Hi all
Found this great little website www.tineye.com. You upload an image of yours, or enter the image's url, and they scan the web looking for matches. So far I've found 3 of my pictures being used elsewhere, needless to say without my permission.
They have plug-ins for Firefox and Internet Explorer, these are very useful. Once installed, you go to one of your travelblog pages, right click on a picture and select "search image on tineye". This will open a new tab, and if they find any matches, they'll list the urls.
One of the examples of what tineye found for me:
My picture
The copy, cropped, but look at the people on the right hand side!
Good uh??
Hope you find this useful!!
Have travels and happy snapping! :-)
Maria
Reply to this Hello Maria 😊
Does that site charge anything for this service?
Mel
Reply to this No!! It's completely free!! I'm getting addicted!!!
I found another two of my pictures being used, one by some Peruvian site and another one has turned up in Hungary!!
I know I should be flattered.... but I'm cheesed off!! Why can't they just ask!?!? I don't know whether to just ask them to withdraw the pictures or whether I should demand money... Getty images do it, why shouldn't I?? 😱
I wouldn't mind too much if they had bothered to credit me at least... even without payment, but it really annoys me that people just take your pictures without asking 😞
Reply to this Thanks Maria 😊
So far, I have not checked the web to find out if anyone is using my blog material. I want to avoid seeing anything that will irritate me, since I dont write my blogs for commercial reasons anyway. Some of the stories I have heard here on TravelBlog are horrendous, like about people posting stolen photos of other peoples friends and claiming that they are their own friends. Harmless and stupid I suppose, but so annoying!
There is a thread about this from a while ago here on TravelBlog. I will dig it up and post link here.
Why can't they just ask!?!? I don't know whether to just ask them to withdraw the pictures or whether I should demand money... Getty images do it, why shouldn't I??
I wouldn't mind too much if they had bothered to credit me at least... even without payment, but it really annoys me that people just take your pictures without asking
You are entitled to set the conditions for which your photos are to be used. There is a copyright notice on TravelBlog accounts. But, you might have trouble enforcing it, depending on which site the stolen photos are on.
Reply to this I think the website is fantastic! I tried it for a few of my photographs earlier (nothing came up, but as they say, their database doesn't cover all photos on the internet). I just wonder how thorough it is - would Tineye notice if a photo was cropped, or enlarged, before being used without permission?
J.
(I have checked on their website and according to them images will still be detected if they have been resized). Reply to this Hi Vinovat, well as you found out, yes, they do seem to find cropped pictures as well, the example I listed above has been cropped and it still found it...
Whilst the search is not infallible, seeing that they don't have the whole web covered, I think it's pretty good considering it's a free service! 😊
I also found someone's nicked one of my pictures for his blog (NOT travelblog), it's a picture of a kiwi landscape but he claims this place is in Mexico! Go figure. I've left a comment on the page complimenting him for the picture and asking him if he took it himself... can't wait for his reply! 😱
Reply to this Hey, I just found someone's not only pinched my picture for some Portuguese forum, he's also hotlinking!!!
Ali, you may want to have a look at this one!
http://sites.levelupgames.com.br/FORUM/RFONLINE/forums/p/199475/1783501.aspx.
My picture is the first one, i.e. the roadsign
Reply to this Is hotlinking more harmful than the regular copy and paste blog theiving? Another of those scummy internet behaviours, by unreputable sites?
Ali, you may want to have a look at this one!
I left a note in the private forum, to point this out to Ali. 😊
Reply to this One point: If you remove photos of yours that somebody has hotlinked to, and then reload them with a differrent name, would that break the link, so at least you can prevent your own photos from being used in this way?
Hopefully, this is the only photo being hotlinked to, rather than just one of many TravelBlog photos.
Reply to this that would work to break the link, but hey have a little fun with it, go into the image and write something like stolen from your website name and leave it up on the server. and then add another picture with a different name to replace it in your original blog or website
As long as the image URL remains on your server they will be feeding the bad image on the the scrappers site.
Reply to this I've been experimenting with Tineye, searching for pictures that I have uploaded to more than one website. It can never match them, which means that photography and well-known blog sites aren't part of Tineye's "cachement area".
J.
Reply to this Your photos being claimed by someone else can certainly be annoying. I was a professional photographer and now I just do it for fun. A long time ago I said I would no longer worry about those who took my photos as theirs. We shared some photos recently for a monthly publication and when the article came out we got no credit and it appeared the photos were the writers. You may recall that the portrats you purchased always had a note on the back that they were the property of the artist and not yours even though the portrait was of you. My point is that all this copyright and copying is so far out in left field with the new technology of today it's not worrying about. On the other hand if you shoot a unique Brittney Speers photo, in a unique settign in a unique location, that no one else has, then that one you should sell for big bucks. Use that one which I took and I will be ready to see you in court. A landscape of the western plains is not very much in demand and everyone seems to shoot the same shot.
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