Toward a More Enlightened Copyright Policy
Is this article useful to you? If you think so,
please consider a voluntary donation.
Contribute via Paypal
Introduction
For quite some time, I felt that ANY use of my images (or the articles on this web site) without my consent was a horrible crime, and that the violator deserved the most terrible fate I could arrange for him/her.
As with most things, time mellows such attitudes. Some time ago, I adopted a new policy on web use of images from this web site.
I think the path I took to get to that policy is interesting, as is the rationale behind it. The rest of this article discusses both the path and the rationale.
The Issues
Let me introduce a taxonomy of what I see as copyright issues on the WWW. This is the same as my list in my older article, which you can read at http://www.butzi.net/articles/infringement.htm
- deep linking - e.g. some other web site links directly to something on my web site. In general, if this is a like to a 'page' on a web site, people don't feel this is a problem. The difficulty arises when people deep link to images - so that the images appear on their web site, without any attribution and without the context that my web site provides. For example, I don't object to a link to this page. A link directly to the image at the top, though, I find offensive. Why? Because except for the copyright notice embedded in the border of the image (more on this later), the image is displayed without attribution, and in a context I may not approve of. There are images of my kids on this website. In general, I'm fine with that, but I'd object strenuously if they were deep-linked by a website where the primary subject matter was sexual exploitation of children. Beyond that, I end up paying for the bandwidth costs to display the image on THEIR website.
- Framing - this is a technique where another web site can 'wrap' your web site, and make it appear as if your content is actually part of their website. Thankfully, although this was a big problem in the past, I haven't actually had it crop up in several years. I consider this to be a dead issue.
- Search Engines - Search engines are good. They help people find things they want on the WWW. I have no problem with search engines in general. I do, however, have some issues with search engines caching copies of the content on my web site, and I do have problems with image search engines, especially ones which make copies of the images for their own display.
- Outright copying of content - Sometimes it's the case that someone simply lifts content from my website, and plunks it down directly in their website. Unlike the previous issues, this is actually a violation of my copyright.
The Path
My opinions on framing, search engines, and outright copying of content have not changed. The place where I've undergone a change of heart has mostly to do with deep linking, and to a certain extent with outright copying of images.
Mostly this change has come about because I've come to conclude that, with all of these violations, it's not possible to eradicate them. This is particularly true with deep linking, because the most common culprit now (as opposed to back when I wrote the original article) is done by someone who links to one of my images from a blog or from some online discussion forum.
And some email correspondent (alas, I can no longer find the email) sent me a very articulate note, suggesting that since I couldn't eradicate it, I should instead try to exploit it to my own advantage. Yes, this sounds suspiciously like "When rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it." And, to be honest, to a certain extent, that's the way I feel about it.
But what this correspondent suggested was that:
- the question is not "how can I prevent ALL theft/unauthorized use of images?" The question to ask is actually "Given that I own the rights to this image, how can I maximize the revenue from this image?"
- 'revenue' as used in (a) above ought, really, to include any benefit I might get from the image, including promotional effect.
- most deep linkers don't represent a loss - those people would never have paid to use the image anyway.
- I ought, really, to view deep linking as an opportunity to 'advertise'. That is, I should attach my name, copyright notice, and the URL for my website to EVERY image, and when someone deep links to it, I get 'free advertising' because I've gotten an image placed somewhere for free. The more eyes that see this image, the better, in fact.
It's taken some time, but I have actually come around to agreeing with this person. If you look at my copyright policy page at http://www.butzi.net/privacy_policy.htm you can see that I now allow (even encourage) deep linking, and even suggest that people deep link in a way where clicking on the image lands the user on my web site. And you'll notice that I now have borders on all the images, and the borders include both copyright notice and URL. I also now embed a copyright notice in the metadata in the jpg file.
These borders and copyright notices are ugly, but in a way I can live with if they let me get some leverage from deep linking and outright copying. Sure, people can (and do) crop off the border. If I find such an instance, I still go after them with some vigor, but also with the realization that I have limited leverage and it's not worth investing too much effort trying to get blood from a stone.
In other words, I now look at violations and try to find a way to capitalize on them. That means that I'm (more or less) ok with this page: http://community.livejournal.com/ruguru/?skip=320 (scroll down until you see my image, complete with copyright notice intact). I'd prefer that the image itself be a hot link, but that's probably unrealistic. At least they included a link to the galleries page on my website. It's not much - something like 1.5% of the people who view the image on the blog click thru the link. Still, a handful of click-throughs are better than nothing. There's no way to tell if anyone sees the copyright border and types the URL into their browser, of course.
On the other hand, I still run into outright copying of content that just pisses me off. Far and away, the most common rip-off artists are in China and Korea. Often they just copy the html off my web page, grind it up, and put it on their site. This usually means that they deep link to my images. In general when they wholesale copy content like this, I alter the images to try to get them to take the stolen content down. See this page, which shamelessly rips off content from this article. [update: less than one hour after I made this article public, the page has been taken down. Coincidence?]
Suggestions? Comments? Send me email at webcontact2@butzi.net