User Generated Theft

Piney Woods TRI-X 400, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

outside of Leesville, LA

Republished with really lousy credit:

www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/carbonfundorg-reforestat…

Discovery Communications, the parent of TreeHugger, market capitalization exceeding $2,000,000,000 apparently doesn’t mind bending the rules when it comes to User Generated Content. Flickr hosts my photographs, and has printed clear guidelines outlining what is acceptable usage:

Do link back to Flickr when you post your Flickr content elsewhere.

The Flickr service makes it possible to post content hosted on Flickr to outside web sites. However, pages on other web sites that display content hosted on flickr.com must provide a link from each photo or video back to its page on Flickr.

[From Flickr Community Guidelines]

TreeHugger downloaded my photograph from Flickr, stripped out the copyright information that was embedded in the photo, changed the photograph’s name, uploaded it to its own server, and added it to a blog post without linking back to the original photo¹. Now this image has become public domain, available for anyone to download from TreeHugger’s high profile site, to use, sell, or whatever, without ever realizing where the image came from².

I actually don’t usually mind my photos being used on other websites, as I say on my Flickr profile page, or else I wouldn’t bother to upload images anywhere on the internet in the first place. But multi-billion dollar corporations should try a little harder to respect the rights of the little guys.

Suppose I copied some content from the Discovery Channel, a documentary about American Loggers, for instance, and rebroadcasted it on my own television station, while putting a small on-screen title at the end of the broadcast saying, “all content originally created by the Discovery Channel“, I’d soon receive a sternly worded letter from their corporate attorneys. What rights do I have? What cause of action do I have? None, other than this whiney-ass blog post, and a big spit on the ground in TreeHugger’s direction.

Update, left this comment at TreeHugger

So I’m curious, why did you strip out all of the copyright metadata on my photo when you republished it, and why didn’t you follow the terms of use (which are simple: attribution, and link to the original photo). Is this TreeHugger policy? Discovery Communications policy? In effect, you have released my photo to the world as uncopyrighted, is that your intent? Would it bother TreeHugger/Discovery if I did the same with your work?

Curious as to your response, either here, or at my blog where I ask the same questions.

Update: 9:10 CST, TreeHugger didn’t publish my comment, just removed the photo. Now, they are stealing Brion V.’s photo, without a link to his photo page. Still scummy, but not my problem any more. Just wish I had bothered to take a screenshot of their theft before blogging about it. Remind me to steal as much TreeHugger and Discovery Channel material as possible before I die. Or get served with papers.

As twitter and Flickr pal Friendly_Joe suggested, I should still invoice TreeHugger for the time³ that my photo was on their site.

1. they did write below the image, Photo via: Swanksalot, but without a link to the photo they borrowed, or bothering to use my actual name. [↩]
2. my trip to East Texas on a day when both of my grandfathers died [↩]
3. somewhere in the neighborhood of 36 hours [↩]