An urgent call to all professional photographers, illustrators, visual artists!

[felipe]

Some of you may already be familiar with the Orphan works bill which as of the moment is still pending in US congress.

In short, Orphan works is meant to facilitate the appropriation of photos, illustrations etc. that appear without credit lines and whose authors cannot be found through a "good faith, reasonably diligent search". The use of such an "orphaned work" would then be FREE, unless the copyright owner comes forward.

If this bill is passed on it would affect all of us, US citizen or not, and considering the widespread use of uncredited images, especially on the internet, it's definetly no matter to be taken lightly at all!

If you want to read up on the details of the OW bill , here are some starting points:
http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/
http://www.asmp.org/news/spec2006/orphan_faxcall.php
http://www.asmp.org/news/spec2006/orphan_update.php
http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/newswire/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002383134
http://nikondigital.org/dps/dps-v-4-08.htm


WHAT HAS BEEN DONE:

There has already been an ASMP organized fax campaign, which according to them was effective, several other organisations have made similar calls, and quite a few have been monitoring the problem since the amendment was proposed in january 2005, but there is no reason to lower the pressure.


WHAT CAN WE DO:

At the moment, Lightstalkers.org members are putting together a petition oposing the OW amendment, with 225 signees so far and counting. This might well be the last chance to muster forces and speak up against the bill, so we should take it!

You can find the (supposed) prolouge over here:
http://www.lightstalkers.org/prologue-for-the-orphan-works-petition-20060428

And get involved here:
http://www.lightstalkers.org/to-all-ls-members-re:-your-copyright-protection-20060425


If you don't want to sign up on Lightstalkers, just drop me a pm/email and I'll gladly forward your signatures to Gayle or John.

Also, please don't hesitate to contact any colleagues, students or coworkers, etc., we need to make people aware of this and take action NOW.

Finally, if you have any questions please email/pm me or simply ask John or Gayle directly over at ls, we'll be glad to help out as we can!

Cheers,
Phil


P.S.: Oscar, Dennis I hope you are doing well! 🙂

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Bump. Deserves a reading.

 

[sf]

We studied this in my business law class last quarter. Not cool. Definitely gives the big guys the upper hand. GOOD reason to insert a watermark in your photos (digital). I use PS to do this when necessary.

 

[felipe]

Hey folks,

My PM inbox was full since I wasn't aware of the new 20 messages limit, please send them again if you didn't come through!

Cheers,
Phil

 

[felipe]

There surely are provisions to make ripping your images more difficult, but try sending a client the requested work with your credits in bold type all over the images, or even as a small credit line in one of the corners for that matter.

I suppose most people making a living off photography or graphic design have some of their photos and illustrations published on the web, in papers and in magazines without credit lines (I know I do, and quite a few). All it would take for the work to become "orphaned" is one person ripping it out of it's context, and another one to "find" it.

I don't want to debate the growing acceptance of publishing uncredited images, since this is not the issue at hand here.
And although the above is not really an everyday example, who knows if it still will be if the bill is passed?!

It's down to us to decide whether to accept a potentially severe cut of our rights as copyright holders or oppose it. Frankly, the answer to that question shouldn't be particularly challenging.

Here is another interesting article from British Journal of Photography mag, pointing out the graveness of the situation:
http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=326426

Thanks for your effort!

Cheers,
Phil

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

I often get a bad rap for having a "very distracting" watermark on my images. This is the reason why it's "distracting". I'm slightly paranoid about this sort of thing. If the world were, to borrow a line from Ross Perot, were all Lawrence Welk, there would not be a need for all these laws, counterlaws and loophole laws.

I wonder why they didn't include audio works that didn't explicitly invoke the copyright somewhere on the track; it would be a little "distracting", perhaps? Hmm...

 

[clarence]

While we're on the topic of digital watermarks, does anyone have any recommendations on how to do this in Linux?

Thank you.

Clarence

 

[bmattock]

While we're on the topic of digital watermarks, does anyone have any recommendations on how to do this in Linux?

Thank you.

Clarence

If you are referring to the metadata, then ExifTool should do the trick:

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

If you are referring to something visible on the image, then I'd recommend The Gimp:

http://www.gimp.org/

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[clarence]

Thanks, Bill.

I was actually referring to the sort of digital watermarks that are 'invisible', at least to the naked eye.

I could print my name on every photo I put online, but you could easily crop that out. I could plaster it all over the image like Magnum does, but I think it ruins the picture.

Do you know of any program that could do this?

Thanks

Clarence

 

[bmattock]

For those who are not aware of it...there are a number of ways to mark an image with a 'digital watermark' without defacing the image itself.

One way is to make use of EXIF data. This is metadata - data about data, which is stored on the image file. If you have a digital camera, most viewing programs will let you display some or all of the EXIF data - such as lens, focal length, flash used or not, shutter speed, time and date, and so on. There are also fields (usually unused) for copyright, author, and so on - even some 'catch all' fields you can put anything in.

To do so, you need a tool that will write EXIF data. In my world (Linux) this is easy - and the same is true for all Perl programmers. There is a Perl module that makes it easy to access and write metadata. Some image editing and display programs will let you modify or insert EXIF data.

However, any data that can be put in can be taken out - assuming a person knows it is there and also knows how to edit it. There is no way to password protect it.

There is another way, however. That way is called 'Steganography'.

This is essentially putting your copyright in encrypted form and inserting it into the 'noise' of a JPG image itself. Here's some info on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

I do not anticipate that anyone will ever like my photos enough to steal them - or that they will be declared abandoned and some conglomerate will gobble them up - but just in case, I mark my stuff.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[bmattock]

Thanks, Bill.

I was actually referring to the sort of digital watermarks that are 'invisible', at least to the naked eye.

I could print my name on every photo I put online, but you could easily crop that out. I could plaster it all over the image like Magnum does, but I think it ruins the picture.

Do you know of any program that could do this?

Thanks

Clarence

Not specifically, although EXIF data is not 'visible' in the image itself.

Also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermark

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[clarence]

Thanks for the links, Bill. If you don't mind my asking, which steganographic program are you using? I'm on Ubuntu. You can answer via PM if you wish to.

Clarence

 

[Oliver]

For visible copyright in the displayed image, I used to use a script that would run ImageMagick's "convert" program against a diretory of images. It takes some fiddling, but has plenty of options for adding border, text, etc.

For invisible watermarking/verification software, I'd strongly consider finding a Windows app that works with Wine. That way, you won't need to use a Linux box when you want to show the image matches.

Personally, I'm skeptical of hidden watermarks for 2 reasons

1) in the end you potentially are in a courtroom convincing people that because your blackbox application says the image is yours, that it is

2) The more hidden the watermark, the more vulnerable it is to even simple changes like resizing the image, edits - curves or B&W, even resaving the image as a jpeg.

Not to discourage you, I just think Bill's metadata suggestion is at least a good partner solution.

Cheers,
Oliver

 

[John Camp]

We studied this in my business law class last quarter. Not cool. Definitely gives the big guys the upper hand. GOOD reason to insert a watermark in your photos (digital). I use PS to do this when necessary.

I don't think it'd be exploited by the big guys as much as the small guys -- the big guys are usually pretty fastidious about credits and ownership, because if they rip you off, they're also a big target. You see large settlements occasionally in PDN. On the other hand, my son's had first-hand experience of all kinds of things being ripped off by guys building their own websites, and simply appropriating images that they liked. Most of them are fairly immune to lawsuits, because they don't have anything worth suing for, and when threatened, are usually quick to ditch the offending images (or ripped-off software apps.)

The other aspect of this -- mentioned by Michael Reichmann on Luminous Landscape -- is that few big guys are interested in the lo-res images you see on the 'net. Not unless they're trying a produce a postage stamp.

My personal thought about this is that I don't particularly like the legislation, and think it could be recast to take care of people who need to use or curate older images, without hurting contemporary photographers, but, on the other hand, it's not exactly going to be a disaster, either.

Am I naive?

JC

 

[RJBender]

For those who are not aware of it...there are a number of ways to mark an image with a 'digital watermark' without defacing the image itself.

One way is to make use of EXIF data. This is metadata - data about data, which is stored on the image file. If you have a digital camera, most viewing programs will let you display some or all of the EXIF data - such as lens, focal length, flash used or not, shutter speed, time and date, and so on. There are also fields (usually unused) for copyright, author, and so on - even some 'catch all' fields you can put anything in.
To do so, you need a tool that will write EXIF data. In my world (Linux) this is easy - and the same is true for all Perl programmers. There is a Perl module that makes it easy to access and write metadata. Some image editing and display programs will let you modify or insert EXIF data.

However, any data that can be put in can be taken out - assuming a person knows it is there and also knows how to edit it. There is no way to password protect it.

There is another way, however. That way is called 'Steganography'.

This is essentially putting your copyright in encrypted form and inserting it into the 'noise' of a JPG image itself. Here's some info on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

I do not anticipate that anyone will ever like my photos enough to steal them - or that they will be declared abandoned and some conglomerate will gobble them up - but just in case, I mark my stuff.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

Paint Shop Pro 9.0 lets you edit the Artist comments and Image title fields in the EXIF Information screen. Photoshop (including Elements) lets you enter title, author, caption, copyright information, and the owner's URL.

Information on adding text watermarks can be found here:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshopelements/ht/psewatermark.htm
http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/paintshoppro/ht/pspwatermark.htm

R.J.

 

[bmattock]

Thanks for the links, Bill. If you don't mind my asking, which steganographic program are you using? I'm on Ubuntu. You can answer via PM if you wish to.

Clarence

I am on Ubuntu as well, though about to switch to Suse 10 (I run it on my laptop and like it). I am not using any steganographic program. I have my own cyphers which I run on my images. Nothing extreme, just enough to mark my images like a wolf does.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[XAos]

I do not anticipate that anyone will ever like my photos enough to steal them - or that they will be declared abandoned and some conglomerate will gobble them up - but just in case, I mark my stuff.

Even so... secret decoder rings are cool as all getout, aren't they? (Meaning, so what. it's still geeky cool, and that's enough reason itself.)

 

[felipe]

John, Thanks for your input!

I think the issue is more in the lines of: There will quite possibly be a new law which will make it potentially legal for anyone (big guys, small guys, does it matter?) to make (whatever) use of your work.

To quote Brad Holland (IPA):
...this proposal is either poorly conceived or something other than what it
appears to be: You don’t need to expose everybody’s work to abuse by anybody
for any purpose in order to make abandoned work available to some people for
proper use. You don’t maintain law and order by making everything legal."

If you want to elaborate this further, you might want to read this:
http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearing.cfm?id=1847

I sound like a wiseass for sure, but I don't really see any sense in preaching to the choir here.
If you don't see where OW is going to affect you after you've read my initial post, all the linked text AND made a "good faith, reasonably diligent search", I'm afraid I really don't know what else I can do to make you aware! (I'll try though!) 🙂

I certainly misjudged the audience here to some extent, as there seem to be very few people making a living off their images, and maybe this is the reason why I didn't receive a SINGLE signature...

I suppose those folks are organized in ASMP or equiv., or simply already did their due to oppose it already, so they feel under no obligation to sign yet another petition.. 😀

Cheers,
Phil

 

[Simon Larbalestier]

Phil thanks for posting this here on RFF
i think the long term implications of this are very serious and i would urge everyone on RFF to sign the petition on the LS site if only to show support against this bill regardless if you make a living from visual media or not.

 

[clarence]

I've signed it already. Thanks, Phil and Simon.

Clarence