General Ignorance on Social Media

[Matthew]

A few weeks ago, I joined a Facebook Camera club (Highland Photographers) comprised of members mainly from my neck of the woods. It's a great wee group and many have gone on outings together and I am going on one this month. Like here, it's a place to upload your pictures, give and receive critique/praise and also competitions.

Recently though, one member discovered that one of their images was stolen and posted on another group page set up for folks to post stories and pictures of Inverness from days gone by. The stolen image was simply edited by way of converted to mono and an orange filter added. The "thief" posted it up as their own work and claimed all the praise for it!

Upon being confronted about this and told about being in breach of copyright, all the other members of this group instead of ousting the thief, defended him and "set upon" the photographer from our group. They couldn't/didn't accept what the person had done was wrong. I think even one said "anything posted on the internet is fair game". This all then descended into chaos, even the so-called Admin didn't want to know and had much the same attitude as a certain faction of it's members.

It was then discovered that the thief had dozens of stolen images in his "portfolio"....and when confronted with this again, by way of the original photographer posting one of the stolen images on that group page as evidence, the same reaction was met. In fact the thief was so outraged by the fact we found him out, he actually threatened to hunt down the original photographer and his "gang of followers", ie me and the fellow photographers backing him up and I quote, "murder us one by one over the next few days", if we don't "get off his back".

Needless to say, this threat was reported and recorded. An apology was posted by this person the next day, but at the time it was very intimidating. They no longer have an active Facebook account. All known photographers, however, myself included have been banned from the group which harboured this image thief. Yet another kick in the teeth for photographers by an ignorant few.

It's a shame, but an all too common theme arising within Social Media. 

[Oldboy]

Very sad. 

[Jediboy]

Agree with Oldboy.
I think that social media is open to all sorts of abuse, this no doubt being very common.
I find it strange that anybody coud try to defend this behaviour, but there you go. Its strange how aggressive some people can become over something as simple as photography. 

[Matthew]

This is what bemused us (the group). We were a-gog at the level of ignorance displayed by 10 or so regulars of that page. Admin from that page actually emailed the photographer and gave him a right mouthful on how he shouldn't be stirring up trouble! We also couldn't comprehend how no one twigged the guy who was posting the stolen images was a fraud. Even a non-photographic minded person would have suspicions, especially when most of the guys photographs were taken on his mobile and were very mediocre at best, then all of a sudden you come across a stunning image with detail not achieved via a simple phone.

Very odd, we also learned that a woman who accidently advertised her local business on there was also vindicated and ousted by the members of that group.....very, very strange. Almost redneck in attitude. Last report of that groups activities show that Admin have recruited a known friend of the image thief and is also known for stirring up trouble, then sitting back and watching the fall out. I think that group will eventually implode on itself. The mind boggles 

[donoreo]

They probably defended it because they have all done it. 

[Reinardina]

I remember reading some months ago, that Facebook itself, does not respect copyright, and considers all photos on their site as theirs to do with as they please. A lot of photographers removed their images. A watermark might help, but is it worth it?

I think you'd be much better off taking the club to Flickr, where you can have a 'members only' group.
Or you can all join CC! But then you don't stand a chance, of course, of doing 'club business' without people barging in all the time.

Best solution would be to join both; use Flickr for pure club business and CC for general photographic exchanges.

And congratulations on winning the competition by the way!

[Hinfrance]

Very sorry to hear of your experience on Bookface. I have only ever posted a few snaps there, ditto on Google+ (the latter having a better video phone service than Skype for keeping in touch with our friends and family who are scattered all over the globe).

I am afraid that I am also of the view that anything posted on to a public forum on the web is fair game, and that includes public groups on Flickr. This is not because I don't think copyright should be protected, but because for all intents and purposes copyright in these circumstances is simply not realistically enforceable in practice. The only viable option is to register everything with the US Copyright Office, which is time consuming and not without cost. And then hire a lawyer - not without considerable cost.

To my mind the idea of a public forum is to share - so I can't see the point in defacing pictures posted on the web with copyright notices, unless they are on sale, and not just there to be looked at. There will always be those sad individuals who need to claim copied work as their own, but they are few and far between. To my knowledge I have only had on image 'borrowed' in this way, by a small US company in a small US town. I didn't even write to them about it, they got it from Flickr and put it on their website as part of their advertising pitch. I think they went bust pretty quickly anyway. 

And Re is right, Google and Facebook consider anything published on their sites as available for their own use. Remember that old internet adage - if it's free, then it's not the product, the user is the product.

[krennon]

Sorry to hear about that and it's made me think I need to check a shop near me at work they have a suspiciously similar shot in their window as one of mine....mmm although I don't think the shop owner is like that he's a pretty decent guy....

Unless it's a shot of "no particular value" to me then if I post any photos to facebook then I put a GREAT BIG COPYRIGHT through them and save them at about the lowest possible resolution...then if somebody REALLY does want a copy they can message me and I also tell people why I've saved them at such low res but if anybody really wants a copy I will quite happily provide a print etc...

You can of course set up a private group on Facebook (Kingston camera club have done this) which is invite only so you can control access to it

[Andrew]

What can i say that hasn't already been said?

Fairly sure when Churchill spoke about 'the few' - he didn't have those sort of people in mind 
As said, most web forums nowadays consider anything posted on their site to be' fair game', hence the wonderful EXIF file stripping the y apply to all images posted.
I've stopped posting on Facebook, Instagram etc. Simple as...

I suppose it is just a sign of the times.