of the act, Burge wasn’t likely doing anything with malice.

So, even though they had requested over $400,000 in damages, the $130,000 awarded seemed, to him, to be “about right”.

Coton is cautiously optimistic about collection and hoping that the money, if it does appear, can be used to help finance her move to the United States, specifically New York.

Bottom Line

If anything, this case serves as a warning. First and foremost, to anyone who would seek to use Google Images or the Web at large as a tool to find stock photos. Most of the content on the Web is copyrighted and using something without clearing all the needed rights is opening the door to a wide array of legal troubles.

It is also a warning content creators though, that your work is valuable and it can be used (legally or illegally) for commercial purposes. When Coton took the photo in 2004, she was just having fun with her camera and learning her hobby, she never envisioned it being used commercially, let alone on the cover of a porn DVD.

This makes it vital that, before you put works online or timely thereafter that you register your works with the U.S. Copyright Office, especially if you want to prevent unauthorized commercial use. Not only do you need such a filing to even start a lawsuit, without a timely filing you can’t seek statutory damages and attorney’s fees, making it almost impossible to justify a lawsuit.

While the Lara Jade Coton case is a major win and one I hope makes other infringers pause before lifting the works of others, especially for commercial use, it also highlights the responsibilities of content creators to protect their work.

On that note, I want to thank both Lara Jade Coton and Richard Harrison for sticking through this fight and seeing it through to the end. They have done content creators everywhere a major service by sticking up for smaller creators against very high odds.

Update/Correction: Richard Harrison emailed me to correct the issue that his firm did NOT work pro bono but, instead, worked on a contingency fee basis. This means they are paid a portion of damages collected. However, that is rare in these types of cases as, usually, there is no way to recoup the full costs of the case via this means, meaning it was taken at a steep loss. I have updated the text of the article above to reflect this change.

Recently Google announced an update to its Google Image Search product to improve its UI and make it more useful.

However, the UI seems to have been greeted with mixed reviews. In addition to some noting the similarities between the new search and Bing’s offering, the response to it has been split with some users hating it and others loving it.

Webmasters, however, have also been chiming in and their opinion seems much more negative. The reason is that, while all the changes were to the user interface, at least one of those changes has the potential to actually take audience attention away from the original sites.

It’s a problem that has a growing number of webmasters upset and, now that the new format appears to be here to stay, the chorus seems likely to grow.

The Changes

The most visible changes to Google Image Search are on the image search page itself. Gone is the “grid” layout and it is replaced with a more varied one that uses larger thumbnails with less whitespace. Gone are individual pages as it is replaced with a nearly-infinite scroll that will let the user go through 1,000 images at once.

One thing that has been removed is the image information, including dimensions and relevant text. Previously that was displayed below the image but now that information is only shown after the user hovers over the image itself, one point of contention among many who use the service.

Finally, clicking the image also now produces a different result. Rather than going to the original site loaded in a Google frame (with the Google portion on top), Google loads the site in a frame, with their panel to the right and adds a “lightbox” effect to the image, placing it over the original site and graying out the page.

It is this last change that has been the subject of most of the controversy among webmasters.

Not only does this add an extra click between the image result and the original site (forcing the user to click on the site if they want to see it), but it also loads the entire page in the user’s browser, using the site’s bandwidth, and keeps the ads from being clickable until the site is activated.

In short, many feel that Google is de-emphasizing the original site and, instead, putting even more focus on the image itself and their own search panel. This has the potential to hurt webmasters who earn revenue from advertising and see a lot of traffic from Google Image Search and that has some upset about the changes.

Time to Leave Google Image Search?

Previously webmasters, especially artists, have had something of a love/hate relationship with Google Image Search. Though it brought in some well-targeted traffic, many who did not know better used Google Image Search as if it were a stock photo library.

Google, for its part, hasn’t done a great deal to dispel this idea. It offers a vague warning that “This image may be subject to copyright”, a warning that is still present but has been moved to the right-hand side of the results page, and it did introduced a Creative Commons search that is very difficult to find for those who aren’t actively looking for it.

However, since Google Image Search as a good driver of traffic, many tolerated fact some users were abusing the search but it may be time to reevaluate that. The reason is that the quality of traffic from Google Image Search is almost certainly going to decline as sites are hidden behind the image, grayed out and are unclickable until activated.

Many, are going to wonder if Google Image Search is worth participating in and, since you can remove your site from Google Image Search without removing it from the main index, now may be the time to do just that.

Bottom Line

In the end, this is a choice up to the individual webmaster. Personally, I won’t be taking this step at this time. The reason is that I don’t see a great deal of traffic from Google Image Search now and most of the images on this site are logo and screenshots. If I were an artist or photographer where my images were more valuable, I would have to reconsider but, then again, I would also be more dependent on Google Image Search for traffic.

So I ask you the questions. What do you think about the new changes? If you are unhappy with them, do you plan on removing your site from Google Image Search?

All in all, there are no easy answers to this one but I can definitely see why many webmasters are upset.

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.

When it comes to detecting the use of your images on the Web, you have two choices: Watermarking and Fingerprinting

Fingerprinting is taking an image and running an algorithm over it and then detecting similar images to it. Watermarking is taking an image that hasn’t been released, adding something to it (either visible or invisible) and then detecting that watermark as the image is transformed.

Fingerprinting is the technology used by PicScout and Tineye while watermarking is used by Digimarc.

But while both systems can be effective and come with their own advantages/limitations, the solutions for professional photographers tend to be very expensive. Though ImageRights has added in an inexpensive option for artists wanting to use fingerprinting, AdvancedPhotoTools has a similar system for those who prefer to watermark their images.

Entitled SignMyImage, it is an affordable way for photographers and artists to add watermarks to their image and track their use on the Web. However, it doesn’t mean anything. So I’ve put the product to the test and decided to find out how practical the system really is.

The Basics

SignMyImage works similarly to any other image watermarking system. You first download either the Photoshop plugin or the standalone application. For the purpose of this test, I used the latest version of the Windows standalone app on my Windows 7 system.

Before you sign the image, you should first register the application. It will ask for your username, email and a signing code that you wish to use on your images. The code can be up to 10 characters and include letters, capitals, numbers and dashes.

Once done with that, you open up the image you want to sign, in this case I am using a web-formatted image I took while visiting Newcastle, UK for a conference a few years back.

You then click to sign the image and it selects your signature for you (Note: This is just a test signature for this review)

You then apply the signature and, after a few seconds, you get a notice about where the signature has been applied on the image and a visual description of the region. Depending on the size and contents of the image, it may be added to multiple places.

If you have not purchased the app, the program will also add a visible watermark promoting the program in the lower right-hand corner of the image. Purchasing the app will also unlock the batch mode, which will allow you to sign multiple images at once.

You can then post the image online. If you have purchased the app or otherwise have a acquired a license to use SignMyImage’s spider, it will automatically begin scanning for your signature, alerting you to any signed images that it finds.

SignMyImage costs 14.99 Euros for either the plugin or the standalone app or 19.99 Euros. That is about $20 or $26 respectively. Either come with a year of free access to the search spider, which costs 9.99 Euro annually after that, or about $13. Since the spider is simply looking for your signature, you can protect an unlimited number of works with a single account.

The Good

The price is the clearest selling point for SignMyImage. For just $20 for the first year and $13 for each after that, you can protect all of your images including monitoring. Professional photographer routinely pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for similar protection of even small libraries.

For that matter, the technology seems to work fair well. My testing with the app showed that it worked reasonably. I tested both the Windows and Mac version and, though the Mac version moved painfully slow on my older machine, especially when trying to add or detect a watermark, the Windows version moved very quick and light on its feet.

The watermarking itself also seems to work well. Though it isn’t as advanced as Digimarc’s, it does seem to do a decent job. APT provides a sample page with images at various sizes, qualities and with variable amounts of cropping to show how durable the watermark is. All in all, it seems to survive most cropping (remembering it only has to have one signature area intact), compression and resizing within reason.

Also, the German photo site Heise performed a good comparison of SignMyImage against competing products, including Digimarc, and found that their watermark had good durability, though it could not survive rotation.

Finally, SignMyImage claims that their watermark causes less distortion than Digimarc’s though I have been unable to tell the difference myself. However, I am not an image buff by any stretch.

The Bad

The weakest link in SignMyImage is its spider. To date, the spider has scanned just shy of 170 million images. While that may seem like a great deal, remember that Tineye currently scans over 1.6 billion as a free service and without watermarking. However, even Tineye only has a fraction of the Web as Photobucket alone has over 7 billion.

While Tineye has a respectable and growing fraction of images indexed, SignMyImage has only scanned about 1/10th of that.

This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you can set up SignMyImage’s spider to do custom scanning, focusing on URLs that you think are important. However, this doesn’t help if you don’t have at least some idea where the spider should look.

In short, don’t count on SignMyImage to find all or even a majority of the uses of your work. Though it has found some 1,300 matches to date most, likely, were on the artist’s own site according to APT’s owner. Filip Krolupper.

Also, the signature itself is fairly limited. You are given only ten characters with which to sign the image and that information does not connect to any publicly-available database. If you scan an image signed by someone else, you simply do not know who created it. Compare this to PicScout’s very public ImageExchange platform.

In short, SignMyImage is not going to detect all the copies of your work nor is it going to resolve the orphan works issue. That may make it a solution you don’t wish to invest in.

Bottom Line

Though the watermarking technology itself appears to be good and the price is almost unbeatable, until SignMyImage improves the spider its usefulness as an image detection system will be very limited.

Unfortunately, since the signature doesn’t include any additional information about the creator, it doesn’t solve the orphan works problem either, making it a solution looking for a problem. That’s not to say that SignMyImage is bad, it is only inches away from greatness, but those inches are very important.

The bigger problem with SignMyImage, however, is that it, along with all other watermarking solutions, does little to help artists who already have images on the Web. Though they can re-upload their images and make sure all future copying is tracked, existing copies won’t be and that is a problem that requires fingerprinting.

To that end, hybrid solutions are usually best, but usually impractical given the costs and time.

So while I like SignMyImage as a solution, I can’t heartily recommend it at this time though it is one to watch and see. If they can begin improving their scanning system, they may have the perfect solution for small-to-midrange photographers and artists. or at least a compelling added layer of protection.