Now that all the Easter chocolatey sweetness has finished coursing through my veins I'm ready to have a rant. I am by nature quite an easygoing creature but in this instance my feathers are well and truly ruffled - in fact I am spitting feathers to put it mildly. What has got me so annoyed? Well I recently noticed the appearance of a non gardening/allotment related post into my all time top six blog posts (see left hand sidebar). Furthermore this was an old post going back to October 2010. I know that I do occasionally stray off topic but by and large I stick to the garden and allotment and would expect the tops six posts to be relevant. Further research and detective work led me here. The seventh photo down is one of my holiday photos, as featured second photo down in my post here. If you look at the bottom of the website the term 'tagged with' appears. Underneath this are are all but one of the words that make up my blog title and the title of that particular post, listed individually. There is also a cheeky reference to copyright dated 2008 so I am dealing with rather a cunning time traveller.
This photo has been used without consent and placed on a website which features some rather dubious advertising content. I have a hunch that none of the photos are the property of the compiler (s) of the site. I am not sure what to do next other than contact Wordpress, as it is the publishing platform for this site. There does not seem to be a named individual or a group behind the site or any email address to contact. I am also cross with myself for being rather naive. Obviously disclaimers and watermarks on photos are not a foolproof obstacle (two other photos that feature on this site had been watermarked) but I will be doing more in this department from now onwards. Thanks to Diana over at 'Elephant's Eye' who prompted me to share this experience. I will report back if there any developments. I will also be attending a blogging workshop soon, where I hope to get the chance to bring this issue up. In the meantime I wonder if anybody else has had similar incidents happen to them and if so how did you deal with them?
I do not have any photos of ruffled feathers and thought that spitting feathers might be a rather unpleasant image. The above photo, complete with watermark, is of a goldcrest which visited the garden regularly during the winter of 2011 - the first and so far only time we have had the pleasure of its company.
How very irritating. I was asked recently if a parish council near East Lammbrook could use one of my photos if they acknowledged it - which was fine. I have started putting watermarks on photos I care about and I remove the link when I upload the photo.
ReplyDeleteI doubt there is much you can do which is even more annoying
Fab bird photo bby the way - is it a Goldcrest?
ReplyDeleteThat's really annoying, you'd have thought they'd at least have asked. I've not had the same things happen, but I did find that several of my photos are featured on pinterest without my knowledge, but as far as I can see people have linked them back to either my blog or my flckr page.
ReplyDeleteGood luck getting it sorted
Interesting. If you copy THEIR photo URL and tell Google to search by image, it does come back to YOUR blog. Looks like a site simply set up for the ad revenue, and taking whatever to serve their purposes.
ReplyDeleteLet us know what WP says/does and also your workshop?
PS after clicking thru. I went to delete all cookies. Definitely don't want THAT site following me on the web!
ReplyDeleteHow lovely to have a goldcrest visiting. I wouldn't know how to go about finding out if any of my photos were being used without my consent, though I don't think any of mine are good enough to warrant anyone stealing them.
ReplyDeleteI think we need some advice from wordpress and other blog platforms about how to deal with this problem. I suspect it is far wider spread than we think. Thanks for posting about it. We need to be aware.
ReplyDeleteI have read of 2 or 3 bloggers now who've been pirated in one way or another but I still lack the comprehension of the what, whys and wherefores even after reading their advice. The virtual world is as crooked as the real one but it exhausts me with all the know how one has to have - I prefer the real world of a good smack in the jaw for anyone caught stealing! Anna please do follow this up with advice for dodos like me- meanwhile love the Goldcrest or was it a Firecrest?
ReplyDeleteAnna I hope WP were able to help you.... and did the offending site take off the picture? Maybe you shouldn't even link to that site as you're giving that offender some of your precious link juice as a back link or else use bloggers new facility to enable 'no follow links'
ReplyDeleteHow lucky to have a goldcrest visiting.
ReplyDeleteI've had work pirated from my webiste and blog. I recently found a site that had copied all the PDF files that I have on my website of recipes that I had posted. The site apparently trawled for PDF files and used any found to create a library. As I had to remake my website I deleted the files which deleted them from their site too. I then added the name of my website etc to the bottom of the PDF files. This way if they we pilfered at least they had the source acknowledged. I often get requests to use photos and always agree as long as the photos are acknowledged