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Comment by stevekemp | Hacker News Reader

> Most people aren't trying to steal an image without attribution, they just want to share something they liked.

As an amateur photographer you'd be amazed how many people think nothing of taking an image and slapping it on their website, or in their print media.

People routinely use services like imgur.com to rehost images they have no permission to use, and can and will strip watermarks and be silent when asked for attribution.

I'm used to it now, but damn it's frustrating when you take that _one_ great shot and find it everywhere on the internet the next day with no credit.

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I just can't sympathize, at all. I would prefer (I realize this is not the law) an internet that was considered public domain. If you don't want you picture copied, don't put it in the public domain.

I do understand hard work, and skill, and putting in the time that made you the great photographer that you are, and I understand the need to earn a living, and I understand capitalism, economic profits, and accounting profits and economic profits.

But a large number of highly trained and skilled people put a lot of hard work and effort into writing the open source software that is running the internet and the webservers that your images are on.

I understand your perspective: you'd rather buy a proprietary microsoft operating system and a proprietary microsoft webserver so you could run a proprietary Oracle database to keep track of your DRMed photos.

But understand that I wouldn't, I'd rather have a public domain web where photographers share their work like artists do and computer programmers and graphic designers and bloggers and everybody else.

I'm just not that excited by your great photo, there are a lot of great photos.

full disclosure: I took a significant news photo once and made money selling it. I enjoyed spending the money. I don't chase around the internet stopping people from duplicating it.

> If you don't want you picture copied, don't put it in the public domain.

Most of my pictures are prints, hanging on walls. But you need a portfolio to attract (paying) clients, so images have to exist!

> I understand your perspective: you'd rather buy a proprietary microsoft operating system and a proprietary microsoft webserver so you could run a proprietary Oracle database to keep track of your DRMed photos.

So if I said I'm an ex-Debian developer who's released a pile of open-source software, for free? And does so regularly?

Seriously you're getting too personal there, and just wrong. Photography started as a hobby because I love people - in the same way that woodworking is a hobby because I like doing things with my hands that are "real".

But there are costs involved, I've probably spent close to 10,000 in camera-equipment, to have people steal your work, means that stuff doesn't pay for itself any more.

You mention proprietary software? How would you feel if you wrote open-source software and people abused the licenses? That's copyright infringement, and the same thing is a huge deal in the photography world.

Sure everybody has a camera, and fly-by-night people will take money for pictures. But that's like hiring a self-taught PHP-programmer instead of a kernel developer. There are skills, styles, niches, and similar involved that clearly differentiate photographers.

> and the same thing is a huge deal in the photography world.

Is it big enough to start deploying the lawyers? That's what software companies have to do. If you're not doing that, then it must not be a big enough deal to you. If you CAN'T do that, then I think you should get out of the biz.

But, I bet you won't because you are probably getting something more than money out of your career. Maybe you enjoy the work. If it were all about money, you would have become a banker, right?

No sympathy here either. You have no natural right to get paid every single time one of "your" images is used. (Oh and who owned the stuff you took a picture of? Should you pay them to photograph it? Should they get paid every time the image is used?) With no natural rights, you have to use the legal system. Nobody cares if you sue some big corporation, but please...complaining about people posting stuff to imgur.com? What money was lost because your image showed up there? Did you try sending them a cease and desist? I bet they'd take it right down. If you don't do that, then you're not trying hard enough.

OK so you don't believe that people should be rewarded for their creativity, that people should have their licenses honoured in any field of endeavour.

I have sent cease and desists in the past, in the same way that I've sent DCMA takedown notices against people who post documentation I've written with no attribution, and against people who've forked my code and pretended to have authored it.

But I'm done with you now.

Specifically on the topic of photography though - Do you feel that the owner of the object of your photograph should get paid every time the image is shown though? Where does that end? For instance, if you shot a famous building - do you think the architect should get paid? What about the construction workers? The current owner?

That was really my main gist. Sorry for not being sympathetic. I thought I made a pretty good argument. I was not trying to be impolite, but I can see how it could be taken as such. Could you just answer that one question? I'm really interested in the fine line that is being discussed here.

> strip watermarks and be silent when asked for attribution.

If the watermark can be removed without making the image largely useless then you're not watermarking properly. Sure, its not pretty, but this isn't a pretty world. I never understood the lazy bottom-right watermark. Its trivial to remove and sites like reddit reward fraud because people like to pretend its their content as narratives like "Oh i bought a camera and took my first photo" are eaten up by low-information voters (who i imagine are the plurality of votes on reddit).

Get a good C&D template. In this day and age, it's the only protection IP holders have. If someone isn't worth pursuing legally, it's not worth worrying about whether they're providing proper attribution or cutting out your watermarks, just let those people go. If you get ripped off by a commercial publisher, send some letters and get the remuneration you deserve.

It used to be the former, now it is the latter.

Newspapers, big online sites that should know better. They take pictures and half the time you never even know unless you use tineye, or a friend/colleague will share a link with you "Hey nice work getting included in the New York Times", etc.

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