re stealing photos

[nzmalamute]

Do you people realise that most of the search engine owners steal photos from your website or anywhere else that you have photos on and other info ie google image and they do it without your knowledge too unless you keep an eye on people who access your webpage.
I have all search robots banned on my web page and ban any new ones when i detect them for this very reason

[gavia_immer]

...most of the search engine owners steal photos...

In fact not. The way and context in which search engines like Google catalog images has been legally ruled as "Fair Use". I don't have a problem with that and believe it is acceptable and appropriate.

Moreover, if you prefer, Google and almost all other web crawlers respect use of the robots.txt file standard and will not crawl sites (or sections of sites) that use it.

[rickl52]

...most of the search engine owners steal photos...

In fact not. The way and context in which search engines like Google catalog images has been legally ruled as "Fair Use".

Curiously, Google just lost a court case yesterday that ruled it does, in fact, violate copyright laws when it collects and posts thumbnails of images available elsewhere online. This changes the dynamic a bit. With that decision it is no longer the responsiblity of the image poster to act in order to prevent such collection, but it is on Google and the other bot collectors to find some way to gain permission. At least until the matter is altered again via appeal or new law.

Rick

[gavia_immer]

Curiously, Google just lost a court case yesterday that ruled it does, in fact, violate copyright laws when it collects and posts thumbnails of images available elsewhere online. This changes the dynamic a bit. With that decision it is no longer the responsiblity of the image poster to act in order to prevent such collection, but it is on Google and the other bot collectors to find some way to gain permission. At least until the matter is altered again via appeal or new law.
Rick

Interesting. The ruling was interesting too. Part of the reason for the finding was that the results may (in some cases) direct users to Google’s AdSense partners; this effected the judge's evaluation of "Fair Use" in this case since Google would stand to receive a direct commercial benefit. This economic factor can have a significant impact on a fair use claim and was probably the critical factor that made a difference in the ruling this time. Seems like the judge was indicating that use of the thumbnails can indeed be deemed fair use but in this case the test failed when all relevant factors were considered. At the moment the ruling appears relevant only to Google's use of thumbnails of Perfect 10 images, however, this is far from over so it will be interesting to see how it all comes out.

Ironically the case came about in the first place b/c the images that were getting cataloged were stolen images displayed on 3rd party sites illegally. Something that of course shouldn't happen in the first place.

[nzmalamute]

Well i am glad to see that some one DID take the google people to court.Quite often i see in my domain access logs that google,yahoo and msn try two different ip's as if one doesn't work,the other ip will ,ie the msn bot ip will be 65.54.188.133 ,then ip 65.54.188.134 will also be used so in my case i just do a 65.54. block

[jaert]

Heck...I see it as free advertising. I've had quite a few people find my pbase galleries and then able to contact me by searching for my name and other keywords.

[455rocket]

I have only ever sold 7 of my pbase photos (I don't advertise any of my photos as for sale) .... but all those I have sold have been to parties that found my images through Google image search and then contacted me. I certainly hope they keep 'taking' thumbnails of my images. Those sales covered the cost of my camera.

[trimoon]

You don't have a clue! They are not stealing photos, they are referencing them.

[dang]

This was the first I'd heard about all this with google myself. In fact a large part of my hits come from search engines, and I hope they continue. Might be another good reason for people to consider adding a Creative Commons License to their sites, and set it so search engines can use your images. I haven't a problem with google, or any otherw using thumbs if it brings visitors. I agree, seems like free advertising to me.

[mesullivan]

If it means I might sell a photo, they can use thumbnails all they want. It's free advertising. Hard to beat that deal.