Another Competition Disqualification

[Mike Farley]

This time the reason is blatant breach of copyright when the original winner of the competition manipulated another photographer's photo and submitted it as all his own work.

From a photographic viewpoint, what is interesting is that the stolen photo was flipped horizontally, but the composition still worked well enough for the image to succeed in the competition. In this instance the main point of interest moved from bottom right, which is normally the most dominant area, to bottom left. Conventional wisdom would state that leaving the right hand side of the image very dark creates an imbalance as there is nothing of interest in the area where the eye tends to end up. In this case, the left hand side becoming light brings the eye back and sets up a circular movement as it scans around the image. Yet an another example which proves that there are no formulas for creating a good photo.

http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/ph ... squalified

[Nina]

Interesting post Mike, thank you. It rang a bell with me as I have seen what looks very much like one of my images on a graphic designer's published portfolio of websites built for their clients. If that is the case they would have been paid for stealing a copyrighted image. not sure if there is an easy way to prove the image is mine as no doubt they have stripped the Exif out.

[Mike Farley]

Interesting post Mike, thank you. It rang a bell with me as I have seen what looks very much like one of my images on a graphic designer's published portfolio of websites built for their clients. If that is the case they would have been paid for stealing a copyrighted image. not sure if there is an easy way to prove the image is mine as no doubt they have stripped the Exif out.

Nina, you could try TinEye which does a reverse image search to check if the picture really is yours.

http://www.tineye.com/

Google also seems to have a similar function.

https://support.google.com/images/answer/1325808?hl=en

Let us know what you find.

Getting someone to pay for an image which they have appropriated is another matter, though, especally if the person or company concerned is not in this country which would make initiating legal action more difficult. Davidc on this forum has reported a couple of thefts of his photos and only one of the perpetrators cooperated by removing the image. Unfortunately I cannot find the relevant thread, but David might be able to give you details or add his own comments to this thread.

Depending on the circumstances, you might also qualify for payment from the fund which is distributing £4m of royalties in respect of published work. Details in this post.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=552

[Mike Farley]

UPDATE

After posting my response, I immediately found Davidc's post in which he related his experience with image theft!

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=413&p=2203&hilit=thai#p2203

[Mike Farley]

I am also reminded of something I heard a few weeks ago when a "friend of a friend" was contacted about copyright infringement in relation to an image he had posted on the web. It turns out that he had taken a photo of a scene in a small part of which there was another copyrighted image for which he was being requested to pay substantial reproduction rights! It seems that copyright holders with significant numbers of images are using services such as TinEye to trawl the web proactively searching for copyright infringement. Whilst I cannot verify the veracity of this story, it makes sense that organisations such as stock libraries would want to do this to protect their income streams.

[Mike Farley]

I have just done a quick experiment with TinEye using one of my PAD photos taken in May. As I post identical images both here and on http://365project.org/pictor TinEye should find the duplication, but does not report any matches. It works by trawling the web to find images to catalogue in its database, which suggests that it has not yet visited either site. I can understand that it might not have visited here, but given it is a photo sharing site 365project is a more surprising omission. It follows that any report from TinEye is not necessarily definitive since it is liable to be incomplete.

It is possible to submit images to TinEye for inclusion in its catalogue, but this requires the creation of an XML sitemap and TinEye might not give it priority, so it could be some time before it is added, if at all. If I recall correctly, Nina uses pbase for her images, which I really do hope that TinEye will have indexed if it is to be at all effective. If Nina uses the URL on the website she suspects of using her image, in theory TinEye should be able to report if there is a match with her pbase image. Using the pbase image as the starting point will not find a match if the suspect website has not yet been indexed.

[Mike Farley]

Having checked out TinEye, I thought I would see how the Google image search compared. The photo which I used is this one as it is, by several orders of magnitude, the most widely seen of my images. At the time I took it in 2007 it received some publicity through the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run (LBVCR) organisation and even featured in the hallowed pages of davidc's favourite weekly photography magazine.

Brighton or Bust

Brighton_or_Bust_EPS.jpg (97.7 KiB) Viewed 3518 times

First, I tried TinEye and uploaded the image to their site for checking against its database, but this reported no matches.

I then did the search with Google, which returned several matches. In some instances, the use was in connection with LBVCR publicity, which I consider valid. There are four non commercial websites with which I have no connection where it is being used without my authorisation. It also seems that there are some websites which are linking to where the image is being hosted at a valid location.

The Google report is in two sections. The first shows all the sizes of the image being used on the Internet, but none of these included the two instances where I knew the image is being hosted with my permission, namely the members' image pages of the Croydon Camera Club's website and my own personal website! The second section is a list of sites where the image appears, although this still did not include my own personal site.

http://croydoncameraclub.org.uk/ClubMem ... Farley.htm

http://www.mikefarley.net

My conclusion is that neither service can provide 100% accurate results, but Google Images is better than TinEye. This might not be the case if the image has been through some form of manipulation beyond simple resizing. TinEye might perform better than it has in this test when it comes to detecting manipulations or commercial use, although this is pure speculation on my part and very much depends on the efficacy of its comparison algorithms and how it prioritises the cataloguing of images on the Internet.

[davidc]

Late to the party but I'm becoming increasingly distracted by finding out where this image is linked from

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cedarsphoto/8249284215/

It's generating 200+ hits a day and although I know it's an absolute masterpiece I'm still curious who is hitting it! Tried tineye and it couldn't even find it on Flickr whereas Google Image search is ONLY finding it on Flickr. I'd seen it a while back on someone's tumblr feed but that was quite some time ago... why is it STILL getting 200 hits a day. Curious.

[davidc]

Mike I did see your image above linked on the CCC site (twice actually, once in the news, once in your gallery) but not from the Edinburgh PS site where your image seems to be hosted. I'm guessing Edinburgh PS is either not or rarely catalogued.

Looks like it's been linked to on numerous veteran car sites (probably as a result of the Brighton run reporting) and also a couple of very random ones, the forum thread that says "pick a random image and post it" made me laugh.

Looks like it's also been catalogued by a couple of photo aggregation sites too.

[Mike Farley]

Thanks, Dave.

The shot was originally published by the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run (LBVCR) organisers, with my permission. It also appeared in your favourite weekly photography magazine and the article is still available on the News section of the mag's website, complete with the photo. For some reason, the picture appears twice and seems to be cropped in the second iteration. In fact, the entire image is there, but it is something to do with the HTML formatting.

http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/ph ... tion-prize

I have found the photo on the Steam Car Club of Great Britain website, where it appears on a page created by the grandson of the car's driver. Given the family connection and the fact that the steam car's driver's posing got me a ride in the following year's LBVCR event, I am reaching agreement with the steam car club to use the image with permission. All I am asking is a credit on the website to acknowledge my ownership. Being of the Genevieve generation, it being the first film I ever saw in the cinema, participating in the London to Brighton had been a long held ambition. To my complete and utter astonishment, not to say disappointment that there were no shenanigans, the real thing is nothing like the events portrayed in the film.

I have found the photo on a couple of ancient forum postings, but these are so old it is probably not worth asking the owners to remove a copyrighted image. I have also found the aggregators, but no other vintage car clubs to date. That was using Google image search, which as previously noted is not 100% efficient. It did not find the favourite weekly photographic magazine usage, for example. The Edinburgh Photographic Society website photo gallery uses Coppermine as its image library software. Maybe this is not compatible with Google?