not many photos on here !!!

[480sparky]

OK. We got this settled. Now let's all step away from our electronic devices and go shoot something.

 

[vintagesnaps]

Read the Terms & Conditions. That's why I rarely or no longer post my photos.

 

[snerd]

Tried to care, but failed. Sorry.

How hard did you try?!

 

[Buckster]

Tried to care, but failed. Sorry.

How hard did you try?!

Not very, to be honest.

I used to have a LOT of photos posted here, though I host them elsewhere and link, as previously discussed earlier in the thread.

When I found out that TPF staff are just fine with members who openly state that they violate our copyrights by downloading, printing and putting in coffee table books any of our photos that catches their fancy, I decided that this was not a good place to share them, so I removed them.

The great thing about linking them from my own server is that all I had to do was change the name of the directory they were in on that server, and they all went dark here, without me having to revisit every thread where I'd posted one, and trying to edit it out.

I simply can't bring myself to display my photos in bulk on a photography forum website like TPF, when it's staff has stated plainly to me that they don't respect my copyrights. But that's just me.

So yeah, I don't really care if TPF has a lot of members' photos on it or not anymore.

 

[Fred Berg]

I post my photos directly to TPF as this is the site I visit most often and uploading to threads and creating albums is very easy and user friendly. Regarding the terms, they seem reasonable enough for a free of charge site with the one negative point that members are not able to close and delete their accounts for themselves.

 

[vintagesnaps]

I haven't posted any of my photos since 'the change'. I don't know if ownership changed too (I had asked and looked it up when I first started using the site but don't see current info. on site ownership). But I haven't posted any more photos with the current terms ('permanent'... 'unlimited license to use' etc. re: content). To me that potentially allow usage beyond photos being posted here for viewing.

To me it seems appropriate to allow site usage by members for discussions, and for a site to use paid ads to run it as a business. Terms to me should not allow further usage of my work beyond display on the website.

 

[KmH]

The ownership of TPF didn't change.
It's still Social

What do have issue with as far as the Terms regarding posting photographs an other content:

You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service. You retain copyright over the Content.

 

[Overread]

The ownership of TPF didn't change.
It's still Social

What do have issue with as far as the Terms regarding posting photographs an other content:

You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service. You retain copyright over the Content.

As far as I'm aware the "connection with the service" line means that they are allowed to show the photos that you upload to the site on the site and nothing more.


As for Buck's point any photo anywhere on the whole internet can be right clicked/screen captured - printed and stuck in a scrapbook/on the wall of someone's house. We've no way to police such actions; no way to prevent them and quite honestly people have been cutting pictures out of magazines to put into scrap books for decades and thus far the world hasn't ended

 

[Fred Berg]

As far as I'm aware the "connection with the service" line means that they are allowed to show the photos that you upload to the site on the site and nothing more.

This is what I understood it to mean.

No offense meant to anyone but I do sometimes wonder if the P in TPF really stands for paranoid. Perhaps my attitude to the dangers of being exposed the right-click brigade is different to that of other members, though, because I make no commercial use of my images and don't stand to lose out financially if others do. If people are worried about this, they could upload smaller images which couldn't be put to much use by anyone inclined to lift them from the site.

 

[Buckster]

As for Buck's point any photo anywhere on the whole internet can be right clicked/screen captured - printed and stuck in a scrapbook/on the wall of someone's house.

And it's an illegal violation of copyright every time. It's thus never okay. It cannot be legally OR morally condoned, approved of or ignored when it happens, or it is no better than turning a blind eye when witnessing any other crime, and pretending it didn't happen.

We've no way to police such actions; no way to prevent them

I would remind you that as a matter of policy, the TPF staff are quick to pounce on any post that includes a photo not shot by whomever posted it or licensed to exhibit in that manner, and edit that post to remove it, with a warning not to do that in the future. There's a reason for that, and it's called "copyright", and it's very clear what that means to anyone who's informed on the subject. In short, it means that ONLY the copyright holder has the RIGHT to copy the work, nor do anything else with it, like post it to a forum OR print it and make a photo book with it.

In the first case, you pounce like a cat on a mouse. In the second, the person who says they're doing something that violates other members' copyrights gets not even a stern glance from the TPF staff. There's a obvious glaring double-standard.

At the very LEAST, the TPF could warn the person who brags about it not to post about illegal activity. Instead, the TPF staff's response, "(crickets)".

It's not like it's a foreign concept to the TPF staff to respond that way to merely mentioning illegal activities associated with copyright violations. As an example, the TPF staff also have another standard response to a related situation, and that's when someone suggests something about being able to get software, like say, Photoshop, without paying for it by using torrent software or something like that. Saying something like that isn't even a copyright violation in itself, but it's still tainted enough by copyright issues that the TPF staff's standard response is to remove the content and warn the member not to post such things again here.

And rightly so, at least morally and ethically.

At the very LEAST, the TPF staff could warn the person who posts about illegal activities associated with copyright violations.by stealing your members' photos and necessarily violating your members' copyrights in doing so, just as they do as a response to the example with the torrent thing.

and quite honestly people have been cutting pictures out of magazines to put into scrap books for decades and thus far the world hasn't ended

So, now it is the TPF staff's position that if a crime is easy and everyone's doing it, then it's okay??? Copyrights, ethics and morality be damned, stealing other people's work and doing with it as you please is a-ok enough that the TPF staff just shrugs it's shoulders and looks away when you talk about how you do it??? Hey, "thus far the world hasn't ended." It's essentially a non-issue to the TPF staff.

Take your cues from that, image-pirates (wink, wink, nudge, nudge - sincerely, the TPF staff).

Well now I have to ask, if it's such a non-issue, why don't you allow anyone around here to post a photo they don't hold the copyright to? Oh, that's right... It's that obvious, glaring double-standard again.

Now, I understand that you'll pop out some more excuses, er..., excuse me, reasons, to blow this off again, because that's what always seems to happen in a situation like this, and this situation was already officially decided and done some time ago anyway. I don't expect you folks to change your mind on it, or anything like that. We're just having a conversation about why I don't post a lot of photos here, and why I pulled the many I had posted over time. I gave my reason, you had a counterpoint, and I'm just addressing that.

I accepted that it is what it is here at TPF when it all went down, and it just means that I'd rather not share very many of my photos here anymore since finding out.

That doesn't make it right though. Whatever excuses you come up with won't make it right. They won't make it morally or ethically or legally okay to steal other people's photos and do whatever you want with them, just because you can and it's a crime that happens a lot, anymore than it's okay to do it with software. It's the exact same thing, morally, ethically and legally.

The TPF staff defends software against copyright theft, but won't defend their own members against copyright theft.

It's just that simple.

Qué será, será.

 

[Overread]

The "don't embed photos that are not your own" line applies primarily because we are a photography community and as such we use it as a rule to ensure clarity when uses post so that content posted by users is clearly their own works.

It's a rule we enforce in general but not 100%. For example we allow the embedding of photos in a thread when people are editing anothers work to show the edits; and we have a laxer application of the rule in the off-topic section with regard to some general images in circulation around the net.

Far as I'm aware copyright is a minefield, but in general images embedded (not hosted) on forums in threads are generally considered fair use or at least I've yet to hear of a forum being legally challenged because their users embedded photos from around the net into their threads (I accept that there is a potential legal challenge there and would note that I'm excluding situations where the person performing the embedding is claiming ownership of the work). It is a grey area of legalities rather like the vast amount of fan-fiction based upon copyright work which technically can also be challenged and removed (however I've again yet to hear of any author having fan-fiction pulled excepting situations where said fiction was being used to generate income -- I have heard of computer games being pulled and mods in some cases where they made use of copyright material, however its a rarer occurrence when the software is freeware)

It's also something we can enforce; we can lock/remove/edit threads and their content. We can't tell people not to save photos they see on the net; we can't tell them not to use them as backgrounds on their computer; we can't tell them not to print them.


You are correct in that we could take a firmer stance with the policy of discussion on this topic, however as far as I'm aware we've only ever had once instance of this activity occurring on the site (at least I can only recall seeing it mentioned once by one person - I'm sure its been mentioned more than once but likely only in passing and thus not in a place which generated enough attention that I noticed it). As such its never been a major issue (unlike software pirating which is discussed far more often ) for us to even have a general policy of dealing with it.

 

[Buckster]

I see that my crystal ball is working perfectly. Much appreciated for confirming it.

Here's a gift in return: Amazon.com photography copyright Books

Enjoy.

 

[tirediron]

I would like to add to Overread's post, that simply because you didn't see a response to a given situation, does not mean that there wasn't one (or many). With only a couple of exceptions, all matters of "discipline" or enforcement on TPF are dealt with by the moderating team through the use of PMs and restricted-access forums so that only the moderating staff and the member(s) in question will be aware of what is going on.

 

[Buckster]

I would like to add to Overread's post, that simply because you didn't see a response to a given situation, does not mean that there wasn't one (or many). With only a couple of exceptions, all matters of "discipline" or enforcement on TPF are dealt with by the moderating team through the use of PMs and restricted-access forums so that only the moderating staff and the member(s) in question will be aware of what is going on.

In that case, I would like to add that I was explicitly given responses by PM from the staff that ever-so-clearly spelled out EXACTLY the response and zero-level of concern for our copyrights from the staff as I stated above, so your response here is irrelevant to the actual situation in question.

In addition, the TPF staff clearly has no reservations about posting those warnings in public when editing posts to remove photos that the poster doesn't have copyright of, or when posters suggest violating the copyrights associated with software.

Once again, double-standards and attempts at justification that don't actually justify the immoral, unethical and illegal actions being defended by the staff as no big deal are rather unimpressive, IMHO.

 

[bribrius]

that is why i hardly ever post photos of my dog here. I am afraid someone will steal them and violate my copyright. And my dog.