Harvey wrote:
> musical (intellectual) property is now a *very* hot legal
> item.
Only because it's worth billions to some very big corporations like Sony
and HMV. If it was only the artists screaming, the care factor would be
very small.
> I maintain that the same will be true of imagery on web
> search engines.
I doubt it because of the relatively low "value" attributed to web images.
They're not worth large amounts to any major corporations. It may be very
important to a photographer like you or I, but we can't afford the sorts
of legal bills required to chase these things. Want to bet that it wasn't
any individual musician who chased Napster?
>Beyond all of the above:
>We don't like it when our images are appropriated.
No. I am beginning to wonder how many of mine have been. I found out a
while back that a scan I made of an opal was appropriated by Microsoft Encarta
online - without a request or attribution of the source. Judging by the
website logs, it appears that other images on my site are being used by
other web sites who have actually linked to my site rather than copying
the images - this means I am effectively paying for their convenience!
It's hard to avoid this sort of thing. I don't have time to set up the
means to avoid it. One quick method would be to use symbolic links to files
and rename the links. Periodically renaming the links would ensure that
anyone linking to the files would find the links broken, and the search
engine links would break also. The renaming would have to be done by server-end
code. Another neat piece of java code I saw recently pops up a message
if someone tries to use the right-click save-as option on a picture. It's
relatively trivial to get around, but at least it's *some* sort of
discouragement
of theft.
It's a brave new world, and it's not easy for trusting folks to avoid being
shafted by those who are taking advantage of the web's open nature. The
web was oiginally conceived by academics for academics, not by anyone whose
income derived from their art - and needed copyright protection.
Rob
PS I would also suggest that avoiding filenames which obviously relate to
content is probably a good idea.
Rob Geraghty harper@wordweb.com
