As many of you know, I like to create and build unusual projects.  I have not entered any pictures in this site's project pictures because I have my own web site. I have not updated it in a while and for an unusual reason. I was surfing thru Googles wood working images. There listed under "unusual wood working projects" was several projects of mine. Of course this was all done without my permission and I'm sure that somewhere in the legal gargon they can use any thing including pictures of me and my projects. 

Does this forum use our pictures in other places too?

How do you feel about sites like Google doing it?

I don't like it at all.

Ron

Don't like it either. You're probably correct unless you copyright your site.

Is there a way to protect you site from theft? I'm not a site designer, so I'm just askin'.

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Gene
'The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.' G. K. Chesterton

No gents, there is no way to disallow Google from indexing our images. We have auto blocking parameters in place that prohibits the bots from crawling your personal pages and personal profile info, we cannot even access your personal profile info from our end, and we cannot access your private messages either, and neither can the spider bots that google uses to crawl websites.

We need those spider bots to crawl our site, they are good, every site allows the bots to crawl, if we do not allow the bots to crawl then we do not show up in Google searches. Google needs to be able to index our site, and the images are thrown in there too. If we do not show up in Google Searches, nobody can find us, and if nobody can find us, then we are invisible, then we fail to exist as a woodworking community. The photos are public domain, anytime you post photos on the internet they are visible by the public, you can always put a water mark on your images if you are concerned about folks downloading your images and printing them out to sale.

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

I ran across a similar site recently and was surprised to see so many projects that had been "lifted" from other sites. That site did, however, reference where the images had been originally posted. I'm not sure if posting the original site makes it "legal"- sort of like a reference in a book, I guess. But even in a book, you must obtain permission to use someone else's material.

I guess anything on the Internet is fair game and it would probably be too expensive for the average person to pursue through legal channels.

As for protecting your site against someone downloading the images, if I can see it on my screen, I can copy it. I'd predominantly watermark all my images. That's not a foolproof method, either, but at least it will make it more work for the person trying to liberate your images.

just my 2¢

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Lew Kauffman-
Wood Turners Forum Host

Time Traveler and Purveyor of the Universe's Finest Custom Rolling Pins!

Also to add, when you upload photos to our site, you do have the option to make photos visible to "Anyone" "Just my Friends" or "Just Me".

The last two options the bots cannot crawl, the images will not show up in Google indexing. The "Anyone" option, that is out to all to see including Google.

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

John, correct me if I'm wrong, but the "Just my Friends" choice will only be visible to those on our individual "friends" list.  They will not be able to be seen by any other members.

And, yes, the spiders are searching the web for those images - so, if a "search" by any internet user hits close, they will see our pix.

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Fred
aka Pop's Shop
www.pops-shop.com
'Soooooo many patterns - sooooo little time'
Scroll Saw Forum Host

You are absolutely right Fred, but if you want privacy, that is what you'll have.

And yes, if a search query is done for images on "widget x" then the search may pull up images on our site. That is what is so great about spiders, spiders are our best friend here from the standpoint of needing our site to be searched and found. We want folks to find us!

This is common for any woodworking forum, or any website for that matter. Do me a favor guys and do a search on "Lumber Jock Images" using those key words, see what you pull up, do a search on "Woodnet Images", now do a search on "The Patriot Woodworker Images". You'll see we are all indexed in the Google search.

We want to be out there, and we want our entire sight searchable, except of course your personal information, that is off limits, it is impossible for Google to search your personal profiles, because it is all on lock down, an non viewable by Google or any search engine or crawling spiders, the spiders are not allowed in those rooms, and neither are we.

When you do search our images on Google through the key words I provided above, take a look at our lineup of images, how proud I am of what we have for content on our site, look at the variety of images, the woodwork, the veterans, the patriotism, the people, it's incredible, I am so proud of the feeling and aura we have here on The Patriot Woodworker, it's all because of you guys, and the content you have all provided your forum and community!

Fred Wilson said:

John, correct me if I'm wrong, but the "Just my Friends" choice will only be visible to those on our individual "friends" list.  They will not be able to be seen by any other members.

And, yes, the spiders are searching the web for those images - so, if a "search" by any internet user hits close, they will see our pix.

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Fred
aka Pop's Shop
www.pops-shop.com
'Soooooo many patterns - sooooo little time'
Scroll Saw Forum Host

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

By the way Ron, you have a great website, and it appears you are using Blogger as your platform, if you were looking for privacy for your images, you picked one of the most popular softwares in the entire industry of blogging and website building software, next to Word Press, Blogger loves Google search engines. Folks love producing sites with Blogger for that reason, it's great exposure and friendliness to the Google and other search engines and spider bots.

There are website building software out there that you can use that would keep your site private and secure and your images would be un-viewable but for the folks you give permissions too access your site. Blogger may even have a setting that you can flip the switch and put your site on lock down and have only the folks you want, to view your site.

But personally, with all that beautiful work you are doing, the uniqueness of it all, I'd want it out there to share with the masses, and spread around for all to see, but that's just me. But there are choices Ron.

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

What  is legal gargon?

If your work is copyrighted - a thing you can do very cheaply and you don't need lawyers to do it - you can enforce the copyright.   http://www.copyright.gov/  and google the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

However, that latter part (enforcing your property rights with a federal lawsuit) almost always requires lawyers  because you are all on your own when it comes to defending your property and the federal rules of civil procedure are  largely an imponderable mass of twists and turns  which many of my colleagues with their Doctorates in law find intimidating.

 

It is an interesting issue you have raised.    Instantly it seems to me that there is a case for  copyright infringement against GOOGLE.   Google is making money off the display of other people's personal property and  they have not obtained any licenses nor are they paying the owners a fee.

Read this

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/telecom/perfect10vgoogle.pdf

And then

http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/08/03/10-56316.pdf (affirming the holding below)

Where Google tried to overturn the District Court's holding

Perfect 10 sued Google over thumbnails it was displaying of its private property.  They won on the thumbnails, but lost on the links.

The court in  416 F. Supp. 2d 828  Actually got into a discussion of what constitutes "display"

In   Kelly v Arriba Soft, 77 F. Supp. 2d 1116  http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/cjoyce/copyright/release10/kelly.html

 the court denied plaintiff's claim of infringement holding that the images were fair use.

If you want more check out this

http://www.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/scitech/vol...

Now that I have bored the piss out of you, maybe this will help

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/

Contact GOOGLE and ask them to take it down

 

I did not get a chance to read the links you posted Cliff. But maybe our Terms of Service could be of some help. Scroll down to the bottom for the DMCA link. It may cover some of the concerns raised here.

In a nutshell, if our images ever became un crawlable by Google or any search engines, or by law we had to privatize our images our members post here, our site would go down in a hail of bullets, we rely on google searches of our site content to stay alive. That is a laymans perspective.

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

If I read the OP correctly he's upset, not about images posted here, but about Google absconding with images on his own web site that is not affiliated with TPW

"Does this forum use our pictures in other places too?"

The above is why I was under the impression Ron was talking about his photos he posted with us. Ron is a wonderful man, so I hope Ron you weren't thinking I had any issues with you and your concerns, all my above posts are just pragmatically speaking.

The internet sure has created a whole realm of legal mumbo jumbo and concerns hasn't it!!! And entire industry of law had to be created to accommodate the issues regarding the world wide web. it's a very valid concern Ron, and some great questions.

Cliff said:

If I read the OP correctly he's upset, not about images posted here, but about Google absconding with images on his own web site that is not affiliated with TPW

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

With all the privacy invasions that have come to light, my main concern was that info on me and my family could be made available for others to misuse or others to cause me or my family harm. For instance using my photo to endorse products or support causes. I really have no problem with my projects being on the web, I'm proud of my work and if someone wants to use the ideas or learn from the photos, go for it. My experience with woodworking magazines have left me disappointed. I have had a half dozen tips accepted and published. I got paid $25/$35 for each and had to sign all rights away. Then they publish them in a monthly magazine and a yearly book. Each time making money on the tips. One tip made the book

"tips of the decade"  They own the pictures, idea and profit for $25. If I had included a picture of me, they would probably used it to endorse their magazine too.........I no longer submit ideas to magazines and am very careful what I post on the web anywhere. Anyone who uses the internet should feel the same way, be careful what you post and what sites you use. Have good virus protection and be vigilant.

Excellent suggestions Ron, great tips and advice for all internet users!

Ron Altier said:

With all the privacy invasions that have come to light, my main concern was that info on me and my family could be made available for others to misuse or others to cause me or my family harm. For instance using my photo to endorse products or support causes. I really have no problem with my projects being on the web, I'm proud of my work and if someone wants to use the ideas or learn from the photos, go for it. My experience with woodworking magazines have left me disappointed. I have had a half dozen tips accepted and published. I got paid $25/$35 for each and had to sign all rights away. Then they publish them in a monthly magazine and a yearly book. Each time making money on the tips. One tip made the book

"tips of the decade"  They own the pictures, idea and profit for $25. If I had included a picture of me, they would probably used it to endorse their magazine too.........I no longer submit ideas to magazines and am very careful what I post on the web anywhere. Anyone who uses the internet should feel the same way, be careful what you post and what sites you use. Have good virus protection and be vigilant.

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

Certainly your concerns shouldn't be taken lightly, but if someone wants pictures of you, there are so many places they can obtain them and the same with information about you. Most people have no idea how much information they give out and to whom and a lot of it is public information. With just a little information and a little work, one can find out a lot about most anyone they want to find.

It is a great time in which we live and a scary time in which we live these days.

I have always found it funny when people are afraid to purchase online with a credit card, but have no problem handing it to someone they don't know in a restaurant, watch them walk away with it somewhere, bring you back a piece of paper to sign and you get up and leave it on the table. With camera's on phones the next person sits down and takes a picture of your signature and they have a nice piece of information on you. They have the last four of the credit card, your signature and the type card it is.

 Now that is scary and we just get up and walk away..

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John Moody
Site Administratorhttp://www.johnmoodywoodworks.com
“Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.†Shaker Saying

Seed the internet with misinformation about your self. If everyone did that the Feds would see it as a total waste of time

I've got to admit that quite honestly I don't mind if someone uses one of my photos.  Why?

First, my photos themselves are really not that good, so if they are "stealing" a photo, it must be for the content.

So....if it's for the content, then it's a compliment in my opinion.  If they intend to try and present the photos as "their own work", good luck.  Anyone of us who has the actual skill to reproduce my carvings wouldn't bother to "steal" a picture of one I did. They would just do it themselves.  So if they are stealing it to represent that they did it themselves, good luck when it comes time to "put up or shut up"!

And don't get me wrong, I'm really not bragging on my work, I have a long way to go on the road to improvement.  However, no novice will ever pick up a chisel and reproduce my work, you have to have at least a little skill.

Isn't there some saying about "copying is the highest form of flattery"?  Or something like that.  That's just my take on it.

Ron and All

Did a little searching and came up with a few sites that explain what, when, how, and why regarding the spiders/robots and how to block them.  I don't want to explain the whole thing here since some of the articles and tutorials are rather lengthly.  Here is is the list:

• 
  
• Robotstxt.org
  
• Microsoft Article
  
• SEO Book
  
• Media Wiki
  

Good luck

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Fred
aka Pop's Shop
www.pops-shop.com
'Soooooo many patterns - sooooo little time'
Scroll Saw Forum Host