Thousands of Photo.net Images Hotlinked to Amazon.com Seller Forum

[bobatkins]

<p>Actually, for a company the size of Amazon, which presumably has multiple layers of management who have to give permission on changes to their website content, taking a day to remove something is actually pretty fast. I don't know how much autonomy their forums moderators would have in a situation like this. I'm pretty sure they don't have the autonomy that photo.net moderators do.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Not only less autonomy, Bob, but the added complication that the forum in question is (theoretically) populated by people who are involved in selling through Amazon's third party vendor services. These are people who (theoretically) help Amazon to make money, and who have reputations with end-shoppers at stake. Any move by Amazon that might be construed as interfering with the contractual relationship that Amazon has with those vendors could erupt into a lawyerpalooza.<br /><br />So I'd imagine that they do, indeed, have to tread carefully.</p>

[fotoscopio]

<p>Happy to know the post was removed, but be sure there must be a lot of threads like those and people who will steal (knowingly of not) the work on Photo.Net<br>

I post on Photo.Net for people to see some of my photos, not worrying too much if they are taken, it's not that I like the idea of anyone grabbing, but pretty much anything you put in the internet will be interpreted by most as "up for grabs", so I just avoid the personal stuff, watermark what I find to be my best works and try not to think about it too much.<br>

It's been a while since I posted and read threads on Photo.Net and for some reason I stumbled upon this one today (from Bob Atkins' review of a much desired 5D MkII, to his bio, to here). Hope to keep coming back often.<br>

Best regards to all,<br>

Fernando</p>

[cabbiinc]

<p>http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=165718&start=0&tstart=0</p>

<p>Well the thread in question at the beginning of this post spawned another thread with a few more P'net images in it. The links just go straight to the pics so I wouldn't be able to tell you who's they were, but the thread's title is "<strong><em>How do you copy an entire thread to disk</em> ?</strong> ". It looks like cedarhollow (the OP here) has warned people of the illegalities no later than Feb. 3rd.</p>

[Jeff Lear]

<p>It appears we (the PN community) have spawned a <em>rash</em> of threads over there. Some of them paranoid, some apologetic, some contentious. But alas, none of them containing images stolen from PN. Good times and way to go, Josh.</p>

[joshroot]

<blockquote>

<p>It appears we (the PN community) have spawned a <em>rash</em> of threads over there. Some of them paranoid, some apologetic, some contentious.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Fascinatingly strange. And a good example of what having moderators saves photo.net from. Moderation is not a perfect science. But I'll take the few problems that it creates over that kind of lunacy any day.</p>

[MichaelChang]

<p>Here is a follow-up discussion thread on Amazon:<br>

<a href="http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=166079&tstart=15">http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=166079&tstart=15</a></p>

[steve_mareno]

<p>I think it's just becoming impossible to constantly worry about how your web photos are used on the web. It would be a full time job!, and I have better things to do w/ my time. Like make photographs. Just don't put up anything that you wouldn't want viewed. The web isn't paper publishing and things move far too fast. If photo.net management is really concerned they could come up w/ a good watermark. Besides all this, what ever happened to the idea that there was no such thing as bad publicity? This doesn't bother me in the least, as a web image is a really poor substitute for the real, glorious photo.</p>

<p>I never understood this when I was painting and etching either. So someone takes a photo of my work? It's just a 2nd hand reproduction. Let the sorry lawyers and others of their ilk worry about this. It has nothing to do w/ the craft of making photographs.</p>

[CharlesBecker-Toronto]

<p>well done Josh! cb </p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Steve: The sheer scale of the pirating, in this case, makes it an unusual event. Further, the clown that was really going to town on it was "hot linking" the images, which means that untold thousands of page views at that other site were causing the Photo.net web servers to have to serve up hundreds of images directly to that other site's visitors, over and over again. If for no other reason, just a local PN-community dose of personal interest in this site's costs not being pushed up by external jackassery is enough reason to pursue it. <br /><br />You're right that it's counterproductive to fret about every single infringement. But this was completely aggregious. Not doing anything about it in very high profile cases like that is also ceding ground to the wider cultural problem of "if I see it online it's mine." There were people on that Amazon board (a place where everyone sells copyrighted material, no less!) who seemed to be suggesting that since nobody from PN had been complaining up until then, that must mean that PN <em>wants</em> wholesale rip-offs of these photographers' works to be the norm - and possibly even some sort of marketing stunt to get eyeballs. That's BS, of course, but something has to be said.<br /><br />I know that, in some small circles, some of my stuff has legs and wanders around the 'net. I'm not going to hunt all of that down. But I DO get pissed off when some idiot's MySpace page is hotlinking to an image of mine, and using it completely out of context to make some political point or other bit of buffoonery. And so out comes the DCMA heads-up. Just when I feel like it. In the case of Amazon, you've got a message board being run by one of the biggest businesses on the web, littered with thousands of hosted-by-PN images placed there by one deranged user. It was good that Josh stepped in, on a lot of levels.</p>

[don_e]

<p>Life is too short to care what goes on in forums, who posts to them and for what nefarious reasons.</p>

<p> </p>

[iliafarniev]

<p>big deal</p>

[cooltpmd]

<p>Just My 2 cents:<br>

<strong>(1) Bad/Stupid people do Bad/Stupid things, and </strong><br>

<strong>(2) The web is a very private place to be Bad and easily accesible to the Stupid. </strong><br>

<strong>(3) People become suprisingly Good and Smart when threatened with physical violence, monetary loss, or imprisonment.</strong></p>

<p>*** If you passively accept the Bad and Stupid, it will get woprse.</p>

<p> </p>

[don_e]

<p>I've been online since 1989 and participated in many newsgroups and forums in that time. I've seen more than enough netkooks and bad/stupid idiots online. There is nothing to be done about them. Knock one down and there's a million more lined up behind to take his or her place. Have things gotten worse in 20 years? No. Just the same despite "passive acceptance" or jihads against moderators, news admins, servers and sites. We are outnumbered. Lots of people won't play nice according to the rules we prefer.</p>

<p>Get used to it.</p>

<p> </p>

[garrison_k.]

<p>this wouldn't of happened if PN disabled right-click.</p>

[Michael R Freeman]

<blockquote>

<p>this wouldn't of happened if PN disabled right-click.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, it would have. The majority of the stolen images were hotlinked, and served from pages here on photo.net. They weren't copied and served from another website.</p>

<p>A 10 year old can get around the <disable right click> "security". It offers absolutely zero protection from image theft.</p>

[garrison_k.]

<p><em>The majority of the stolen images were hotlinked, and served from pages here on photo.net.</em></p>

<p>Exactly. In order to hotlink, you right click to grab the url location of the photo and then paste it into amazons page.</p>

<p><em>A 10 year old can get around the "security". It offers absolutely zero protection from image theft.</em></p>

<p>Where did I say it did? However, disabling right-click makes it a pain in the ass to do the print-screen thing and thieves move onto easier sites that don't have right click disabled. Like PN. Again, this coverjock would not have posted thousands of PN images into amzon if he/she had to go through the time consuming actions of 'print screen' every photo.</p>

[joshroot]

<p>I am not in favor of disabling right click for the simple reason that it does not do anything to offer protection except give ignorant photographers the idea that is does. People need to understand the risks and rewards of having their images online and no expect some "magic potion" to protect them.</p>

[garrison_k.]

<p><em>I am not in favor of disabling right click for the simple reason that it does<br /> not do anything to offer protection except give ignorant photographers the idea<br /> that is does. </em></p>

<p>Respectfully disagree, Josh. These amazon threads wouldn't have happened if coverjock was denied access to right click and grabbed the hosting url of the image. Hundreds of them posted because of the seconds it takes for three or four mouse clicks. The alternative for him, without right-click ability, would be to screen copy/paste, find a place to re-host, upload, and then enter that hosted url. I doubt he would have went to the trouble if having to go the latter route. Heavens knows how many PN hosted images are embedded into all the blogs out there. No one would know of these amazon threads if it wasn't for the OP here taking the trouble to start a thread.</p>

<p>You can steal a bicycle that's locked up. But I still use one. Because it's inconvenient for thieves. I couldn't use reasoning such as "there's no point to using locks as it can still be stolen."</p>

<p>Thieves move on to sites where it is easy to harvest. Like never before has image theft been rampant for commercial and social site use. If it's easy for PN to re-code this, throwing a speed bump down wouldn't do any harm, imo.</p>

[phule]

<p>[[These amazon threads wouldn't have happened if coverjock was denied access to right click and grabbed the hosting url of the image.]]</p>

<p>What is so difficult about "view --> page source" ?</p>

<p>Disabling right-click punishes legitimate uses (spell check, copy/paste for quotation, etc) and does nothing to dissuade hot linking.</p>

<p> </p>

[jsc]

Garrison, you're arguing from the understanding that disabling right click means the only way to post the image involves

some tedious process that only the dedicated thieves would go through, either involving "print screen" or otherwise doing

an image grab.

 

The alternative, in fact, is to simply disable Javascript (a preference option in all browsers), or do a View Source and find

all the URLs there. It is a trivial workaround, and I encourage you to try it out on some site that has disabled right click for

images. If you can find any site where either of those two things does not get you access to the image URLs, I will take a

look into implementing their method.

 

If your browser can display it, it needs to know where to look, and (this is the important point) it is trivially easy to get the

browser to tell you. Any browser, not some elite hacker utility.

[garrison_k.]

<p><em>Garrison, you're arguing from the understanding that disabling right click means the only way to post the image involves some tedious process that only the dedicated thieves would go through, either involving "print screen" or otherwise doing an image grab. </em></p>

<p>Hi Jin,<br>

I'm affraid this isn't my point at all. My point is that the harder it is to steal, the less it happens. 99% of all casual surfers are completely ignorant on how to get an image if right-click is disabled. For what it's worth, for those savy and want the jpg on thier hdd, the easist way is to go into frefox's cached folder and remove/copy all jpg's after a session of surfing.</p>

[cabbiinc]

<p>So since your able to work around the defenses don't even bother.</p>

<p>Would you suggest that I don't bother locking my car? After all anyone can buy a slim jim at a local autoparts store, and it comes with instructions on how to use it for nearly any year make and model car.</p>

<p>Do you suggest that I run my computer without antivirus protection? After all, AV programs are always a step or two behind since they only scan for known viruses and any new virus just waltzes in and plants itself.</p>

<p>Do you suggest that I don't bother locking my front door? After all a rock through the window can circumvent that.</p>

<p>To argue that it can be circumvented so why bother is a really poor arguement.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Disabling right-click punishes legitimate uses</p>

</blockquote>

<p>And padlocks only keep honest people honest, but isn't that the point? The fact is if your not allowed to right click and save you <strong>KNOW</strong> it's not OK. You <strong>KNOW</strong> it's stealing. But if your allowed to right click and save then it adds to the misconception that it's part of "fare use" to use the image for personal use and not make any money off of it.</p>

[phule]

<p>[[And padlocks only keep honest people honest, but isn't that the point?]]</p>

<p>You have clearly missed the point, Dan. That you stand up these strawmen is proof of that.</p>

 

[joshroot]

<p>It's a moot point. We're not doing it on photo.net. It would create more problems that it would solve and it doesn't really solve anything. If that means that some people aren't going to have images on photo.net, so be it. But I would rather spend my time educating people about how to use watermarking and small image sizes to protect their images in a useful way.</p>