Facebook image sharing copyright issues

[Dan Robinson]

This is an open letter to all of the chasers and weather enthusiasts with Facebook 'Fan Pages'.

I was surprised and disappointed at the multiple chaser/weather "fan pages" that copied my image to their Facebook page last week, instead of 'sharing' it directly from mine. The result is that they got all of the traffic, shares and new 'likes' to their pages that I would have received. To do that, they had to right-click, save the image to their hard drive, then re-upload to their Facebook account. There is no possible accidental way to do that within Facebook, each instance was a deliberate act. Properly sharing the image only requires a simple click within Facebook. It's obvious this was done with intent to use the image to boost the page owner's own numbers.

While a few of the offenders gave 'credit' to me for the image, consider that this is no different from a TV station or cable documentary using your image on the air for a credit line, without your permission.

What was further aggravating was that most of the offending pages had 20-30 times more followers than my page, yet found it necessary to use my work to further help their follower counts instead of mine.

With social media becoming a major player in media usage and advertising, this is no small offense that could cause legal problems for page admins in the future. Please respect the copyrights of chasers and share the image properly from their pages.

 

[Skip Talbot]

The best defense against this is to prominently mark the image with your name or brand across the center of the image. Then if your image is copied without being shared, their audience still sees your name or brand. They won't have single click access to your page, but they'll at least be able to easily look you up from the search bar if they're curious. Watermarks in the corner can easily be cropped out, but ones in the center require quite a bit of effort to edit out. It can be done, but in the instantaneous sharing and "first one wins" world of social media, it's just not worth the time. Yes, it mars the image, but it's what you have to do if protecting your work is more important than its aesthetics.

 

[Dan Robinson]

It seems this is partly due to a belief by many that if something is posted on Facebook, anyone is free to use it as they please for any purpose, as if it passes into public domain.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I'm getting ready to send my first invoice to a FB page admin for copying an image to their gallery instead of properly sharing it. Will be doing this from now on. I have other clients who purchase licenses to copy images to their FB pages, the infringers should not get a free pass. Standard social media usage rate.

Just a note of caution to any page admins who make a habit of copying images to their own pages' galleries rather than locating the source and sharing/linking to it from there. This was rampant during Hurricane Sandy. I saw many AP photographer images copied to page galleries. It's copyright infringement and actionable!

 

[Rob H]

The downside to watermarking an image is that you don't recover all that traffic - a user is far less likely to read a watermark and type a URL into their browser, than just click a handy link. My suggestion: Facebook's equivalent of the DMCA takedown notice. Eventually these accounts get flagged as being problem accounts and the problem solves itself.

Also, I think there's a new mindset that "Fair Use" protects everybody because they're not explicitly making money from it. With Fair Use, the burden is on the person claiming it as a defense, and "entertainment" value doesn't count. Educational and parody Fair Use have been historically difficult to prove.

 

[Jeff Duda]

Another thing you can do to alleviate the problem is to compress, shrink, or in some other way corrupt the image so that it is not top quality. Label it as a sample. You'll always have the raw, fully-uncompressed image yourself that you can dole out when needed. True, it still doesn't fully remove the problem, but it's one way of having easy proof that the image is yours.

 

[Dan Robinson]

With Facebook sharing, the intent is to drive traffic to your FB page and get more people following your work. All of my images have watermarks on them, but when one is stolen and copied to another FB page, the watermark doesn't help me. The thief's page is the one that gets all of the traffic, they get all of the shares, the new likes to their page, and so on. Very few, if any, people will actually take the time to type in the URL in the watermark to find your FB page or web site.

It's just like when a TV station takes your work and airs it. Even if the watermark is visible, how many people actually get on their computer and go to that site? I can tell you because it's happened to me: it's zero. The only benefactor of someone improperly sharing your work is the thieving FB page owner. You see no benefit, while the thief increases his/her following.

A FB page is no different than a web site. It's an internet presence that the owner controls and benefits from the traffic. Copying an image to a FB page is no different than copying it to a web site, tv show, newscast, book or magazine.

With Sandy, I saw FB pages copying AP photographs that were subsequently shared thousands of times. One page went from around 7,000 followers to over 11,000 in a couple of days by sharing other people's images. That's a gain of 3,000 in 2 or 3 days. Those of you who own FB pages know how long it takes to gain an audience. Pages like this do it very quickly by taking images from photographers like you and me. That particular page took my tornado image on September 25 and it was shared from there almost as many times as it was from my own. It had twice the number of likes on it than the one on my page.