Iconic Britain looks extremely worrying at first glance. It is not a photo competition in any normal sense as photographers don't win anything. Submitters are told 'No need to take any photos, simply use Live Image's powerful seach to find images!'
Yes, that's right : it seems anyone's images anywhere on the web may be used without permission to win the submitter a prize. All you have to do is use the search facility provided to find photos and drag them into the Iconic Images entry box.
Unfortunately the site is incredibly confusing, but all is not what it seems. Although at fiirst glance this is Bill's Evil Empire[TM] finding interesting new ways to grind photographers into the dust, it is not so much a photo competition but an image search engine operated by Microsoft (Live Search), which is trying to promote itself out of relative obscurity compared to Google Images.
To build traffic and brand profile, members of the public are invited to nominate photos with the possibility of winning a Nikon digital camera each day. The voting mechanism isn't a tickbox, though; you actually drag and drop the images you like. This makes it look as if participants are beiing asked to go out and steal, but they aren't. They can only drag and drop from material Live Image has indexed.
Is this a big deal as far as copyright is concerned? No more than any other search engine. Iit's simply a competition asking people to put forward images that they like from those already indexed by Live Search. But the site, what it does and how it works - and often doesn't - is bound to alarm photographers. It's not really clear who wins or how, or what the panel of judges is doing down the bottom of the page. Hang on, that's Brian Blessed and Joanna Lumley - who are the two in the middle? Michael Barrimore and Raoul Castro? And why do only 3 turn up sometimes?
The Live Image search engine adds a great deal of confusion as it appears to the casual viewer that it and Iconic Britain are one and the same. Photographers are typing in their own names and finding images which they believe have been entered. This isn't necessarily the case, although it might be, but it doesn't seem to be possible to view images that have been entered (ie voted on), just everything Live Image has spidered and knows about. This should be no more alarming than finding your photos on Google images
What obscures this innocent explanation is that Microsoft have indulged in some ambitious but iffy scripting that just doesn't work reliably here, in either Firefox 2 or Microsoft 7.
What is supposed to happen, but only sometimes does, is that a thumbnail can be hovered over and will zoom to an enlarged view that also reveals the image dimension, file size and a non-clickable link to it's location on the web. There is also the ability to add to a scratchpad (lightbox) and a 'feedback on this image' link that leads only to 'Sorry, the page you requested is not available.'
It goes without saying that all the thumbnails have had any metadata stripped, but that is par for the course. I keep pointing this out to people who believe orphan rights legislation is innocuous : just about every server-side resize mechanism on the web removes all metadata.
What Live Image is supposed to do, it only does sometimes. If you click on the zoomed thumbnail it is supposed to open a frameset with the index thumbnails on the left, and the original site loaded into the right-hand frame. However quite often this just doesn't happen, in fact nothing does. It becomes much more reliable if you resize the thumbnails smaller using the slider.
When it works, the photographers site appears on the right...
As far as I can see there is no way for users of Live Search to 'acquire' (steal) the full size image without going to the original location, the photographer's site. If anything Live Search is more protective of photographers' copyright than Google Images, which serves up cached larger sizes and requires more user effort to visit the original site. With Live Image, the site is automatically loaded into the frameset, unless it's a site that prohibits frames, in which case Live Search politely serves a notice saying so and offering the full URL.
So the alarm circulating the net is not really warranted. What looks like a competition aimed at image thieves is really just a way to get people to view and use the Live Image search mechanism. MS have certainly shot themselves in the foot somewhat by not making this even slightly clear, and then by using immature code that doesn't work reliably and encourages the belief that stolen images have been uploaded. But in realty they have not, and nothing can be uploaded : everything on display has been spidered, just as Google do. But unlike Google, MS even give you an opt-out link, in case you don't like your work being shown or used in this way.
I quickly found a couple of instances of my work used without permission on sites Live Search has spidered, and will now be investigating those. So far very little of my own site has been indexed, but maybe I'll nominate the few that have and try and win a camera...
This story has now appeared on Brand Republic,a respected publication and website that covers all things related to marketing and brand management.
It is also featured on Amateur Photographer.
Hopefully there will be some more mainstream coverage as the competition reopens.
Thanks for that Gordon.
Just to clarify one thing, the removal of metadata is indefensible. The deliberate removal of copyright and ownership information is a criminal offence under both UK and US law when done deliberately, and quite right too. But it's pretty much unenforceable because we have to prove intent.
It's also disastrous in the context of orphan works legislation. It should not happen, but the reality is that resize scripts used across the web do not preserve metadata because of the server load, increased Jpeg file sizes and bandwidth required. As a result ISP's are wholesale orphan factories that encourage infringement.
I think most of us thought this might not matter too much as small thumbnails have not seemed to have commercial value and usually link back to attributed originals, but this Microsoft exploitation shows both to be mistaken assumptions.
Sites like Flickr, which can generate multiple resizes, some very large, are downright dangerous. User pressure could get this changed but the vast majority of Flickr users don't embed ownership details to start with.
I certainly don't approve or accept all this. Sites like this exist to try and educate but end up largely preaching to the converted. Hopefully it helps a bit, but where we need to be going is, in my opinion, an intense, global campaign to press for enforceable moral rights and mandatory attribution. It ought to be no more legally or morally acceptable for a photo to be reproduced without ownership details than it is for, say, MS Office to be copied and distributed with all references to Microsoft removed. In fact even moreso, because their brand is instantly recognisable and their product traceable, where ours is not.
This is going to be a tough sell in such a disparate photographic community, but the threat of orphan works legislation presents an opportunity to make this case. It is one area where amateurs and pro's agree. Regardless of whether anyone wants paying, they don't want their work anonymised. The NUJ, who were initially neutral about the US's OWA2008, have now recognised that there must be enforceable moral rights as a quid pro quo, after input from photographers. Every representative body, photo club and forum needs to get behind this, then we might have an antidote to Web 2.0 predation and corporate opportunism.
'If we had more resources'... ain't that the truth.
©A admin
MS seem to be replying to complaints using the following form letter:-
Dear ******,
Thank you for your correspondence in relation to this matter.
At Microsoft we take copyright very seriously and endeavour to provide all users of our products with guidance on respecting copyright. However you have informed us that you object to certain of your images being submitted by users and displayed through the competition mechanism and that you do not wish these images to be included in the competition. We appreciate the fact that you have informed us of this situation and want you to be reassured that we will take steps to ensure that each image you have reported to us will not be used again within the competition.
The initial stage of the Iconic Britain competition, in which users submit entries, closes at 1pm on Thursday 31st July, after which we will be compiling all submissions ready for voting prior to the Final 100 reveal on Thursday 14th August. Naturally, we will exclude those images you have notified to us from this voting. Microsoft will obtain the consent of the copyright owner in relation to all images that will be featured on www.iconicbritain.co.uk during the Voting and Reveal stages of the competition.
Sincerely,
J.K. Weston
Legal and Corporate Affairs
Microsoft Corporation USA
I know there are photographers taking legal advice about how and whether to proceed. Although this clearly is infringement the legal position is not as straightforward as the moral one, so we'll have to wait and see what the lawyers advise.
Meanwhile I completely agree with Gordon, there is more than one way to skin a cat. This has been very embarassing for Microsoft and Nikon, and shows that it is worth making the effort through campaigns such as Pro-Imaging's, forums and websites.
©A admin
I am still waiting for a reply to my e-mailed question about how you intend to compensate photographers for having used their images as you so accurately put it "to promote (microsoft's search engine) out of relative obscurity compared to Google Images".
I note with interest your admission that you have used our images, without permission, as a promotional tool to enhance the commercial value of your search engine. To my mind, this amounts to confirmation of breach of copyright by Microsoft and simply adds to the evidence that I am entitled to payment for the use of my work on your site.
It may help calm this discussion down to realise that at long last Microsoft have recognised and apologised for getting it so badly wrong by using images to promote a Microsoft product without permission. That after all is the simple heart of the matter; using copyright images to advertise a product without permission is theft of someone's intellectual property and is prohibited by the laws of every country in the world.
The apology from Microsoft was listed on the Pro-Imaging website today and Microsoft are going to work with Pro-Imaging to ensure best practice is adopted in future photo competitions. That is a positive outcome, still to be realised of course, from this debacle.
There have been remarks made during the course of this discussion to the effect that complaining about removing metadata from imagery on the webs, or web 2.0 chipping away at our IPR, etc., may all be pointless and ineffective. I don't believe this to be the case. We don't need to resort to invoking the law in the courts to change behaviour. The law is ON OUR SIDE (by and large) and that is what matters when it comes to a public perception of wrongdoing.
Companies that indulge in illegal or dubious behaviour are very sensitive to criticism, they are jealous of their reputation. By reporting the bad or illegal behaviour, listing the companies involved, and by engaging with them directly at a senior level, behaviour can sometimes be changed, even in the biggest companies. It just takes time and effort to do this, and I know, because I am involved in a campaign that does this.
The Copyright Action website is frequently referred to for examples of bad or illegal behaviour and it provides very useful reference material for our campaign. If we had more resources we would be able to deal with more cases. I am sorry to see people who are really at heart all on the same side expending energy arguing with each other instead of focusing that energy against those who are doing us wrong.
OK, Steve, this is the bit where I grovel and eat humble pie. Looking at my screenshot, I now notice the 'drag and drop' selection had vanished by the time I got the page working properly. In which case I must have done something that caused this redirection. In which case I am very likely completely wrong that the scripting of the 'add your own' pages was broken - and Iconic Britain had disabled or removed the code that enabled hover and click through. And in which case I owe you and everybody a huge apology.
Why didn't I notice this before? Target fixation I guess. :(
[Edit:]
I just went through all the history list of all the URL's I visited. Those including vote.apsx didn't show the origin etc, those including search.aspx did. The one in the screenshot was, I think, http://www.iconicbritain.co.uk/search.aspx?q=Frestonia but I'd clicked through the thumbnail link.
None the iwiser and more confused than ever.
©A admin
Please see my comment to Steve about scripting. You had to persist with the page before it began behaving.
With the few of my own images that I bothered to find, 2 instances of changed filenames were infringing copies on sites that I didn't know about, and a 3rd was a licensed image where the publisher had evidently changed the name. All the files I found with correct names were at my own site. So quite likely, any of your files with changed names were also published somewhere on sites without your permission or knowledge. If you can find them again via http://www.live.com/?scope=images where the links and loading of the host site worksreliably, you should be able to check this out.
The Flcikr API has nothing to do with this, any more than it does with Google Images. As you say, MS are very wrong to claim any images on the public web are public domain. Live Search and any other search spidering just tramps all over copyright status (it can't read), hoovering up any images it encounters and making thumbnails without metadata. The only ways to stop this are by server restrictions that block the spider, so that is down to Flickr. I'd guess though that most people want their images found and indexed.
©A admin
No Steve, we are not talking about different search engines or entry points. My screen grab was done after a lot of messing around, via the major 'submit your own' form slap in the middle of the home page. On the initial selection it behaved exactly as you say and show, absolutely no image info except a hover-over filename, no ability to expand the thumbnail and see the size, URL etc, and no ability to click through to a framed version of the site where the original was hosted. All I could do with them was drag them to the 'submit' form.
However I noticed that the thumbnails twitched very slightly when moused-over or clicked, although nothing happened. This would not normally occur unless some event was supposed to trigger and iit made me curious. I then tried the same approach in MSIE7, with the same negative result. Eventually I discovered that if I persisted in selecting different categories in the top form field (on the page you show, not the home page) the behaviour changed and I was able to expand the thumbnails and click through to the framed original location, and was able to produce the screen grab.
I don't think I spent any time at all on the smaller, top search field on the home page. My recollection is that was a 'search Live Image' form, and wasn't relevant. I wanted to find out WTF MS meant by 'submit your own'.
That seems to me like flaky scripting, something not working initially because of the embedding. I have experience of embedding one web application in another, and know perfectly well that the different scripts and CSS can interact in unexpected ways. I have spent days trying to sort out such difficulties. These pages were heavy with JS controlling an ASP backend, and with fancy CSS, complicated and fragile, and broken until after a page refresh or two. Because the problem did go away eventually I would hazard a guess that the coding problem was within the front page of the site.
So I stand by what I've said. My information was not wrong. I resent the inference that because I managed to provoke different behaviour through trying to be thorough, I am wrong, sloppy, mad or an apologist for Microsoft.
I also reject the 'personal playground' jibe. Funnily enough, the original EPUK intention was just to put up a few static pages. I felt this site and Photorights.org would be better snowballs if it encouraged participation through forums and so on. Since I've done a fair bit of Drupal development, that meant I ended up having volunteered myself for what has been a shitload of work. My motivation is imagining it perhaps makes life a little more difficult for copyright thieves and grabbers. Who I am sick to death of, and would personally sanction an air strike if I could.
I would like to see many more people active here, and if they registered they'd be able to post without having to wait for me to check comments are not porn or casino spam. Most sites don't allow anonymous posting at all, but here it seemed necessary to encourage whistleblowing.
If you don't like the stuff I post, post different stuff; the site is set up to encourage that. Oh! So you have! :)
I'm perfectly OK with agreeing to disagree about whatever conclusions others draw from this particular exploitation by Microsoft, and how clear-cut it all is. I know I'm outvoted on this one, and did before I wrote it. Pro-Imaging and a majority of photographers seem to see this as a massive, intentional infringement. I agree it certainly was not fair use, and MS are talking rot to claim anything they can see is public domain. But...
The practical difficulty is that I just can't see where the significant value is, or a realistic way of countering this and similar Web 2.0 chipping-away at our IPR, because the value is in the aggregated whole not individual images that may or may not have been put to momentary infringing use. For all any of us knows, the only person who saw our photos at this site may have been us, when we went searching for them. Can you sensibly sue MS for an unauthorised promotional use where the instigator of the infringing usage and the only probable viewer was...you?
I don't know the answer but the question is a pointer to the muddy mess that Copyright Theft 2.0 is making of our ability to defend our photography.
As it happens, making a fuss has succeeded and MS PRO's must be rushed off their feet trying to repair the damage of this particular promotion. Well, good! Pro-Imaging did a fine job. But I suspect this outcome is as good as it gets and some equally slippery novel infringement will be back again soon.
©A admin
As Steve points out in the above post, the "Submit" search is the problem. It violates the Flickr API, in which any returned image must link back to the original and provide info on the owner/photographer. The "hovering mouse" thing does not work at all the way you say it should in the "Submit" search. It displays only a file name, and a different file name from the one my images have on Flickr. This means one of two things:
1) Microsoft/Iconic Britain/Thin Martian has downloaded, renamed and hosted my images without my permission and is in breach of international copyright.
2) Someone else has done this and Microsoft's Live Search is returning this image, in which case Microsoft would be guilty of only having crappy programmers.
Well, here's something interesting: The banner from my Flickr page, created expressly for my use by Big Huge Labs, is returned in the search results along with six of my photos. The only place that banner is displayed on the web is on my Flickr page, which means that IB got those images directly from Flickr, where each one is copyrighted, all rights reserved. Microsoft is on record as saying that all images returned through Live Search are Public Domain. This may be what they hope is happening, but after seeing the many photographers who have weighed in on this issue, it is clearly not the case.
As to the crappiness of Live Search, if it is intended to compete with Google, it needs to do a much better job. Live Search returns six of my photos. Google returns hundreds of the 2600+ shots I have hosted on Flickr. Competition over.
Ok, it's too late for you to verify this now as the submission part of the site is closed, but trust me when I say this and check it out for yourself in all the postings that have been made on flickr about this, the screen grab you have posted is THE WRONG search engine from the iconic Britain website, as I have stated twice already. I was able to replicate what you have there using the search engine at the top of the page and I have no grievance with that but you have missed the point I made twice already that there was a second search that was the one that was causing all the issues. See my screen grab below.
This results page is the one that the 'entrants' to the competition were supposed to use. This results page is the one with the scrapped images, without link back to originating websites, without attribution, without copyright, without metadata. This results page is the one that everyone is so upset about. This results page IS THE ONE THAT I AM UPSET ABOUT.
This had nothing to do with bad programming nor bad implementation nor lousy UI. This had everything to do with unfair usage. There is nothing in the google ruling that protects this use, nothing.
As for the valuation of the usage, industry standard rates for such usage puts a fair and reasonable valuation of £60 per image whether MS lawyers want to agree with it or not.
We are supposedly on the same side in this discussion. Perhaps I was angry when I posted my first response but I felt let down by your article due to the inaccuracy of your reporting. You may still think you are right, but I know you are wrong because your screen grab proves it. Your information was incorrect and posting it here and then dismissing my attempts to set you straight just compounds my notion that this website is just your personal playground and has a long way to go to become a really credible source of information on copyright matters.
Post new comment