When you post your photos online the control you have over those photos is very limited. Did you know that when you upload your photos to Blogger that those photos are hosted at Picaso? What rights are you giving over to those photos and how easy is it for others to use your images on their blog?
Brian Angliss has an excellent blog entry on why using Picasa’s web album to host your photos is a particularly bad idea. This of course includes uploading them to Blogger.
If you read down to section 4 of Picasa Web Albums TOS , you’ll find that you have given [/tag]Google[/tag] (Blogger) the right to use your patented, trademarked, or copyrighted work free of charge. How many other photo sharing sites have similar rights grabs in their TOS? I know that PhotoBucket does.
For more information on this be sure to read Don’t be evil - unless you can hide it in the Terms of Service legalese no-one ever reads.
Steve Borsch also has a post on this. Please see “Why he won’t be using Google’s Picasa Web Albums.”
Recently Blogger introduced BloggerPlay. BloggerPlay is a continuous slideshow of images, currently being uploaded to Blogger. Any of these images can be saved by just right clicking. (Frightening thought)
Bloggerplay has also released iGoogle Gadget for those that enjoy Blogger Play. So now your most personal photos that you have uploaded to your blog might be on someone else’s blog via slideshow.
If you don’t want your photos being apart of Blogger Play’s slideshow, you can have them removed, but only by removing your Blogger blog from Blogger’s public listings.
Another bad move for Blogger perhaps?
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12 responses so far ↓
Laurie
// Dec 6, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Hi Rose. Thanks for visiting my site.
Photo theft is something we photobloggers have to deal with. I use an FTP and host my photos elsewhere even though I use Blogger but people who want to steal them will and there is little that can be done to stop them. There are ways to slow them down but stopping it is really impossible for the really determined and savvy thief.
I saw that you found me through Blogger Groups and I want to ask you if this is a Blogger site? I love your comment format and I know it’s not Blogger so I was wondering how you got it? I’m am not at all computer savvy but I would love to have a comments section set up more like this one rather than the way Blogger does it especially now that they messed with the format and took away the URL line and went with that open id which doesn’t seem to work anyway at least not when you pick “any open id”.
Again thanks for dropping by my site.
Mike Goad
// Dec 6, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Another good reason not to be on blogger!
I started using Flickr a while back and I satisfied with them so far. Before that, all of my photos were hosted on my own site, which gets to be a real hassle when you’ve got a lot of photos.
After reading your post, I checked Flickr’s terms of service and community guidelines. I don’t see any need to change.
I downloaded Picassa software once before Google bought them. Didn’t like it.
Another great post!
Rose DesRochers
// Dec 6, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Hello Laurie, I’m using Wordpress hosted on my own domain. Here is a post with regards to installing Wordpress.
How to Install Wordpress both Manually and with Fantastico
You can import all your posts from Blogger to Wordpress easily.
Rose DesRochers
// Dec 6, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Mike
Perhaps you should read
Flickr-Yahoo Terms of Service
Mike Goad
// Dec 6, 2007 at 10:52 pm
I viewed the part of the Yahoo TOS that applies to images.
I still don’t have a problem with it. I’m not going to be making any significant money from my images. With the proliferation of high quality digital cameras, there is too much competition to even think that I could. I still enjoy photography, though.
For example, I’ve got a great full moon image that I took a couple of months ago. There are 64,260 images with the phrase “full moon” in the description and 8,646 of them are licensed under Creative Commons. Of the 20 or so that I viewed, several are as good or better than my photo. (Not all of the images are of the moon though. Several were from a “full moon party” in Thailand.)
With the Yahoo TOS, the user grants Yahoo a license “use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display” audio, photos, graphics, and video placed in publicly accessible areas “solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available.”
The purpose is for sharing images online - nothing more.
The license also terminates once the material is removed.
I understand that my images are going to be used by others and , on my photo blog, I make the images available under a “Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License” which allows the images to be used so long as the work is attributed to me, with a link.
I’m not trying to defend Yahoo/Flickr. In my view, they MUST have something in their TOS that allows them to display the images (and other electronic works) that people have published in their publicly accessible areas. Otherwise they’d be setting themselves up for all kinds of litigation.
Rose DesRochers
// Dec 6, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Mike, do you not remember the whole MySpace owns your music thing? Billy Bragg took on MySpace and won! The terms were the same as Flickr giving MySpace the right to “use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute.”
This is a real Eye opener.
Fighting sites
that highjack rights
While it may be ok with you, it does not sit right with some.
AuthorMomWithDogs
// Dec 7, 2007 at 4:36 am
This is a real eye-opener! This, on top of Google messing with Blogger’s commenting. They’ve essentially blocked anyone not with a (Big surprise) Google owned Blogger or OpenID account.
Thanks for the heads up.
Seamus
// Dec 7, 2007 at 4:49 am
I used PBase early in the blog, but started having problems with traffic issues and the pics were slow to load (I believe that is fixed now). I switched to loading through blogger because it was simpler - probably a bad choice. Any idea what happens to the pics (if loaded through Blogger) if a post is deleted or the pic deleted from the post?
Rose DesRochers
// Dec 7, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Seamus, well I tested this and though I deleted them from my Blogger blog they were still hosted at picasa.
Seamus
// Dec 8, 2007 at 4:38 am
hmmmmmmmmmmmm…thanks Rose.
DrowseyMonkey
// Dec 9, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I don’t think you can really control or own anything you put on the web, regardless of what program you’re using. It’s just a good idea to remember that anyone can access your words or pictures once you upload.
Eric "Speedcat Hollydale"
// Dec 10, 2007 at 1:16 pm
As you have seen… I am a little different than most. I like when my pictures are found on another page. Good PR for the Speedy Cat.
I’m still afraid to comment on your “TOP” post.. ha haaaaa!
Eric AKA Speedcat Hollydale
ps…help yourself to one of my pictures. Ohh please
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