Tags
Yesterday I found myself tagged on my Sevilla Tapas Facebook account in about ten photos, which then showed up in my timeline, and after that my notifications became cluttered with comments on these “photos of me” by people I don’t know. And they weren’t even photos of me, but of tapas from a local bar. So I spent about 15 minutes tracking down all the photos, removing the tags, and then wrote to the women who posted them, asking her to please not do that again. And I also wrote an entry on my Facebook timeline that said: “Please stop tagging me in photos I am not in just to promote your business. Thank you.”
I mean, it’s bad enough when people leave links on my timeline to stuff that is clearly just blatant self-promotion, and not to something that is being shared because someone thinks I’d be interested in it. But tagging people in photos like this is actually an abuse of the Facebook tagging system. It’s meant to be used to let someone know you’ve posted a photo of them on your FB page, not as an attention-seeking cheap trick to get people to look at your stuff.
Anyhoodle, my friend Del (aka WeeRascal) replied to this – probably because he doesn’t like me dissing Facebook 😉 – by referring to the collages I did of those wonderful old photos of Semana Santa in Sevilla the other day, one of which I also posted here on casa az, which have my ©azahar-sevilla.com watermark on them. He questioned the ethics of putting my copyright on other people’s photos, and at first I thought I’d done something terribly wrong. But then I realised that they were actually collages of photos I’d taken at the exhibit – a public place – and not of copyrighted images I’d found online. And well, since I wasn’t around in 1885, I reckoned it was pretty clear that I wasn’t trying to take credit for the photos. But it does seem like a bit of a grey area. What do you think? Both about the annoying Facebook tagging issue and the copyright confusion.
You can see the Facebook conversation below (click to enlarge) or click here to be taken to the Facebook post.
casa azahar 
It sounds like a question for Isabel Dalhousie!
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I just raise a smile when you condemn Facebook, then use it. 🙂 I agree with the tagging issue – it’s a horrible abuse of the system. But I was under the impression that only the account holder can approve tags on their account before they are set. (?)
There’s no debate to be had around putting a © on work that isn’t yours. It’s wrong on way too many levels. Period. In the case of your old Semana pics, what is that you are claiming copyright of? The position of the images? Fine, I’ll move them a millimeter apart and republish.
The wider and more important issue is one that you have often vented about, which is when someone uses an image you have created without asking permission. There’s actually no need to watermark your own work – the fact that you have created it, reserves you automatic copyright. And you should pursue those that use yours with vigour.
Incidentally, I like that blue 3D © you put in this post. How did you create that?
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Haha cheeky you … I found the blue © image on google images, and didn’t see any copyright notice about using it. I often use small images (up to 300x300px) I find online to illustrate the subject of a blog post. If I use a larger image I try to find a source to link to.
The only reason I use Facebook is because “everyone else uses it” and it would be social media suicide for me to not take part. But in fact, I despise it. As you well know.
I guess what I was “claiming copyright” when I posted the collage was that I’d gone to the exhibit, taken my own photos of the photographs on display, then came home and worked them into collages (took a couple of hours). And so, nobody but me could have created those collages. If someone else wants to use them, okay, but at least don’t cut off the watermark.
I find people use my online photos all over the place. Sure it’s a bit annoying, why shouldn’t it be? But I guess that’s the price of fame, eh? 😉 But I have never ever used a photo and cut off the copyright watermark. When it’s clear (which is why I watermark my pics) then I add a link back to the original photo.
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To me these are issues which really should not be discussed in the same breath; they’re two different animals. One is the question of how fine you can parse a copyright, how long it remains in force (which varies with the date of content creation, internationally) and what your obligation is to track down an original creator for attribution of something quite old that you choose to disseminate. I mean, if I paint a mural on the side of my building and you take your vacation picture in front of that mural, is it actionable? And why would someone object?
On the other hand — well, I don’t know how Facebook works well enough, despite having an account. If tagging you in a picture means that the people who read your page can see or click through to the picture, then tagging tapas pictures that you had nothing to do with amounts to hijacking your page for advertising. Do you have to be a friend or follower to tag?
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Fucked if I know what is allowed/not allowed in terms of so-called Facebook privacy because it changes every five minutes and I cannot waste/spend time figuring out what the latest switch in policy is.
I get so many FB daily notifications that I don’t bother keeping up with them. Though of course I do so for my clients. But having to use this clunky ugly social media platform is basically a necessary evil.
Meanwhile, if I took picture of your mural and posted it on my blog, not knowing you were a famous nocturnal graffiti artist 😉 , surely there would be no issue there as your work of art was being publicly displayed. As were the photographs I took photos of the other day.
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Hye, it might be the only promotion I got!!!!
Now where are those spray cans?
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On FaceBook – I think there is a trade-off between enjoying a relatively free internet and dealing with people who abuse it. Even with stronger security and rules, there will be people who will abuse your good will. It stinks, but I don’t know what you can do.
I presume that when I post anything on my blog for instance, that there is real risk that my work will be used without my permission. I presume that because I can’t stop it. I attach a share and share alike license to my blog:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Canada License.
The license is really only a request though. When I post a photo, I’m not too worried about it. If someone wants to use my image, I’d like them to attribute it but if they don’t, I’m not going to lose sleep about it. Now the whole business is thrown into a new light with Pinterest. I pin lots of images, the vast majority my own photos, on various boards and in doing I accept that anyone can repin these at will, and change the descriptions too. I also post photos of my paintings and this is more troubling to me. Those painterly ideas are dear to me and I don’t want people to steal them. On the other hand, the internet affords me the opportunity to let way more people see those images, in photo form (which is not at all like looking at paintings) than would ever get to see them in a painting exhibition. So, it’s a trade-off. I risk having my images stolen but I get to access a much bigger audience. In my case I make paintings that don’t have a huge audience at best. If there were huge demand for my images, meaning the risk of having them stolen was much greater, I might be way more reluctant to share those images on line. I have a small audience and so for me the opportunity is way greater than the risk.
I never add watermarks to anything I post. If I make something and share it, it is mine because I made it and I’ve specified allowable use with the Creative commons license, but I accept some risk that my image will be used or partially used or changed and reused anytime.
I post lots of videos that I find on YouTube. I presume that these are legally shared on YouTube and it’s OK to point to or embed one of these videos. If someone contacted me and said, hey that’s my video, it was posted on YouTube without my knowledge and I don’t want you to share it, I would take down the post immediately. It would be the same if I re-posted a photo that I found and thought was OK to use. If someone said, no no I don’t want to you use that, I would take it down and I try to use images that are only attributed as free use or share alike in some way.
The more you use social media, the more information you share with the online world. You get potentially huge and fast reach but at the cost of risking privacy and copyright. I’m still struggling with this a little, but for me the positives have hugely outweighed the negatives.
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I agree with all of that. The main difference between you and me is that I do put a small watermark on the right-hand lower corner of the photos I post online. This is my way of saying that I want to be credited.
The other day I came across a local hotel using a photo I’d taken just the day before and “live posted” on Twitter (so, no watermark as it came directly from my iPhone). Turns out they loved this photo so much they started using it as their own Twitter avatar. I told them – hey that looks familiar – and showed them my original posting. Well, they were all apologetic and offered to take it down, but I said it was fine… and I think they like it better knowing it was taken by a local and a neighbour.
Re: Pinterest. They have recently changed their user terms, and they sound better now. Like you, I reckon pretty much everything I put online is fair game in terms of being used, but in my case I would like the watermark to remain.
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Oh no. Cheeky you. Let me get this straight. You want anyone who reproduces something you’ve copied from a museum to credit you with copyright if they use it, and you want to be able to copy and publish someone’s work for your own gains because they didn’t have a copyright notice on it? Fair summation?
Sled – wasn’t aware you were a nocturnal graffiti artist….
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I didn’t copy something from a museum. I took photos of an exhibit and then created a collage of the photos I’d taken there to show my readers. As I said in the Sevilla blog, to entice people to go and see the exhibit themselves.
I put my watermark on that because I’d done the work. I’d spent over an hour at the exhibit and another couple of hours creating the collages for my blog post. If someone copies that then they are copying my work.
And if the small blue copyright image I used here had had a watermark on it, then I would have credited it. But nothing I use here is used “for my own financial gains”… like huh?
My watermark is ©azahar-sevilla.com because I want people to know where my photos have been originally posted. It’s a website link. No confusion there. I’m not an artist and don’t pretend to be. But you’re right, I don’t like people taking my photos, cutting off the watermark, and then using them. If they use an image of mine with the watermark intact, then I have already been credited for it.
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“Copying your work” – Ha. Arranging those shots should take about 4 minutes. . You didn’t ask for permission to use the blue copyright mark. It doesn’t matter if it had a watermark on it or not. Sorry, but frankly, I shall remember to completely ignore any posts you make complaining about people stealing your images. Your perspective is astoundingly hypocritical. And actually……. quite baffling. I’ll post “your Semana work” – without your watermark. Try suing me for infringement.
Candid, as always (as you know)
Del
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Cropping and arranging the shots took more than an hour. That may not count as work for you, but I did put my time and effort into creating what I thought would be a pleasing collage.
Why on earth would you do that?
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Of course I wouldn’t. But anyone could – with zero fear. As pleasing as your collage may have been (and it was) – It’s (sorry to be harsh) kinda just a few pics arranged to fit into a shape?
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“But anyone could – with zero fear.” Well, that’s true, of course, and highlights the fact that at this level of personal blogs and non-commercial use we’re talking about etiquette rather than legal sanction. In using a watermark, az is asking for the courtesy of having her work acknowledged. If other people request the same courtesy from her they get it. What’s the problem?
The semana santa collage involved work on her part, which should be acknowledged.
Sled asked earlier what would be a reasonable amount of time to spend tracking down the creator of an unattributed image? And to what extent are representations of images in the public domain covered by copyright?
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Can I go back to my original point? People need to be careful about attaching a copyright symbol or watermark to an image which can be construed as not theirs. Argue the point at your peril. As it happens, an American photo library owns the rights to the © image used in this post.
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Time for some hard truths.
You don’t own the copyright of the collages. Actually, you don’t. If you take public material like photos that are out of copyright and transform them materially you MAY be able to copyright the result, but just putting them in a collage is not enough.
Also: those pictures in which Sevilla Tapas was tagged: were they not pictures of tapas in Seville? I don’t see that she did anything wrong. Your business name is a commonly-used phrase, and it’s only natural you’d get tagged. I’ve done this by accident myself once or twice. Just remove the tag or remove the posts from your wall.
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The woman on FB was spamming. All the tapas photos were tagged with about thirty other names that had neither tapas or Sevilla in them. When l contacted her to ask her not to tag me anymore she said she did it because she thought l would want to look at her food photos. Which is not what the FB tagging feature should be used for.
Meanwhile, I think the whole copyright thing is very confusing. I can copyright a collage of my photos of tapas but not one of my photos of photographs? Weird. I can understand a problem if l were to use the collage for financial gain, like having it printed on a coffee mug, but otherwise it’s mine. The watermark is mostly to show the source, which is my website.
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The copyright of the photos belongs to the photographer. If they are out of copyright, you have to materially transform them, artistically, so that they are recognizably different from the originals. Putting out of copyright materials together does not make them copyrightable. It may be yours, but the copyright is not.
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I just got a private message on my Sevilla Tapas FB page from someone asking if I would be interested in “liking” and mentioning their FB page that’s all about things to do with kids in Sevilla. I told him it would be more appropriate on my Sevilla Blog FB page and said I would be happy to share the link over there, which I did.
That’s the way to do it, not by putting fake tags on photos to trick you into looking at someone’s page.
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I have has quite a different problem involving copyright.
I have had a number of my videos flagged by YouTube for copyright issues. In most, it is just noting that I din’t have to take them down but that they contain copyrighted music. I have removed any that are using music which I think I could be in trouble for. I even had to go to YouTube’s stupid “Copyright School” before I could go in and delete an offending video.
However, a number are clearly illegal claims.
I have a number of videos using Fred Eaglesmith songs. I have received warnings that Koch “owns” the rights to these songs. In fact they do not. Fred owns the rights, or at least “Major Label” owns the rights and that is Fred Eaglsmith’s own recording company and Fred has made it quite clear to me (personally) and his fans that he has no problem with fan videos using his music. He actually encourages it.
One video is of friends in a band recorded live playing a piece. I don’t know if it is a song owned by them but according to the law, there is no problem video recording a band playing a cover song. The band playing the song pays fees which pay the artist royalties. However, I am perfectly within my rights, as long as the band is okay with my recording them, to post the video.
Problem is that, while companies can flag you for violating their copyright, whether they actually own copyright, and your account can be removed, you have no way of contacting YouTube and lodging a complain to clear yourself.
The irony is that I have all the same videos on another site and no one seems to care about those.
What DID happen on that site was that the video site owners (or a third party) had a dispute with the landlord of the building where their servers were located, the landlord seized the servers, and took their site down, claiming ownership to not just the property but the servers but all the material on the site. It took several court injunctions and the owners of videos lodging a complaint with the FBI before the content and the site were freed up.
THAT was truly bizarre. Sort of like a landlord locking a art gallery out of the building and seizing their website and any artwork on the website.
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