opsec wrote:

"Red Cross?!  I thought it was a target marker!!!"

That cross is red to you Op?  Looks white from where I'm standing...

orangeplus wrote:

We're trying to have fun here, not strike a blow against the man.

You say that as though they were two separate actions.

< DhalAdence > If you were not there . . .  You do not know. < /DhalAdence >

Digimarc isn't necessary. A site owner/webmaster can see who's "calling" images from his or her server by pulling up a report, or being automatically advised if the bandwidth leakage is excessive. It's similar to the sort of anti-leeching/anti-hotlinking protection you see from sites like Imageshack or Tripod. F'rinstance, I know there's a small forum in Japan that's been swiping several pix from one of my site's threads, but the size of the files and the number of views don't warrant contact with them, or punishment. If I ever wanted to, I could simply block their domain.

In most cases, you really have to be an over-protective, paranoid ass to bother about such things. If your images are visibly watermarked, then you're getting free publicity. Still, in the case of a concerted effort to co-opt someone else's hard Photoshopping work, it's best to ask first. I have an entire gallery of [non-ghey] avatars, fashioned from the work of a sculptor named Kathie Olivas. I got her permission, and credited her. Still, some people (of the non-paranoid, non-assy variety) don't want their stuff associated with a particular site. In the case of High Street, I simply can't imagine why.

Last edited by pALEPHx (2007-11-06 16:01:43)

choad wrote:

If, for insistence, Rogers Cadenhead turns around and demands we stop using the slogan, "The Web's Bitter Afterbirth" - and I suspect he already has - what do we tell him?

Fuck off, and die?  Hey, just tying to think "inside the box" here for a change.  It's obviously not working out all that well for me.

Roger wrote:

I'm not stupid, sheesh.

Another e-fantasy ruined.  Thanks for that, Rog.

Last edited by Decadence (2007-11-06 16:17:31)

Hey Dec -

Fuck you.

Hey pENIx -

Fuck YOU.

Btw, it *is* All About Me (tm).

Please don't make me put a disclaimer here.  I'm pretty sure I don't need one for Dec...

Papi Chulo, bitches.

!RT!

Dmtdust wrote:

These Guys...

http://www.websheriff.com/websheriff/

might be the nazis who busted the site for images.

If that mother-fucker lays one grubby paw on RapidShare, I'm going to have to hit you guys up for bail once I've finished with his ass (No, Taint - Get your mind "out of the gutter."  Try to stay with us here.)

Roger_That wrote:

- Hey pENIx -

Fuck YOU.

Erm...no. You may not. Stop drinking Decadancemix's booze.

The Web Sheriff looks like a media hack, a Harvey Levin for intellectual property law. Nonetheless, there's a whole cottage industry cropping up around copyright infringement and piracy, with boiler rooms full of surfers* paid to scan the WWW for misappropriation of any kind. And yes, it's fairly expensive, because they presume you'll be able to take legal action on the basis of their findings. EFF, anyone?

* You'd think this'd be the perfect employment for Asian outsources, but they only work for the first tier of inspections. Even college profs have access to automated web-searching apps that flag plagiarism in student papers.

pALEPHx wrote:

Roger_That wrote:

- Hey pENIx -

Fuck YOU.

Erm...no. You may not. Stop drinking Decadancemix's booze.

The Web Sheriff looks like a media hack, a Harvey Levin for intellectual property law. Nonetheless, there's a whole cottage industry cropping up around copyright infringement and piracy, with boiler rooms full of surfers* paid to scan the WWW for misappropriation of any kind. And yes, it's fairly expensive, because they presume you'll be able to take legal action on the basis of their findings. EFF, anyone?

* You'd think this'd be the perfect employment for Asian outsources, but they only work for the first tier of inspections. Even college profs have access to automated web-searching apps that flag plagiarism in student papers.

Student papers are  a hell of a lot easier than photos/video/music.  Collecting on that kind of enterprise would be difficult as well, since under normal circumstances you'd have to send massive numbers of takedown requests and hope someone forgets to take something down so you can sue them, and the people inexperienced enough to not know when to hold'em and know when to fold'em probably don't have enough cash to make up for the hundreds of hours of surfing required.  I'd be interested to find out if anybody's really making much money back off of lawsuits, or if they just figure that it's worth the money to hire these guys in order to try to stem the tide of copyright infringement.

Roger_That wrote:

Thank you!  Thank you very much.  I don't care if the pics show up in threads where I can discern there will likely be pr0n.  But surprise pr0n isn't good for my work career.

Kisses,

Woggah.

RT, respectfully speaking, you can alter your profile so that it shows an "image" link instead of the actual image.  That way you can surf at work porn free, then check it out while you're at home.

It's kinda tough to go,   I work so no porn on any link unless otherwise CLEARLY labled!

It's against the spirit of the forum... think back to tubgirl and lemon party.  The purpose was specifically to get someone in trouble for looking at gross stuff at work.

When I'm at work, I alter my profile so that no pics show up.  That way I don't have all the profs thinking I'm any crazier than they already think that I am.

Mr. Cupcake wrote:

Anyway, I don't think websheriff actually has anything directly to do with legal action. They just report it to the folks who do follow up with copyright infringement matters. It's probably pretty easy for them to find the available files for a specific client where music is concerned since there are so many aggregators out there.  I'm not sure about other media but images seem next to impossible unless directly hotlinked or tagged.

That's pretty much what they are/do, yes. It's a whole cottage industry of anti-piracy services, most of whom can combine low rates with the brute force of a million subcontinental Indians running search engine query after query (no word on whether they will eventually produce the collected works of Shakespeare...but if they do, they'll probably have to pay somebody). They do not commonly undertake legal action on behalf of their clients but, as you discovered, they send the most rankling of C&D letters. A post relegated to the comment section, however, doesn't really constitute "official notice." You could probably have retained the file, considering that you actually had permission and that it pre-dated their new contract and recent publicity. Oh, well.

HS staff are wise to remove media that are questionable. This is not censorship, it isn't aimed at anyone in particular, and the alternative is usually a headache that no one has the patience or the pocketbook to endure. Banners are defensible as "original art," once their source materials have been altered (like putting a moustache on the Mona Lisa, or mounting a urinal), but--for my own--I'm not claiming rights to them or accepting any compensation for their display.

Copyrights can be renewed by heirs/estates, gallery agents, publishing houses, etc. The penultimate point is "passing off such work as your own." The original artist/author doesn't have to lose money (nor do you necessarily need to gain from the work) to substantiate a complaint. People police such things too arbitrarily, and much of what's on the WWW could be called derivative. High Street can easily stay on the side of caution, but not every official-sounding communication from some lawyerly type is worth the benefit of the doubt. Despite all that we've been discussing, it's almost always going to be a case-by-case thing; hard to generalize, harder to legislate. Right now, it's the media conglomerates and entertainment industry that are trying to gather up their marbles and charge everyone to play...but they never said they weren't in it for the money.