photographer’s rights

Is Google’s New Image Search Violating Their Own Policies? The Law?

By Mia McPherson, on February 4th, 2013%

I have been doing more research about Google’s update it its Image Search and have come across a few things that I find of interest. I will be providing links and telling my viewers which paragraphs to look for and adding a short quote from the pages which I believe falls under “Fair Use” since I will not be grabbing the entire content of a page or making screen shots which might be in violation of copyright laws.

Let’s discuss the first question in my title: Is Google’s New Image Search Violating Their Own Policies?

I believe they are, take a look at Google’s Terms of Service for people who have Blogger Blogs on a page called Blogger Content Policy: http://draft.blogger.com/content.g?hl=en

One paragraph on that page; outlining what Google expects from the users of their free blogging platform, stands out in clearly written language.

Copyright: It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. More information about our copyright procedures can be found here. Also, please don’t provide links to sites where your readers can obtain unauthorized downloads of other people’s content.

I made that one sentence red so it would also stand out clearly. So; let me get this straight, according to Google’s terms of service for the people who publish blogs on their Blogger platform tell those users to not provide links where other people can download our content without our authorization.

But Google is providing links to our content and facilitating unauthorized downloads of that content.

Does Google apply or follow the same terms of service to themselves as they do to their users? It sure looks like they don’t, doesn’t it?

I recently discovered one of my juvenile Red-tailed Hawks in flight on a Google Blogger blog, the image was “hot linked” to my web site galleries and I sent in a DMCA Copyright Infringement Notification to Google to have the image hot link removed. This is their reply and response to my notification:

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out to us.

In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have completed processing your infringement notice. We are in the process of disabling access to the content in question at the following URL(s):

http://birdsflyingpictures.blogspot.com/2013/01/mvscience-tailed-hawk.html

The content will be removed shortly.

Please let us know if we can assist you further. If you would like to file additional requests, we ask that you contact us by using the online forms at: www.google.com/support/go/legal as we do not accept add-on requests.

Regards,
The Google Team

I went to the offending URL to make sure that my image was no longer displayed on a Google Blogger Blog and this is what I saw:

Not only did they remove the hot link to my image they removed all of the content on that blogger’s post.

But wait; isn’t Google doing the exact same thing this blogger was doing by hot linking to my image files on Google’s new Image Search engine?

Yeah, they are, they are infringing in the SAME manner as the owner of this Google blog had been.

Shame on Google for not following their own terms of service in regards to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, shame, shame, shame.

Next question: Is Google’s New Image Search Violating The Law?

It sure looks that way to me.

Let’s visit the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s pages on Intellectual Property theft and read the statements on their Anti-piracy Warning Seal page: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/white_collar/ipr/download-the-fbis-anti-piracy-warning-seal#unauthorized

Warning language specifying current penalties

FBI Anti-Piracy Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

Okay, see the word “distribution” in the FBI’s warning language? Google’s update to their Image Search pages DOES distribute our works without our authorization. Is hot linking considered “reproduction” when our images show up full size on their Image Search pages? Well, I sure didn’t authorize them to have my image “reproduced” on their pages. Did you?

This page on the FBI’s website about Intellectual Property Theft is a VERY interesting read regarding Google’s update to their Image Search: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/white_collar/ipr/anti-piracy

Additionally The FBI has a partnership page about Intellectual Property Rights which is also very informative: http://www.iprcenter.gov/

It appears to me that artists, photographers and other content providers whose works show up on Google’s Image Search results have the option of reporting Google to the FBI through their partners at the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center for Copyright Infringement. http://www.iprcenter.gov/referral

I am seriously considering taking that action, Google isn’t listening to the artists, photographers and other content owner’s feelings on how wrong the changes are to Google’s Image Search, they think they are bigger than we are, but are they bigger and stronger than the FBI and its partners?

I wonder how many complaints through the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center for Copyright Infringement against Google it would take before the hot linking to our original files would be removed from Google’s update to their Image Search and that “View Original File” button would be removed?

Isn’t what Google is doing Criminal? Sure feels that way to me.

What Google has done isn’t “Fair Use”. If in accordance to the DMCA they have to remove our content that is hot linked on their Blogger blogs then in accordance with the DMCA Google needs to remove the hotlinks on Image Search to our files immediately, remove the “View Original File” button and stop facilitating the unauthorized distribution of our Copyrighted work.

Anything less is criminal.

Mia

See my previous post about this Google issue: Google has become the biggest image scraper of the Millennium

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and none of the content above is to be considered legal advice, the opinions are my own and nothing more.

Google has become the biggest image scraper of the Millennium

By Mia McPherson, on February 1st, 2013%

Close up Chukar in the snow – Taken January 31, 2013

You might wonder why I have used this title but since the 25th of January changes have been made to Google Image Search that have infuriated webmasters, photographers, artists and many more.

It used to be that when you did an image search on Google you would see a page full of thumbnails and when you moused over the image it would show the link to where the image was stored on a server, for instance on mine http://www.onthewingphotography.com, and if you clicked a thumbnail it would load with the web site in the background. If the viewer wanted to see the full-sized image they would click the X and be on the web site.

The image above is a screen shot I made after searching in Google images for “mia mcpherson onthewingphotography Chukars” and I clicked on the image outlined in red. Then an image pops into a dark screen with some buttons on the side. Noticed that my site has not loaded in the background like it used to so the viewer could click the image and be on my site. Now to go to the site one must click the “View Page” button outlined in blue.

If you click image details (outlined in yellow) you would expect to read the EXIF information, for instance; the name of the copyright holder, contact information and camera settings. Not so, not so at all. Instead you go to a page that looks like this:

And if you click on any of the images the cycle is repeated again, you’d go to a page that looks like the one above where I have outlined key features in different colors.

Notice the tiny, almost unnoticeable, “Image may be subject to copyright“. Google fell flat on their faces with that one, there should be a sterner warning stating that “All images are copyrighted at the moment of creation, do not use without contacting the person who created it for permission” in a color that stands out to the viewer. People already think if they swipe an image off of a Google search that it is okay to use it. See my post on Palmlix.com and how the owner of that stinking wallpaper site thinks it is okay to steal images. It IS not okay to steal images from any search engine. Period.

Lets look at the button I outlined in green that says “View Original Image”, if you mouse over that button this is what you will see on your browser window’s status bar:

The changes Google have made since the 25th of January now hot link directly to your full-sized version on your server which increases the load on YOUR band width. I have unlimited bandwidth but some webmasters do not and this change could end up costing them more money and I don’t believe that Google has the right to do that. Not only that but I have no right-click protections set up on my blog and while I know that won’t stop ALL image theft it does deter some, GOOGLE has by-passed my protections and now offers up a hot-linked full size version of my file so viewers/scrapers/thieves do not even have to go to my site to swipe my images. Google has the right to display small-sized version of my images in searches but they have now taken it a step further and show the full image on a page where anyone can right-click and download my images.

I have routinely sent requests to Google when I find one of my images “hot linked” on a Google Bloggers blog and Google is obligated to take the image down or limit the Blog owners access to their site until it is according to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) so why does Google think that THEY can hot link to our images? I do not believe this “hot linking” to be ethical or legal. They are no better than the image thieves we file DMCA Takedown Notifications on when we find our images being infringed upon. This is from Wikipedia on the DMCA:

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works.

Google is circumventing the program I have on my site to limit access to my copyrighted works. They are disseminating our copyrighted works. How is this NOT criminal?

With our images so easy to download we are facing even worse issues with copyright infringement.

Webmasters are furious because of these changes. Look at what has happened to my own stats:

This graph represents viewers that have come to my blog view Google referrals, the red dot is shown for the date of January 25th which is when this asinine change Google made was done. I had 86% fewer referrals from January 24th thru January 29th through JUST Google searches. Google is saying this change is good for the webmasters. How can that be? Does Google think we are all that ignorant?

I do not have ads that generate income on my sites but many webmasters do and now they are losing money because people don’t even have to go to your site to view all the “pretty pictures”. Even Google is losing money for the sites that have Google Ad Sense ads on them, how stupid is that?

Google has made a serious mistake, they are looking at class action lawsuits being filed against their company. As a photographer and copyright holder I’d be happy to join any and all of those class action law suits against Google.

The way I see it Google is crapping on our rights as artists, creators and photographers. And I am furious about it.

More information can be found here about these changes:

Google Updates Image Search, Artists to See Changes

An article in the LATimes (I commented, they have not approved my comment at the time I am writing this)

Google’s own Blog Post about this: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2013/01/faster-image-search.html (Yes, I commented there too) The people that do like the changes seem to be the viewers (and some image thieves) but all of the “publishers” are angry about it. Even the sleazy wallpaper site owners who steal OUR images.

Google’s post about this on G+

NaturePhotographers.net: Google “Images” change hurting websites and photographers

Is Google’s New Image Search Increasing Or Decreasing Your Traffic?

DPReview.com: Google updates Image Search with preview panel

Notice that Google has NOT responded to people’s questions about this change.

It is my opinion that Google has crossed the line and that they have become the world’s largest scraper site. They have sunk lower than the nastiest image thieves.

I am checking into ways I can prevent Google from offering my full-sized images up to the image thieves right on Google’s Image Search pages and I am NOT alone. Webmasters, photographers, artists and more are all seriously considering blocking Google’s robots from indexing our images. I am considering activating a WordPress plugin to prevent hot linking for images on my blog. I may have to go back and re-upload much smaller versions of all of my images on this blog and put huge copyright notices on each image.

You bet I am upset. Google has gone too far and I am simply not willing to take a back seat about this issue.

Mia