I think one of the problems of this community is the Steemcleaners service and cheater
Cheater for me was wrongly coded as it usually flags posts wrongly sometimes and newbies or even old users tend to leave posts with cheater comment without curation..
Great work on trying to solve community issues @michaeldavid
By the way, @raggaemuffin and @surpassinggoogle are my favorite whales..
Steemcleaners do an excellent job in my opinion. It's very important that they go after plagiarists. Not long after I joined, someone on here was impersonating a professional photographer and posting all his work and claiming it as their own.
They do a great job with plagiarists. It is a shame when some users that are not trying to scam get caught in the crossfire. However, I really don't hear of this much from them.
If Steemit is going to be looked upon with real credibility as a quality blogging platform, the community has got to take a stand against real image plagiarism and copyright infringement. Steemcleaners do a great job with written plagiarism, but photography plagiarism is not properly addressed.
We have to say it is not tolerated, but unfortunately whales are getting away with it more than anyone. Too often I see Image Source cited as a search engine like Google , or some web site that may have paid a fee to use the work, or it may be another site that has already stolen the work. It is still plagiarism to cite a wrong source. But no one wants to take the time to research that! The true source of a piece of work is the photographer, and that is where Steemcleaners falls short. You can cite Mickey Mouse as your source, as long as you don't say it is your own work.
As a professional stock photographer, I have twice found my own stock images being used on here without a license fee being paid - once with absolutely no credit given, and another time with some website where the image was lifted from being claimed as the source. In both instances, those stealing my work were whales and the posts made a lot of money, and my work was not compensated. Not only was this plagiarism, but also copyright infringement, which is by far a bigger problem on here than plagiarism. Citing even a true source is copyright infringement unless permission has been granted or a license fee paid.
I know this is a whole other area of discussion, but it is a very important one to those of us who are professional photographers. Legitimate sites always make it clear that copyright infringement will not be tolerated, and they have a stated method of dealing with it when it happens. That helps the site to get off the hook if they are sued. I dread to think what would happen here on Steemit, because there is no such published statement about copyright infringement. That could be Steemit's big downfall one day, and we will all suffer because of it.
I think i quite agree about Steemcleaners but I believe the image plaigiarism is somewhat difficult to handle
It's easy really. The photographer has often spent a lot of time and money creating the work. All businesses have overheads, and photography is no different. There are free sites like Pixabay where users can get images that are copyright free.
I believe that steemcleaners should class any source other than the free sites as plagiarism. (It's copyright infringement too, but stopping the plagiarism would stop the copyright infringement.)
Pixabay is a wonderful site actually. Perhaps promoting more awareness about the site (and others) and how you can get copyright free images would help as well, at least until @steemcleaners can workout a solution.
I think that many people just think you can pull an image from the net and not worry. Some knowing it is infringement and some likely not knowing as well.
I totally agree that plagiarism and copyright infringement are very serious and must be taken care of. These are things that are not only morally wrong, but actually illegal if you get right to it and cases can be brought against people even. I was aware that @steemcleaners was doing what they can about written forms. I was however, not really thinking about the photograph's as personally I was always in the habit of citing ones that I used.
This is a serious thing that we must definitely addressed. I've added this to my list of topics to bring up. :)
I'm sorry to hear that this has directly affected you also. That's a shame.
I know that other sites have ways of dealing with this issue better that steemit has though, i'm not exactly sure what they are.
I'm going to start with a couple lighter topics to get people talking then lead into some of the heavier ones like this. It may seem backwards I'm just wanting to get more voices talking before we get to the heavy stuff.
Thanks for bringing this up!
Yes Steamcleaners handles photo plagiarism too, but they don't go deeply enough. They accept whatever is given as a source, because it simply shows the person is not claiming it as their own. The problem is that it is plagiarism not to cite the ORIGINAL author!
I'm finding more and more professional photographers joining Steemit, so pretty soon there may be a unified voice with us too.
This is a very good point. You need to write a post on exactly where public domain pictures can be uploaded and how to determine if you are plagiarizing a picture. How does one go about getting permission if they find a picture they wish to use? Pixabay is very limited. There are lots of appropriate photos and graphics out there but there is no way (that I know of) to tell if what you would like to upload is already pirated or not. Can you work your way back the "image credit" chain to find the original source? It really isn't clear at all
OK, here's a link to the last post I made. At the bottom there is a series of links to other posts on the subject. The one about using Google Images will help you to trace back to a source. I need to write a post about using Tineye, which is my favorite site to use, but I used Google as an example, because i was tired of seeing google listed as a Source! LOL!
Thank you so much. I honor people's intellectual property and will do whatever it takes to not violate that trust.
I have written a few posts about it already, and so have other photographers on here. I do have a post somewhere that shows quite simply how to work back to the source - takes all of a couple of minutes in most instances! If you can't find the source, you can't use it! I will track down that post and link it here.
It is not a subject that most want to address, because the majority of posts that are using images not from Pixabay etc. are plagiarizing and infringing on copyright. No one has a right to use ANY image on the web - except where specific rights are given. It may be OK with the Steemit community, but that does not make it ethically right.
If you find an image on the web, unless you are willing to do the homework and find out what the source is , then you should not be using it. Steemit doesn't care. It's just a community! Of course you are going to be limited, that's why there are stock agencies that license content. We are professionals who work for a living like everyone else, but that is often hard to get across on here. My overhead over the years has been hundreds of thousands of dollars, so giving away my work for free was never my intention. LOL!
Thank you so much. I honor people's intellectual property and will do whatever it takes to not violate that trust.
I don't think it's appropriate to plug my latest link here, but I uploaded a post this morning about photo plagiarism and how to find the real source in just a few minutes and a few clicks of the mouse!
I see no problem linking to another of your posts, especially when you are answering directed questions and trying to help. Again, thank you I'll search it out.
The other link was for and older post that doesn't stand to gain monetarily, so I did not think it was appropriate to link to a brand new post. :-) You should find me easily enough. LOL!
I'm with @citizenzero. since you are helping discussion and not just advertising its all good and frankly helpful :)
Ok, and thanks! Here is the link then. I hope it will help. I honestly think that education is the key. https://steemit.com/photography/@dmcamera/photo-plagiarism-how-to-avoid-it-original-photography
If you are talking about cheetah it does sometimes mess up. That is the thing about a bot, it cannot determine the minor things that may decide about posts that are in grey area.
Thanks!