Who's copyright, really?
Check it out: Same model, same dress, same background, most likely the same photo shoot. One photo is claimed by Shutterstock, the other is claimed by Alamy.
Recently a billion dollar lawsuit was filed against Getty Images for fraudulently claiming copyright and charging royalties on over 18,000 images by photographer Carol M. Highsmith. The photographs were donated to the U.S. Library of Congress are quite clearly established as being in the public domain. Despite that, Highsmith says she never surrendered the copyright. Curiously, I haven't come across too many Getty Images lately.
It makes you wonder how many photographs have been misappropriated by Alamy and Shutterstock as well. I don't know that they have, but if Getty Images has done it, it's reasonable to suspect that other Internet image providers have teams of freebooters raiding and culling Cyberspace for booty.
This is relevant to Steemians posting images on Steemit because you may find one day while googling or baiduing images you find some of yours. You may also try to give honest credit to your presumed image source for your post, and then find yourself getting notice from some Internet image giant's attorneys that you've appropriated their image and owe them a portion of your STEEM or SBD, or both.
We've seen the complaints of plagiarism here on Steemit, and they are right and justified. But what happens when the people claiming plagiarism are themselves the plagiarists, and on a colossal scale no less?
My inclination is to say, "Fuck 'em." But of course, that could have damaging repercussions for Steemit.com, and experiment and a business model that we're all trying to make work and develop in good faith. Or at least most of us are. But it does raise the issue of using images, how they are claimed, our sincere effort to credit sources, and how easy it is to commit fraud on a vast scale in the largely anonymous World Wide Web.
Hmm food for thought, although no corporate is ever going to be wanting my photos!
Don't be so sure @dodders007, I've seen some of your photos and they should be copywrited asap.
Can't be too careful
You are spot on by calling this the grand experiment. The problem is the we have traversed a new path in pay to post (that Jeannie not going back in the bottle) where new users migrate from twitter and facebook where 'sharing' is promoted and encouraged. The pay to post applies 'for profit' which changes the rules of the game. I believe a great bit of legal responsibility falls to Steemit for failing to offer clear guidelines to its new user. I fear at some point Steemit will take that hit which it may or may not survive. I like the whole 'fuck-em' attitude when it comes to copyright, but there are too many lawyers in the world trying to make a living too. You say
I do not see Steemit acting in good faith. They are not protecting the business model for sake of gathering new users and wanting growth. How easy would it be to inform users about risks or legal implications of copyright and plagiarism and making clear the whole 'share' concept does not work here- before they are allowed to post. VERY EASY and it would protect the business model. But all (most) those new users would walk, never starting, showing little growth. For now, this is the wild wild west.
I like the Wild Wild West. There's so little of it left. But what about all those lawyers? The current litigious system in the US has, what, a year or so left? Pretty soon we'll be free to do whatever we want on Steemit and lawyers be damned.
Twitter runs ads for profit, so does Facebook. They're publicly traded.
There is no original work. We have been repeating ourselves for eons, so yes, fuck it. Or as the Chinese say, 他妈的它.
LOL! Actually I think "fuck it" would be “哦”. 他妈的 is used more like goddamnit.
So i was lead to understand that its ok as long as we link our story to the actual news or artical, and that we put in a image credit. When useing memes or photos that are not our own. Is this alright to do!?
Yeah I have no idea
I posted some pictures of a unique item I was selling on Ebay. A couple years later I searched Google for that item, my pictures came up with some else's copyright on them. I wondered how that could happen.