Oct 3, 2007
Tonight I spent a few minutes Googling my own name to see what new incoming links I had*, you know, those lovely organic ones that you don't have to beg and plead and pay for.* Yes, I'm well aware there are tools for checking links, but Googling your name brings up pages that mention you without a link, and there were a few of those tonight.
This little exercise was enough to keep me amused for an hour or so. But I found one site that was particularly interesting. While I was Googling my own name to see what people were saying about me, I found a blog post that - of all things - talked about why you should Google your own name so you know who is using your images. This particular post was using one of my images.
I had to laugh at the irony here.
Permission or not permission?
The natural reaction to finding your content on other websites is to ask yourself "do they have permission?". In this particular case, it's not important because I'm not especially fussy over my images, and they were kind enough to link back to me - which in my books, is a fair price for image/content use.More importantly though, I don't know if they have permission to use the image or not.
I should know, because it's my image. It's possible it was scraped from the RSS feed, or copied from the blog. It's also totally possible that I gave permission via email to the blog owner in one of the hundreds of email requests I deal with daily - and it wouldn't surprise me if I said "yes" to such a request at some point in the past.
How do you keep track of all the permissions you give out to random people on the internet? Long live open source I say, let's decomplicate life that little bit further.
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4 Comments
Actually the best thing to do is to configure your .htaccess file or your Webconfig file to deny people from calling this image from their site using up your bandwith. You could only allow images to be called up from your website. People could still copy the image and put on there own server.
You could also use a Image Watermark, but this can really be a hastle and make you pictures look horrible.
Since there is no way that you will ever know how many times your picture has been used on someone elses site it really is best to add a Little Tag in the corner stating your website address. atleast this way, you will get some direct traffic for people looking to find more pictures from sites like yours.
I would believe that this little tag can be less obtrusive if you take your time.
What is meant by putting a little tag in the corner? Inside the photo?
Gabriele
In answer to Gabriele's qustion. A little tag inside the photo means to put your website URL so if they see it on someone else's site then it has probably been done without your permission or knowledge
Robert - NJ Travel & Event Guide - Oct 5, 2007
I've had this problem. I don't mind people using my images - as long as they link back. One thing I have found though are most people just link to the image off my server and then don't even say who they took the image from. This seems to be mostly from MySpace accounts. However there was a blog I found that was using my photo as a heading picture for their article. Therefore I have taken to putting a tag line into all images - "AboutNewJersey.com". I don't mind people using my images at all - just tell the people where it came from and give credit where credit is due!
People using my images without a credit tag especially annoys me because I've had my photos published in travel brochures. Just recently six of my photos were used in the Greater Philadelphia Relocation Guide. As far as I'm concerned - my photos are a form of advertising for the site.
BTW - usually the way I find photos that are being used by other sites is by going through my stats. When sites are creating hits to AboutNewJersey.com, but no page is viewed - then I know they are embedding one of my photos in their site and most likely not giving me any credit. I then go to their page and check it out Like you, I use Dreamhost, so their standard stats gives me this information. (I also use Google Analytics for more detailed stats)