more than manipultion, this burns me up

[bobatkins]

The photographer hasn't been banned, his posting ability has simply been suspended until the facts have been established. That means his images can't be changed while we look into the matter.

 

If you look at his portfolio you won't find any other images similar to this one, or any similar to the other images on the "wickedweasel.com" website. The shooting date on the image posted here was last week. Douglas says he first saw this image 2 years ago. There's no way it could have been shot on the date posted as the shooting date here on photo.net.

 

While it's certainly *possible* that an australian website hired an argentinian photographer to shoot images for their site, and that said photographer posted the wrong date on his not very well exectuted greyscale converions of that image, the facts in evidence so far don't really point in that direction.

 

The most likely and benign explanation is that the photographer didn't know any better and simply thought he could take images from the web, play with them in photoshop and present them as his own work. In that case we'd like to know which other images of this type have been uploaded.

 

It's also possible that the photographer picked an image he though he could maybe get away with PhotoShopping and that nobody would be likely to recognize - and which might do really well in the ratings scheme.

 

It's also possible we are all doing a grave injustice to the photographer and that he actually did take the image himself. If so I'll make a public apology to him myself for casting any doubt on the ownership of the image.

[root]

"The image does, however show problems with the rating

system standards. This is NOT a good greyscale conversion, in

fact it's pretty awful. I could do better in a couple of minutes. Yet

despite this, all the ratings (except mine!) on the image are 6s or

7s for aestheics and originality.

 

 

I suspect many of those ratings are for the model's anatomy not

for the photographers photography. Nothing much we can do

about that, but it must make photographers doing really good

creative work that don't include naked or semi-naked women feel

a bit frustrated. "

 

Well yes . This is one of the reasons why many of the better

photographers don't upload. . . . but there's more.

 

What adds fuel to the fire is his personal favorites page. He's

given me quite a few 6/6s, yet I now assume they were only

invitations, based on the fact that his "favorites" - all 7/7s - are all

of recent images and fill his 300 limit, so there are probably

more. Brian has a page all set up where he can easily check out

the reciprocal ratings of each of the photographers that he's

given 7/7s to. The fact that some of them are probably new and

don't even understand they've been sucked in only underscores

the warped nature of the whole system.

 

I wish to heck somebody else had brought this up.. Seems like

I'm the one that gets stuck pointing out correlations like this.

[bobatkins]

What are you going to do about it?

 

Make up some arbitrary complex rules about reciprocal scores (IF A gives B a 7/7 then B can give A a 7/7 only if B gives a 7/7 to C, who has not given A or B a 7/7 - except there are 10,000+ combinations to check not 3)?

 

Create reciprocal rating monitors who scan the files for the rating criminals?

 

Should Brian have to devote all his time to ever more complex schemes to stop people cheating, or should he devote those efforts towards making overall site improvements which benefit everyone, including those who dont gave a *^%# about ratings?

[leanne_newton]

The ratings system can't be fixed, in my opinion. Mate rating, hate rating, retaliation etc. are all alive and well, but I do seem to remember time and energy being dedicated to discouraging this practice...THIS is far MORE SERIOUS.

 

To read Simone's comment re copyright causes me to shudder....and these kind of comments always seem to come from people who are contributing nothing new to our culture,

beyond a couple of pretty, not-particularly-interesting-to- steal kind of pictures.

 

In the same way you will find people who have jobs which bring in a monthly wage + benefits denigrating "freelance" artists as ridiculous for charging industry standard prices for their intellectual property.

 

You will have a world of images to look at - all coldly executed, lacking in energy and fire ( that which we call talent ) but probably aesthetically appealing...and yes, I imagine that a lot of great work is not published on the net.

 

Look at what can happen, and even on a photo-site there are people who couldn't care less. Sad.

[leanne_newton]

To be clearer, I need money to eat, and to support myself, and to further my personal work, which costs me money to produce.

 

I could not care less about having my name published, I want to be paid cash. I do not feel any obligation to supply the world with my vision for free. Whoever wants it / needs it must pay for it.

 

Photo.net is a for-profit organization, and should be careful about unauthorized publishing of copyrighted work. I haven't checked the terms of use but I hope that there is a disclaimer, which places the responsibility on the person who posts.

 

Before licensing images, photographers should read the fine print -- any publication will place the onus on you for all rights and releases to the material you are providing, in the event of any problems to do with copyright.

[navarra]

Leanne, if you want to produce commercial work only to gain cash with it you are free to. From your words I understand that you are able to create real artistic pictures that can as well be sold on the market because your personal view of life and beauty corresponds to the commercial one. I (sort of) work with art galleries and I usually see the contrary, artists that cannot produce things that anyone would mass produce and put on the market. Guess what? They still do that because they like it and don't care about cash. Of course people's opinion will differ, I usually just aknowledge that and don't attack or judge somebody I don't even know.

 

I'd really like to take a look at your portfolio as well, but of course you wouldn't upload images for free, right? There is an omepage connected to your name, I'll try and take a look there.

 

Strange thing is that I registered for photo.net while you didn't. But that's just a minor point, isn't it?

 

Simone

[stefanovandelli]

I am completely with Mark G. on this one. Some serious accusations are going round in this thread, accompanied by even more serious language. Do you know who is the author of the wickedweasel picture? No? I thought so. Wait for an answer from wickedweasel and if you don't get one you must assume that this guy IS the author until you can PROVE otherwise. This is the way justice works in my country.

[leanne_newton]

When work is published in a magazine, ie editorial, the photographer usually gets a credit. Advertising work means having to contact the ad agency/client to ask the name of the photographer most of the time, but I cannot see how professionals could be worried about this post. The only suggestion which worries me is the idea that there would be nothing wrong with stealing other people's work, and posting it as your own.

 

So it is right to check the facts, in my opinion..

[anthony_lloyd]

It may well be his work, but I sincerely doubt the shot of Nicole Kidman in his folder

is his work. If it is, then the shot is so poor I imagine she won't include it in her

portfolio. I can also spot at least one other well known model (whose name currently

escapes me) in his folder. Maybe he gets lucky and is invited to shoot Nicole and

others.

[dustinhenry]

I imagine the photograph in suspect more than likely did originate from the wickedweasel.com website. If one takes a look at the link, they'll find that there are several photographs of the same model in the same colored bikini.

<br><br>My question, what is Photo.net going to do now that a website such as WickedWeasel has been posted here? I predict we'll have less people browsing the Photo.net galleries in pursuit of bikini-clad photo subjects when they can get all the eye-candy they want at WickedWeasel!

[dougs]

looks like he's been "murdered" in usefilm.com, his name, folders all been deleted.....what does use film know?

[mottershead]

I received confirmation from the managing director of wickedweasel.com, that he personally takes all the photographs on his web site. (Must be kind of a drag having to take all those bikini photos every time the product line changes, but I guess it keeps the costs down to do it yourself.)

 

I deleted the photo. We will also be removing this portfolio in its entirety. It may be that the person simply has no understanding of copyright law and did not realize that posting the photo was illegal. He may not think it is wrong to appropriate another person's photo as the starting point for a Photoshop manipulation. However, photo.net cannot be seen as tolerating copyright violations, and our policy is to deal with copyright violations in a fairly draconian manner.

[bobatkins]

Thanks Brian. I guess WickedWeasel (who were probably wondering why they're website is now getting all the extra hits!) are faster to respond than the photographer, who has not yet responded to my email.

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with suspending accounts with questionable content before proof is obtained. Last night I was unable to make an online purchase using my credit card because they had suspended my account due to what they thought was "an unusual pattern of purchases, including overseas charges". As it turned out I had in fact made those charges and all was OK, but it made sense to suspend the account until they got the facts.

 

Perhaps I shouldn't have contributed to the thread in public before we got confirmation of the facts. Maybe next time we'll just hold the account and not make the situation public. However making things public does draw some attention to the problem and should make it clear to other users that you can't just "borrow" othe people's images and pass them off as your own, even if you manipulate them. There are people here who think it's OK - but it's not.

[dougs]

i know you guys are busy with day to day operations of the site.

i appreciate the manner that you handled this.

having had artwork stolen, it srikes a nerve with me when anybody takes credit for something they didn't do..

 

BTW: the check is in the mail..

best regards

Doug

[john_henneberger]

It was sound for Bob to respond to this issue.

 

The initial reaction went straight to a conclusion but, subsequent posts corrected the initial post in a reasonable time with equal emphasis as the orginal post. If public accusations such as these are false, serious defamation issues could arise. A like and timely retraction sometimes suffices to defend against such claims.

 

Some forms of defamation do not require that the accused suffer specific economic damages in order for the accused to collect damages. Examples include situations where someone is falsely accused of having a loathesome disease, committing a crime of moral turpitude or that a professional commits an act of malpractice. The latter is the closest that applies but, the rule usually applies to licensed and regulated professionals such as lawyers and doctors. Some courts, I suppose, may recognize defamation of a professional reputation of a photographer as a basis to claim money damages without showing specific losses. In any event, it appears that the orginal observations were true.

 

It was appropriate for Bob to respond saying the accusations were not yet substantiated. There has been some litigation against websites for 'allowing' posters to publish defamatory material on their sites. I don't recall how it turned out but, I am fairly sure the issue is not settled across the land yet. To allow posts accusing another of serious factual misconduct to pile on without Bob's "IF" disclaimer would not have been advisable.

 

Hopefully this sordid episode will soon pass and everyone may concentrate more on photography.

[robert_byrd1]

Wasn't it discovered that "Takkinda's" self-portraits came from Asian magazines?

[dougs]

wasn't that in the leica forum, someone pretending to be a asian girl, taking nude self portraits? did the person pull the pics or did the PN staff?