Photobucket Follow-Up

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Deviation Actions

WrensHollow's avatar
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Unto the boundless ether, HeatherWind says:

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To my surprise, the Photobucket.com staff answered my email and told me that my image had been taken down from the gallery of the member that posted it. I had fully expected to have to go through the write-in process to defend my property, but they did resolve it quickly.

Later the woman that had posted it answered me and apologized for the snafu - as I suspected, she honestly didn't know they were potentially selling prints and she meant no harm. As a matter of fact, she was so surprised at Photobucket's policy of selling people's art as merchandise with NO compensation to the original artist that she quickly took all her own items out of there too.

That's right boys and girls, Photobucket has essentially claimed royalty-free merchandising rights to any and all images uploaded to their servers, whether it be artwork of the member or no. Prints, calendars and more, and unless your artwork is heavily watermarked they won't trace the source and you won't see a dime.

I asked their service department what the policy was on this, and was referred to the FAQ of their 3rd-party print company, which also said nothing about compensation to the artist / party that uploaded the image. To which I say, bite me.

Anyroad, the situation has been dealt with, and it's proven an eye-opener for many folks that have images uploaded there. Yet one more reason to juice up those watermarks...

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"Wait, we can not break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the pilgrims. And especially do not trust Sarah Miller. For all these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground." -- Wednesday Addams, Addams Family Values
© 2006 - 2024 WrensHollow
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GratefulHeartist's avatar
Reading your journal has made me think. This stealing of work is not that dis-similar to the theft of musician's work. The problem I see is that there is more of a public outcry and thus more means of protection and prosecution for musician. I am not trying to say one is better than the other or that one group deserves more attention than the other, by any means. Many sites are required to lock the audio files if posted, making this much more difficult to download. More and more music CDs are being locked or at least means of protection are attempted. Even the software to encrypt music files for posting on the web is very easy to obtain.

For artists we are not fighting the populous, we have to watch out for the bigger guys. There are no Feds waiting to be notified of art download and distribution, there are no huge laws that make it something that people avoid. There are very few places that will attempt any extra protection in regards to ones art. WHY? I have time and time again, seen art work that is being sold or used as cheesy backgrounds for places such as myspace, (not myspace’s fault, just the distributor) or what not or posted online without the artists awareness. And more often than not, it is the big guys that are spreading it. Organizations in which artists trust in order to be able to share their work, and show others what it is they are doing are the ones selling the work without compensation to artists and sometimes without notification. It is even rumored that Deviant Art is not an exemption to these devious ways, (I haven't looked into it closely so I can neither confirm nor deny that, it is merely a rumor.) Is there nothing artists can do to attempt to protect their work? other than add watermarks that mare the visual experience of the piece?

Sorry that is just my rant off the subject of your journal, I'm glad everything was worked out for you.