And what i'm saying is it doesn't happen. You can't put a gun to your clients head and say make my images go viral.
Getting your competition to drop your images there stealing is a lot of work and costs money if they if they don't do it willingly.
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And what i'm saying is it doesn't happen. You can't put a gun to your clients head and say make my images go viral.
Getting your competition to drop your images there stealing is a lot of work and costs money if they if they don't do it willingly.
JB
I'm talking about "friends showing their friends what you do". That is ALL I'm talking about. Without social media they had to e-mail a photo around. Now it can be done passively, so if 10 of them show 10 of them show 10 of them show 10 of them.... That's a lot of exposure for you doing nothing and spending $0. Forget the Leno example - let's make it real to a local market.... Deckbuilders traditionally have used television spots. You can spend $100 per spot on the lowest-rated TV station in your market, for "best time available" spots (which will never be shown when your prospects are watching) -- and spend many thousands of dollars to get what Facebook will give you for free.
It doesn't make sense to play 'beware of the dog' and prevent your circle of influence from displaying your images because you're afraid of someone else stealing them.
JLS
PPS - just to be absolutely clear, because apparently I haven't been.
I'm not talking about "viral" as in "Peanut Butter Jelly Fat Kid" video - I'm using Leno and Idol only as examples of what this medium can create. I totally agree, your deck video or photo is not likely to have that happen to it, and you don't need to have that happen anyway (unless you have a national product line) ..
I'm talking "viral" in a 10 friends of 10 friends of 10 friends way.
It's entirely possible for you to achieve 10,000 quality impressions from a Facebook or YouTube 'pick'... and 1000 is absolutely commonplace. What's it worth to you to have 1000 people who are all fairly well qualified (compared to a random television viewer) purposefully choose to plop a photo of your product on their Facebook page because they like it ?
I agree with JB and others that it's costly and a PITA to try to chase down anyone who is stealing your images (or other content)-- but there are a few things you all should be doing to, if not discourage the practice, at least lay the groundwork for when you need to rattle a saber. When your brand is compromised, if you haven't taken steps to protect it you won't be given any deference in court if it goes that far.
- Watermark your images (I'm sorry if this is distasteful and yes, I realize any 10 year old can crop them off. You should still do it.)
- Post clear attribution with all images and all copy . A byline on the article and a bio at the end. A caption with the photographer with images.
- Post clear policy on your site about the legal use of your content - words , images, media - it's all the same thing.. If you don't take steps to protect your brand , you can lose your brand.
- Use services like tineye.com to search for infractions. Yes it takes a little time to do this - but there are some reputation management services that are very inexpensive relatively and will notify you any time anything is lifted from your website or blog. Some use humans (in India probably) others use technology but if you're concerned - there are places that can help. Tineye is unique in that it develops a "footprint" for an image so even if the bad guys try cropping, re-sizing, or even flipping the image - their search engine will still find it.
This is all part of reputation management and protecting your brand. It's part of being in business.
JLS
PS - Greg-- just hope the clown in upstate NY is asked by someone to go and look at "their" job.
[I]"I'd love to take you there... but it's in New Jersey and someone else built it...."[/I]
[QUOTE=jstoddard;526923]
PS - Greg-- just hope the clown in upstate NY is asked by someone to go and look at "their" job.
[I]"I'd love to take you there... but it's in New Jersey and someone else built it...."[/I][/QUOTE]
How do you think I called him out on it? I had so much fun with that phone call. :)
I started asking real specific things about the photos and the jobs and the spewage of BS was insane.
The pics are now off the site, but it wasn't easy to do.
Wasn't easy - but you did it, and unfortunately that's exactly what you have to do. You seriously might want to load up a couple of the images they used in TinEye.com - and let it search the web developer's site(s). Good bet if they used your decks for one client, they used them for others.
Upstate NY -- that's where I am (sort of.. I live a mile from the NY/PA state line) -- Land of Eric Massa, our latest local disgrace.
[QUOTE=Greg Di;526909]
There was a deckbuilder in upstate NY that took EVERY single image I had on my site and used it as HIS portfolio.
[/QUOTE]
How does this harm your business?
I have hundreds of photos on the web. If another builder were to use them I would be very upset and pursue whatever legal action might be available. However, if they weren't in my market, would it really cause me any harm. Probably not.
If one of my local competitors did this, I think they would be making a huge mistake PR and reputation wise.
If they're not in your market, why pursue legal action? It costs your company money and what's the benefit? Putting images or anything else online is a guarantee that other people will use it in ways you don't really want them too. That goes for photos on your website, stuff you write here, etc. There's a guy out there somewhere using something I wrote here as a tagline for his posts, with my name attached. Only real defense against that for me is to not use my name.... too late for that....
[QUOTE=David Meiland;526964]If they're not in your market, why pursue legal action?[/QUOTE]
I agree, and wasn't it Mark Twain who said "imitation is the highest form of flattery"? Or was it Dick Seibert :)
Besides, Joe says be a "thought leader", so if they are copying your work I guess in a way that is spreading your brand.
You definitely need to be a 'thought leader' - and to get there you definitely need to be re-published wherever you can be... but you don't want someone else's name on the byline of your thoughts ;-) I've had articles ripped off almost verbatim and it's no fun.
To Dave's question - ' why pursue if it's out of your market' -- that depends what was stolen. If it's just a picture of one of your decks that could be anyone else's deck my first question would be [B]"why was that on your website to begin with ? [/B]" That's absolutely the wrong thing to put on your website - nondescript photos that could have come from a stock picture gallery... how does that help to add value to your company or your brand? How do they help strike an emotional chord with your prospect? If it's so generic that someone can represent it as their work and get away with it - it's probably not doing you very much good either.
In cases where there's something "unique to you" about the photos that adds value to your product, client, or business... then by definition there is potentially damage to you if they're ripped off, and you should at least make a preliminary effort to stop it, and document that effort. For an out-of-market perpetrator a letter is probably enough, with a copy to your atty. for your file. You don't have to start with a $500/hr copyright attorney.
Why bother at all? Since you don't know what the future will bring, you never know... maybe that photo could some day be a plate in a book you're going to write... or maybe that detail you developed could become the prototype for product you develop or license the idea for (like the Collins miter clamps) Or maybe the little kid on the deck will wind up running for president someday and you want the original copyright. In those cases not taking steps to protect it now - even out of your market area -is a big mistake. You run the risk down the road of some judge deciding that if it wasn't important enough for you to pursue when it happened.. it's sure not important enough for the court to pursue now.
JLS
[QUOTE=David Meiland;526959]How does this harm your business?[/QUOTE]
Dave, send me all of the images your best work so I can represent that I built them to use them to sell jobs I may not be capable of performing.
We are not in a local market, so who cares?
Greg, you can right-click everything on my website and use it, I wouldn't even know it. If I had a few minutes I might download a watermarker and edge mark the images but like you pointed out, they can be cropped. There's not much I can do to stop you or anyone else from copying a web image, and it seems pretty far removed from my pressing business problems. I'm not making Clam Clamps or anything like that, where it would make a difference.
Joe, I'm not sure of your point about "if an image is generic enough...." because face it, most of us do stellar work but there's nothing [I]that[/I] unique about it. A picture of a high-end kitchen remodel can do you a lot of good marketing-wise, because it lets people know which strata you're in... but chances are low that you're breaking new ground in design or execution. Even the work Allan shows, with imported antique stone floors and whatever... there are guys around the country doing the same thing, and their photos will look similar.
[QUOTE=David Meiland;527055]I wouldn't even know it.[/QUOTE]
I was going to say the same thing, how would you even know.
I have a photography website and at one point I noticed that a few of my image pages were getting lots of hits. I was able to trace one source of hits to someone's MySpace page... they had linked to the image file itself without credit to me. I gave it some thought and let it go. I'm not Picasso, I'm not Ansel Adams, they're just not hurting me by "borrowing" my image, and they weren't attributing it to themself. The other was getting a bunch of hits from someone's academic site, I have forgotten what that was about. Since then, my hosting service has changed their defaults and the servers will no longer serve an image file alone, it will only serve the entire page with the image included.
Like I said, the main problems in my business are far, far removed from this. For that matter, I have yet to find a way to make a website a sales tool at all.... everyone that hires me knows someone else who hired me. The vast majority of visits to my site are JLC users who click on the link in my sig. Hey, uhhh..... any of you guys need a contractor?!