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.

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Twitter Does Not Mean Copyright Free, Court Rules

First off today, photographer Daniel Morel has won a key victory against the wire service the AFP and, along the way, a victory for those who post images on Twitter. The AFP had used one of Morel’s photo of Haiti earthquake in a story. After Morel claimed sued for copyright infringement, the AFP claimed that Morel had relinquished rights in the photo after sharing it on TwitPic. However, the court shot down that argument saying that posting via Twitter is not the same as relinquishing ownership. This paves the way for Morel’s lawsuit to continue and lets other Twitter users breathe a sigh of relief.

2: Porn Purveyors Target 13,000 More Does in P2P Lawsuits

Despite setbacks in late 2010 for other plaintiffs, the porn industry seems to be rolling out more lawsuits than ever with various smaller companies combining to file some 13,000 estimated lawsuits against “Doe” defendants all over the country. A similar lawsuit by the Adult Copyright Group targeting some 7,000 Does was thrown out for lack of enjoinder, meaning that there wasn’t sufficient reason to lump the lawsuits together. However, the new cases are arguing that the act of sharing files via P2P is a cooperative effort deserving of such enjoinder. Without it, all the lawsuits would have to be filed separately, greatly increasing the time and expense.

3: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

Finally today, January 1 marked Public Domain Day, the day in which expiring works lapse into the public domain. However, in the U.S. no works were to lapse into the public domain domain the the Center for the Study of the Public Domain instead ran a list of the titles that would have entered the public domain on January 1 2011 if it had not been for the Copyright Act of 1978. This year those works included “The Lord of the Flies”, “Horton Hears a Who” and “Creature from the Black Lagoon” among many others.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 6 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

In a judgement dated yesterday, September 16, the judge in the Lara Jade Coton case has awarded the photographer $130,000 in damages after a self-portrait of her was used as the cover art and the disc art for a pornographic DVD.

The case began in 2007 when the defendants in the case, Robert Burge and his company Televised Visual X-Ography used Coton’s photograph when they distributed a pornographic DVD entitled “Body Magic”. Coton, who was 14 at the time the photo was taken, was seen wearing a formal dress and a top hat while posing in front of a window.

Coton, who was outraged at the use of her image, immediately demanded that Burge stop use of the image. Burge said that the error was with his designer but said that he had recalled the DVDs and was changing the cover art. However, according to Coton’s attorney, Richard Harrison, they had not changed the art on the disc itself and were continuing to sell copies of it with Coton’s image.

Coton sued Burge and TVX citing a wide range of torts including copyright infringement, misappropriation of image, defamation and infliction of emotional distress.

The case had dragged on for the past three years, with Burge and TVX being found in default, and it eventually proceeded to bench trial on damages alone in July.

Coton had asked the court for some $434,000 in damage totalled but the judge awarded $129,173.20 in the case, saying that some of the claims were impermissible double recovery and denied punitive damages citing that Burge’s actions lacked malice.

This is a breaking story and I will have a more thorough evaluation of the judgment later as well as a more thorough write-up on the case itself. In the meantime, feel free to review the order granting final judgment for yourself.

Congratulations to Lara Jade and Richard Harrison for a hard-fought and very important win.

It probably wasn’t how photographer Dana Dawes wanted her big Groupon début to go.

Groupon, which specializes in offering one-day deals on various local businesses, had just published her special offer and it was selling very well. Her deal, $65 for photography package worth up to $500, was drawing a lot of attention from those in the Atlanta area, where she is based.

Unfortunately for Dawes, a user of the site noticed similarities between her photos and others on the Web (Update: It appears Groupon has deleted the thread, fortunately Petapixel has a backup). The commenter, known only as “SP” posted the following comment:

Groupon, you are dealing with a thief here. This photographer does not own all the photos on her website.

I looked at her website and realized that as a pro myself, her lighting and conversions didn’t match up. I then took one of her images off her website and un-distorted it, and then placed it through a recognition software that brought up this – http://morgaineowensphotography.com/?p=924 — THIS is the owner of the photograph, not Dana Dawes. I would suggest you refund the money to all of these people because this person is using photos that aren’t hers to try to bring in clients. In other words, she’s a fake photographer.

Soon, other allegations began to surface, from SP and other users. One user even noticed that the “About Me” section of her site was identical to that of another photography site. Dawes eventually responded saying that:

“Let me assure everyone that I have rights to the photos on my site. I am not sure who SP is, but someone is trying to sabotage my success. My website has not been hacked and all of a sudden I am receiving all of these comments. I am currently working with my hosting company to work through this. But I can assure you that I am NOT a fraud.”

However, one of the photographers involved, Tanya Shields, who verified that the work was hers and demanded that Dawes remove her photos from the site.

Hi Dana,

With every ounce of professional courtesy that I am able to muster for you……REMOVE MY WORK FROM YOUR WEBSITE.

Immediately.

But the issue was moot. As mentioned above, Dawes’ site was down, according to her due to a hack. Her then-host Hostgator was only displaying a generic “site not available” page. Dawes’ Facebook and other presences also either disappeared or had images removed from them.

The forums exploded and Dawes’ Yelp page was also affected. Groupon eventually stepped in when an employee named Josh announced that they were cancelling the deal and issuing refunds:

We would never intentionally feature a business that engages in unethical or questionable business practices, nor would we ever expect you to be stuck with a Groupon that is offered by such a business. We have decided to pull this deal today after reviewing all of the feedback left on the discussion board.

We have instantly canceled all of your orders and immediately refunded you for this purchase. If you’ve already been charged for this, you can expect to see the refund appear on your credit card statement in 7-10 business days.

We deeply regret the unfortunate events leading up to this decision and are extremely sorry for any inconvenience we’ve caused you.

As for Dawes’ site, it reemerged, now hosted by Apple and using a much smaller set of images. It’s offering a similar deal to the Groupon offering, but for $50. However, attempts to buy the offer forward to the Apple homepage.

The thread on Groupon is now closed and the matter seems to have died down, though it doesn’t seem likely many people will quickly forget what happened, especially as sites such as PetaPixel are picking up the story.

The Importance of Plagiarism

Usually, on this site, I try to avoid talking about plagiarism scandals as they don’t do much good but this one actually highlights a great deal about why I still run this site, even after more than five years. Regardless of how these images wound up on her site, whether through Dawes herself or through, as she claimed, a “mistake” by her webmaster, there were three very important effects:

1. Buyers Tricked: The people who purchased the Groupon, or even just her regular services, were being deceived into thinking she had abilities she did not. Though she might be an excellent photographer, her portfolio was not representative of her work, giving buyers a false impression.
2. Unfair Competition: The other photographers, who spent the time, money and energy taking the photos that were used, were having Dawes use them as promotion without any of the expenses. This gives Dawes an important edge in a very competitive market.
3. Potential Turnaround: What if, instead of believing Dawes to be the infringer, SP had been a friend of hers and thought Shields had lifted from her of if Shields had attempted a Groupon of her own with similar results? Given how difficult these cases can be to prove, it is more than a possibility.

But more to the point, it highlights how seriously the public and other artists take these issues and rightfully so. No one likes being ripped off or deceived and those are two elements of plagiarism, especially professional plagiarism, that are hard to get around.

In short, this case serves as a warning. Plagiarism, despite all the talk about the Web changing everything, is still taken very seriously and can cost both the plagiarist, and potentially the victim, very dearly.

Bottom Line

In the end, this case was handled by the users and the staff at Groupon. I have to applaud the way Groupon stepped in on this case and refunded the money for everyone who purchased it, whether they asked for it or not. Though I agree with others that they should have done a better job vetting the offer, especially considering there is almost no way a photographer could do over 1,000+ such shoots in the time allotted, but when they learned of the allegations they stepped in, investigated and responded quickly.

To be clear, if there was hacking of Dawes’ site involved, I do not approve of that nor do I approve of any harassing calls, emails or other contacts she may have received. These are the dangers behind mob justice and a reason I discourage the practice.

Finally, I don’t wish to see Dawes’ career be completely ruined by this either. If she truly is a talented and professional photographer, I hope that she is able to learn from this mistake and build a legitimate business. It may take some time but it can be done.

All I want is for this case to serve as a warning, both to would-be plagiarists who think that no one will ever find out and to artists and content creators who don’t think anyone would ever use their work for this kind of purpose.

It can and does happen, more often than most people realize, and those who do it routinely get caught It is really that simple.

Note: I have sent an email for comment to Dawes but have not heard back from her, I will update this article when and if she replies.

One of the bigger headaches many visual artists have talked to me about is that many, often misguided, think that Google Image search is the same thing as a stock photo gallery and that anything they see or can find is right for the taking.

The problem, however, is that most of the photos in Google Image Search are copyright protected, legal for Google to use in the way it does under the Perfect 10 v Google ruling. Others, using the full-sized images in blog posts or site designs, often run afoul of the law.

However, today Google announced that it was integrating Creative Commons into its image search. The new feature promises to find images available for a variety of reuse scenarios, including commercial use, and actually make Google Image Search an effective way to find images for repurposing.

As promising as this sounds, the system isn’t quite perfect, though it is a great first step.

How it Works

If you’ve ever used the basic Creative Commons Search under Google, you are probably already familiar with how to use the one for image search. First, visit the Google Image Search home page and click the “Advanced Search” link.

There, toward the bottom of the options, you’ll find a dropdown box for filtering the results by license.

Once you select your desired license terms, just perform the search as usual and you should see the familiar results, but with a notice like this one above the thumbnails.

From there, as with regular image searches, you can click the thumbnails to view the Web pages they are on.

All in all, the search seems to work very well. The results seem to come mostly from environments with clear licensing and there’s a good variety of images on most of the queries that I tried. That being said though, there were still a few hiccups and concerns that I saw.

Some Limitations

The biggest limitation that I saw when using Google Image Search’s CC functionality was that it, understandably, can not detect licenses perfectly. In the original blog post, Google warns that users should verify the licenses independently, which is a very good idea.

A big reason is because Google is detecting image licenses on the page, not within the post. So, for example, if a blog post has its text in under a CC license and but uses an image as a fair use example, the image, at least in some occasions, winds up in the search. It can also happen to where Google places unneeded restrictions on an image if, for example, a public domain work is used on a CC-licensed blog.

The other, and less avoidable, problem is that many people are placing CC licenses on works they don’t own. A simple search for “Marilyn Monroe” found many commercial images that were, almost certainly, not licensed for commercial use for free. Other celebrities produce similar results.

The user has to make the final decision about whether they have the correct license for an image and, on that front, I urge caution. Remember, all the search does is point you to pages where an image you like and a CC license exist at the same time.

The other problem is that, despite Google’s impressive breadth on the Web, there seems to be a limited number of sources that it pulls from for these searches. Flickr is by far the most common source, which isn’t shocking as it is the largest repository of CC-licensed images, but it and Wikimedia seem to make up well over 90% of the results I checked. There were a few Blogspot blogs and at least one Typepad blog as well as a few other domains, but they were the extreme minority.

In the end, Google’s search did not seem significantly more robust than Zemanta’s image search, even if they have far more images on paper.

Still, it is a tremendous step forward for Google Image Search, even if it also a catchup to Google’s main search product, and means that, with just an extra step, those used to using Google Image Search to find photos for their blog posts and templates will now be able to do so legally and freely.

Bottom Line

In the end, this new feature is nice, but doesn’t blow me away. Though I’m a big supporter of Creative Commons, the implementation of this is understandably flawed and limited. Much of the benefit is already available via Flickr, Zemanta and Photo Dropper.

Furthermore, as with its main search product, Google works to bury its CC search functionality as deep as it can. Though it isn’t as well hidden as its counterpart, its unlikely anyone is going to stumble on it by accident.

This is definitely a step in the right direction for Google Image Search but there is still more that could and should be done with it. The question is whether or not Google has the dedication to this project to make it happen.

Whether you’re a professional photographer, an amateur artist or just someone who likes to post images on the Web from time to time, you probably want to make sure that others know who the image belongs to, even if you don’t mind it being copied.

The problem is that, as images are passed around, they usually get separated from identifying information. For example, once an image leaves your Flickr Account, there is nothing to identify it as yours, unless you watermark it before uploading.

However, JPEG images have long had a means of embedding invisible data into an image. This data, known as Exif, can carry an abundance of information about the image including the camera type, its settings and information about the copyright holder.

Last year, I discussed Microsoft Photo Info, a powerful and free tool for adding Exif data to images. The problem with that system is that it is still time-consuming, even with batch editing, and it is easy to forget to add the metadata before uploading.

But photographer Rikk Flohr has proposed a better solution. By making some changes to your camera, you can embed your copyright information into your photograph at the second the image is taken, no need to do anything on your computer.

It’s a simple idea, but one that will save many photographers a great deal of time and headache.

How it Works

The truth is that your camera, whether it is an expensive high-end SLR or a cheap “toy” camera, already adds a great deal of Exif data to every image it takes.

If you look at the Exif data of an unmodified image, you’ll see that the camera adds information about the camera, its settings, the date (if possible) and more. However, since the camera doesn’t known anything about its owner, it can’t add that information.

Fortunately though, as Flohr pointed out in his article, most cameras come with software and drivers to help you set up the camera. Most of those applications have the ability to to add author, copyright and other information.

That way, when the camera writes its regular Exif data to the image, it also writes the photographer information in, ensuring that it is added before the image leaves the camera. This leaves no room for human error and eliminates a step before putting the photo on the Web.

Needless to say, if you’re a photographer that enjoys putting photos on the Web, this is a step you should take immediately.

How to Do It

Unfortunately though, there is no consistent way to set this feature in all cameras as every manufacturer and every camera is slightly different.

If you have your CD that came with your camera, install the software from it and hook up your camera. From there, you should be able to edit the author information and add other details. If you don’t have the CD anymore, you can likely download the drivers from your camera manufacturer’s site.

According to Flohr, most cameras have this ability, including most inexpensive ones, but some likely will not. In those cases you will have to resort to using software-based solutions such as Microsoft Photo Info.

However, according to the comments to the blog post, Adobe Lightroom has the ability to automatically add the information upon import, making it a good choice as the process doesn’t require any human intervention.

All in all, it should only take a few minutes to set up but could easily save hours spent manually adding Exif data to images after the fact.

Caveats

As I mentioned in my previous discussions of Exif data, there are a lot of potential problems.

First, it doesn’t actually prevent or discourage copying, rather, it just helps identify the image as yours after it is distributed (you can always supplement Exif data with a visual watermark). Second, the data can be easily erased without destroying the image. Finally, you can’t use it on PNG or GIF format, only JPG.

However this particular method also comes with its own unique set of problems. For one, it only works well if one person is using the camera. If two people share a camera, they would either have to share the copyright notice or manually change it after importing it.

Second, some applications overwrite or modify this information, often times by accident. Also, uploading your images to Flickr or Facebook will result in the data being stripped out in most cases.

If you use this method for adding your name to your images, you need to be very careful of the people you allow to use your camera, the software you use to edit your images and the places you upload it to. Failure to do so can actually make things worse, not better.

Bottom Line

All things said, this by far the easiest and most reliable way to embed your name and information into your photographs. It only takes a few minutes to set up and can help protect your works when they get copied, prevent them from becoming orphan works (should the law come to pass) and generally make your images more secure.

Anyone who is serious about their images and posts them online should take this step as soon as possible if their camera will allow them.

Like most good ideas, it’s beautifully simple. It is fast, easy, free and comes with no drawbacks to the viewer. Even if one isn’t very interested in protecting their images, there’s no reason to not take this step.

This is difficult because search engines, including image search engines, are designed to look for text, not pixels. Though you can look up the title of an image, the filename or even metadata within the image, if that information was changed by a site reusing your work, it has traditionally escaped detection.

Though the technology has existed in various forms, there has never been a search engine available to the public that could take an image and look for other ones like it. That is, until Tineye.

Tineye works differently than any other image search engine. It doesn’t ask you for words or even a description. Instead, you upload an image and it returns results similar to that picture. It is fast, easy to use and, most importantly, effective.

However, there are limitations to Tineye, especially in its current form. Though artists have many reasons to celebrate, the dancing likely won’t commence for some time.

How Tineye Works

For the purpose of this demonstration, I am going to use a standard Google Logo, specifically, this image:

First, after accessing your Tineye account, you upload the image from your computer to the service.

Tineye then converts the image into a fingerprint and begins matching that fingerprint against others in its database, which currently has over 700 million images.

After it is done, Tineye returns the results, starting with the images most similar to the one you submitted, for example, the image to the left. In this case, Tineye found over 3000 matching images, the first one being an exact copy of the image I had used.

However, the real magic of Tineye is not in its ability to detect images that are identical, but to detect those that are similar, but altered. This includes images that have been resized, cropped, edited or otherwise changed. As long as enough of the original work is left behind for Tineye to understand what it is, it can report the altered version.

As you can see below, in a screen capture from page 23 of the results, that often includes very heavily altered versions of the original work.

In addition to helping you find altered version of your original image, Tineye also helps you see what was changed. For each image you see, you’re able to do a comparison where you can flip back and forth between your image and the one on the Web, noting both similarities and differences easily.

Also, from the search results, you can visit the URL the image is located on, making it easy to follow through and, if appropriate, take action against any infringement.

The site also offers a Firefox/IE plugin that allows users to perform Tineye searches from any page on the Web, thus eliminating the need to download the image first.

Why this is Important

To be fair, Tineye is not the first to attempt and succeed at this kind of matching. Other companies, including both Digimarc and Picscout, have long offered similar matching services that work without text.

However, Tineye is the first to offer a robust image matching service that is free for everyone (at least as of this writing) and is simple enough to use so that artists can take advantage of it on a whim. There is no watermarking, no technology to apply to your images, just a simple upload and search.

As I see it, this has three potential implications that are both very large and very welcome:

1. Copyright Protection: The most clear use is for artists to punch their images into the service and receive results, thus enabling them to track down potential infringements of their work. They can then take action to secure removal of the images or request attribution.
2. Image Tracking: Some images, including buttons and banners, are put on the Web with the intention of them being shared and passed around. Tineye can track the effectiveness of such a campaign and determine how many sites are displaying the image in question.
3. Orphan Works Protection: Assuming that the current orphan works legislation gets passed either as is or with only a few modifications, finding a way to search for visual work is critical. Tineye can do that. If one found a work that they thought might be an orphan, they could run it through Tineye, even scanning it in if necessary, and search for copies of it on the Web, letting them track down the copyright holder. If such a tool were effective, any qualifying search would almost certainly require such an effort be made.

In short, Tineye can help bring visual artists up on par with writers in tracking their content and being able to have their work easily searched. For this reason, Tineye has already garnered several big name clients, including the Associated Press, Digg and more.

Limitations

Of course, as with any new service, there are limitations to how effective it is. However, in Tineye’s case, those limitations appear to only be temporary and should be fixed as the service grows in size and adds features.

1. Limited Index Size: Currently, the Tineye database is at about 700 million images. While that is an impressive number, one has to remember that Photobucket alone has over 5 billion images according to their numbers. The site does not seem to detect duplications on Photobucket, Flickr or other popular image sharing sites, focusing instead on blogs. Thus, many images that are known to have many copies return no results. Though Tineye has stated that they are growing their database, the number in the index has not moved in the weeks I have been using the service and no indication was given as to when they would start indexing new images.
2. No Case Tracking: Currently, with Tineye, there is no way to track cases of plagiarism or copying so that they are not acted upon a second time. Though the site does a respectable job finding duplicate images, it does little to help the artist sort through the mess. The good news is that this is a feature Tineye has expressed a willingness to implement later.
3. No Alerts System: Where writers have Google Alerts and even CopyAlerts, there is currently no system in Tineye that will alert artists to new copies of their work being posted. Once again, this is a feature Tineye has expressed an interest and willingness in adding later.

In short, Tineye is not the system artists have been waiting for today, but it definitely has the potential to be that system in the near future.

If Tineye can continue growing and improving its service, it can easily solve a problem that has had artists struggling to protect their work for well over a decade.

Conclusion

Even though Tineye is a great service with tons of potential, in its current format with the existing limitations, it is little more than a preview of what is to come.

Though you should definitely consider registering for the Tineye beta, if nothing else than to pass along your thoughts to the creators, you should realize that the searches you perform will, for the most part, be ineffective. That will hopefully change soon though.

Tineye, right now, is not intended to be the solution to the problem, but rather, a preview of the solution. So if you want to search for your images and immediately find out who has copied all of your work, Tineye, right now, is not for you.

But if you want to see what might be coming down the pipe, definitely check it out.

Related Links

Arstechnica – Another test case
The Inquisitr – An overview of Tineye
Anniebee’s Posterous – An example where Tineye worked)
Daily Tech Report – Another Tineye overview

Further Discussion

1. How will you use Tineye?
2. What features would you like to see added?
3. How do you think image rippers will respond to this kind of search?

Video

But using Creative Commons is not a simple task. You have to first find the work you want to use, resize it so that it fits in your blog and then provide proper attribution, something that is rarely done correctly.

By the time all of this is done, many prefer to use the stock.xchng or similar sites to avoid these issues. However, a new WordPress plugin, Photo Dropper, seeks to make life easier for those wanting to use Creative Commons images. The plugin automates the entire process of using a CC-licensed image, including the scaling and attribution.

The process is so simple that it is even easier than using WordPress’ built-in media uploader and takes only a few seconds to complete. It could easily be the best thing to happen to image-hungry bloggers and to CC-loving artists in a very long time.

How it Works

The first step is using Photo Dropper is to install the WordPress plugin. This is a process that every WordPress user should be familiar with, save those using a free WordPress.com account, but directions are also provided on the Photo Dropper site if needed.

Once the plugin is installed and activated, you first have to edit the options for the plugin. The options themselves are very straightforward, consisting of only five things, setting the number of images displayed, selecting whether to only search for ones available for commercial use, sorting by “most interesting” and adding HTML code before and after the insert.

Once you’ve set your options, the interface appears on your write screen below your editor.

As shown above, it allows you to search for a keyword you are interested in, such as “pirate” in this case.You hit search and it pulls up a thumbnail gallery of applicable images.

Below each image is a series of options. The first pops the image out full size in a new window, making it easier to view. The other letters represent “small”, “medium” and “large” and generate the code to insert the image into your post.

For example, if you click “Medium” on one of the images, you get a new image in your post that looks like this:

photo credit: Brittany G

As you can see, the image is sized correctly for the blog and contains the attribution directly below the image, rather than at the footer of the post. The attribution is formatted well and is compliant with both Flickr and Creative Commons requirements.

All totaled, Photo Dropper makes it possible, with just two clicks of the mouse, to put in legal free images into any of your blog posts or pages. All by working with the well-documented Flickr API.

Why this is Great

The beauty behind this service goes well beyond just bloggers obtaining free images for their site. Rather, this also helps content creators, specifically photographers that post their work on Flickr and license it under a Creative Commons License.

As I’ve talked about before, one of the biggest issues with Creative Commons is that the license is very rarely followed to the letter. This plugin, however, ensures that the photo is attributed correctly and in the proper manner, including links back to the creator and the image itself, all of which are search-engine friendly.

By making it easy for bloggers to do not just the right thing, but also the legal one, the plugin encourages the behavior and will cause more bloggers to follow the letter of the license. This, in turn, should result in more bloggers taking advantage of CC-licensed images and in more links and recognition for CC artists.

Limitations

Though the plugin, overall, is a great tool, it has its share of limitations as well.

1. Only Supports Flickr: Though Flickr is a great repository of CC-licensed artwork, it is not the only one on the Web. Though Flickr was a great choice to start with, it would be nice to see other sites added in the future.
2. Limited Control: Outside of adding HTML before and after the image, you have very little control over how it displays. This can make it difficult to fit into your site without some effort.
3. Difficult Searching: The search feature is great if you find what you’re looking for almost immediately. Otherwise, going through a large number of images can be a pain. You practically are forced to change the number of thumbnails before use and more advanced search tools would make a big difference.
4. WordPress-Only: Currently Photo Dropper exists only as a WordPress plugin, meaning those that use other platforms, or even WordPress.com, are not able to take advantage of it. Plugins for other platforms as well as a Web-based version that generates the code for easy copy/paste for those who can’t use plugins would also be a huge help.
5. Slowness: This is an issue with Flickr, not Photo Dropper, but sometimes search can be very sluggish. The Flickr API is not very quick and, when combined with the searching issues, can make for a long search time.

However, the negative aspects, for the most part, are significantly outweighed by the positive aspects. Since the plugin is free, it makes sense to install it and see if it works for you. If it doesn’t, simply deactivate the plugin and move on; if it does, you may have easy access to a large number of images that are free for you to license.

Conclusions

I try to cover legal alternatives because the more that are available and the easier they are to use, the fewer excuses that plagiarists and scrapers have. Every legal alternative is another weapon against content theft and a way for people to support and help content creators.

Personally, I am very excited about this service. Though it has flaws, it solves at least two of the major problems with Creative Commons, namely the issues with providing proper attribution and formatting, and it makes great headway into solving the issue of finding good work to use.

Most likely, if you watch this site, you’ll see a couple of Photo Dropper images in various articles as time goes on. Though I favor my own screenshots to illustrate the articles I write, in cases where that is not appropriate, I may use Photo Dropper to add images in as fitting.

All in all, Photo Dropper is a great tool that I look forward to using as needed. It may not make regular appearances on the site, but I do have a feeling you will see it again…

At issue, specifically, is PhotoBucket allowing users to print the photos of strangers, including photos that were uploaded illegally, and the lack of a take down stay down system on the service.

PhotoBucket, through their PR agent responded by saying the following:

“Photobucket is committed to protecting and empowering content owners and creators. The site offers features that give users the ability to set private and public settings for their photos and videos. The company also strictly adheres to government DMCA guidelines to protect copyrights through the prompt removal of infringing material and action against repeat offenders.”

It seems unlikely that the response will do much to quell the concerns of the signatories of the petition, which is now over 5500 signatures, or address the issues raised.

I will report more on this as I get more responses and feedback.

Generally, however, that power is best left unused. For the most part, restricting people’s access to your site is a bad move. Though you can use your powers to carve out a members-0nly area or prevent others from accessing administrative areas of the site, turning people away from the door is usually unwise.

Still, there are some people that you want to keep out. RSS scrapers and image hotlinkers, for example, offer nothing to your site but instead only steal your content, your bandwidth and your other resources. If you can prevent them from accessing your site in the first place, without impacting other users, it is probably in your best interest to do so.

Fortunately, with Apache’s .htaccess file, it is possible to do all of those things and more. All one has to do is understand a few basics and get the code that they need.

A Quick Primer

According to the Apache Software Foundation, .htaccess is a distributed configuration file that provides “a way to make configuration changes on a per-directory basis”. It is most commonly used when a Webmaster has access to the server, but not the core configuration files for that server. This is typical of most shared hosting environments.

When editing an .htaccess file, there are three important things to remember:

1. .htaccess is the name of the file: In short, htaccess is the extension and there is no file name. This can make editing the file difficult on some computers, but it is important that the convention be followed. If needed, name the file something else and rename it after uploading it to your server.
2. It is an ASCII file: .htaccess is a plain text file and should only be edited in a text editor such as Notepad.
3. It only works with Apache: Though other servers, such as Microsoft’s IIS Server, offer similar features. .htaccess itself is only for Apache-based servers. If you are unsure of what kind of server you have, check with your hosting provider.

Finally, it is important, when working with .htaccess, to back up well and be careful with your edits. A poorly-constructed .htaccess file can render your site useless.

But despite these warnings, .htaccess files are, generally, very easy to edit and manipulate. Furthermore, there is a lot of very good free code ready for you to copy, paste and manipulate to fit your needs.

Stop Image/File Hotlinking

One of the easiest and most basic tasks that can be performed with .htaccess is stopping image/file hotlinking. This is the process by which other sites link directly to your files, either having them display or download directly from their site. This not only amounts to content theft, as well as often plagiarism, but also bandwidth theft as your server spends the resources to serve the file everyone someone on their site calls for it.

According to Zann Marketing, the process is very simple. All one has to do is navigate to their images folder and either create a new .htaccess file or add the following code to their existing one:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://yoursite.com.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.yoursite.com.*$ [NC]
ReWriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|png)$ – [F]

The first line tells the server to turn the Rewrite engine on, the second line instructs the server to check and see if the referrer is blank, the third and fourth line check to make sure that is not from your own site and the fifth line instructs the server to disallow the request for the selected file types if none of the above statements are true.

With this code, you can easily modify it several different ways including:

1. Add New Domains: You can add new domains and sites to allow hotlinking from. The original example from Zann Marketing includes the IP address for Google Images, for example. You can include other search engines as well.
2. Add New File Types: By editing the last line, you can modify your rules to include any kind of file necessary including movie files, documents and anything else you wish to have protected from hotlinking.
3. Disable Access to Blank Referrers: By removing the second line, you can prevent access from browsers and tools that return a blank referrer. Though some scrapers and black hat spiders do this, so do many visitors in a bid to protect their privacy.

Though this method will not stop people from saving your images to their hard drive and uploading it where they please, it can prevent people from stealing both your image and your bandwidth at the same time.

Also, on the original Zann Marketing page, there are examples for blocking just one hotlinker and to redirect hotlinkers to another image, thus pulling the famous “switcheroo”.

Finally, if the process of editing the code seems too daunting, you can also use HTML Basix’s .htaccess code generator to create an .htaccess code set for you to copy and paste into your file.

Blocking RSS Scraping

Equally easy, or in some cases even easier, than blocking hotlinking is blocking RSS scrapers. All you need to do so is determine the IP address of the RSS scraper. (Note: You can use domains if you wish. However, since not all scraping software is located on the domain itself, IP addresses are more reliable).

The easiest way to determine the IP address of a scraper is to use the Copyfeed plugin and have it place the IP address in the scraped content. This not only eliminates the need to translate domain names into IP addresses, but also works in case where the scraping software is located on another server or computer.

However, if that fails or is not an option and the scraped site is hosted on its own domain, you can simply use the IP address for the server itself. To determine the IP address for a domain, simply enter it into a site like Domain Tools and let it get the IP for you. It only takes a few seconds.

If the scraper is using a free service such as Blogspot, you will likely have to look into your server logs and attempt to find traffic on the feed that times out with when the posts go up on the scraper site. It is a risky task to undertake as you can accidentally block legitimate users and it can be very time-consuming on larger sites, but it is the only option in some cases if you wish to use blocking techniques.

No matter what method you use, once you have the IP address, all that is required, according to JavascriptKit, is the following code in the .htaccess file of your feed’s directory:

order allow,deny
deny from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
allow from all

Editing the code is easy, all you have to do is replace the Xs with the IP address of the scraper. You can add more lines to as new scrapers emerge and you can also use wildcards by leaving off numbers. For example 123.123.123., would block all IP addresses that start with 123.123.123. This can be useful if a scraper has an IP that changes, but only within a certain range.

It is important to note that this code will block ALL access to your site for that IP address. However, there is very little reason to allow a scraper onto your site as, most likely, they are only accessing the feed anyway.

Also, if you want to redirect scrapers to a fake feed, you can use the method discussed on Hung Truong, which often generates very humorous results.

Finally, once again, if you are uneasy with editing the files yourself, HTML Basix offers another .htaccess generator, this one to block users. It is also useful to stop RSS scraping.

The bottom line is that, once you obtain the IP address of the scraper, it is trivial to block them using .htaccess. All you need is a little bit of understanding and some freely-available code.

Conclusions

Though .htaccess editing can seem very intimidating to a novice, it is actually very easy to do. With the proper tools and a few fundamentals, anyone can manipulate their .htaccess files and use it to their advantage.

Though these manipulations won’t do anything to stop human plagiarism it can stop some of the more common types of plagiarism before they happen, all without impacting legitimate users at all. It makes sense, if possible, to use these methods to your advantage.

However, it is important to note that you are unlikely to find a free host that allows manipulation of .htaccess files. This is, predominantly, the feature of paid hosting companies. Also, it will not work if your images and RSS feeds are on another server, such as Flickr or FeedBurner.

But if you’ve paid for your hosting, it makes sense to use the tools that come with that kind of an upgrade. One of those is the ability to protect your content at the server level.

It is a great power and one that is sorely underused on the Web.