Google Reverse Image Search
ckck:
I’ve been testing Google’s new reverse image search function for the past couple of days and it’s a most welcome addition to their services, as well as a welcome rival/compliment to Tineye. I have the Chrome extensions for both of them installed, and it makes looking up images as easy as pie.
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I haven’t had the chance to play around with this yet, but I’m excited about the possibilities. Tineye has always been pretty limited, so I’m hoping Google’s “search by image” feature will be better.
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a few minutes later…
It works! It works very very well… almost too well. I’ve found dozens of people using just one image without citations! Now I almost wish I didn’t know… it’s rather disheartening. I’ve never minded people blogging my photos with citations and links back to the image, but to see so much outright theft!
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Of course, the really good news about all of this is that it will force people to be honest, especially if checking is only a few clicks away!
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…45 minutes later…
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I’ve had the chance to search for results from some of my other popular images, and they haven’t been nearly as bad as my teddy bear picture. So I guess the lesson here is to not take pictures of teddy bears that you find on the sidewalk! :)
Still, I’m finding more stuff on blogs, fake websites and several other places for a lot of the other images I’ve checked on.
Very interesting indeed…
Played with this for a short while and turned up many of my images on all sorts of websites both foreign and domestic. Not very surprising, really. Anyone who’s shocked by finding folks using their photos for all sorts of purposes across the web would have to be rather naive or very new to the internet.
Still, assuming it happens and seeing it happen are two different things.
Didn’t find anyone trying to pass my photos off as their own or selling them, etc. So I don’t feel terribly compelled to take any action at this time.
My advice to other photographers using this service would probably be that unless you have a great deal of time on your hands and/or a large legal team at your disposal, you should probably take the whole thing as a lesson in non-attachment.
The ease of copying (regardless of what protection strategies you may employ) and the general ignorance/laziness in regard to copyright law/ethics means that the only way to truly prevent it from happening is to never put your photos online…but where’s the fun in that?
(via photo-guerrilla)
