People dowlnloading and re-uploading photos as their own...
Something has been bothering me tremendously about the Ancestry site recently, and I wanted to make a post to see if anyone else has the same problem. My tree is public, because connection is the point of the Ancestry project. However, I have worked very hard to locate and, in some cases, restore many old family photographs, which takes a good amount of time and energy. Many people simply connect to the photograph as the system was intended to be used, but certain people are downloading my photographs and then re-uploading them as their own original submissions! I can't imagine why anyone would do this, except to be able to claim the documents as their own. Does anyone else have this problem? Every time I locate another lost photo, I hesitate when uploading it, because I know the same people are going to pirate my work yet again...
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Re: People dowlnloading and re-uploading photos as their own...
Contact Ancestry.Com or Rootsweb, let them know what is going on. They can't do anything unless you notify them.
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Re: People dowlnloading and re-uploading photos as their own...
This has happenned to me on a few occasions. In my case it was not the intention of the offending party to "pirate" my photos but simply ignornace that what they were doing clearly violated ancestry.com rules. Sometimes people download a photo to their hard drive for their own files and then upload it from there. They may try to improve it themselves to re-name it or what not. This has happenned only a few times to me. In the vast majority of cases people simply link the photos from my tree to theirs, which is what ancestry intends. This way a user can always trace back where the photo originated. I'm fine with that.
In cases where someone either ignorantly or maliciously uploads one of your photos I would simply leave a comment on the photo in their tree. Something to the effect of "this photo was originally uploaded by.... from ...... tree. See ..... tree to see the original. If the tree owner removes the comment you can report them to ancestry.com for copyright infringement. If they did it out of ignornance they may just apologize.
This irritated me when it happenned at first, but you do have to take the good with the bad. Don't let a few bad apples spoil your ancestry.com experience.
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Re: People dowlnloading and re-uploading photos as their own...
Ashley, by using Ancestry, you agree to their Terms & Conditions (link at bottom of page) which includes "You may access the Website, use the graphics, information, data, editorial and other Content only for personal or professional family history research, and download Content only as search results relevant to that research." Before April, the T&C also included "Should you contribute content to the site, you understand that it will be seen and used by others under the license described herein", which is a little more easily understood, in my opinion. Given that information, the users are doing nothing wrong as your use of the site allows them to download it. Also, if you were not the photographer (such as the "old family photographs"), you may actually be violating someone's copyrights by uploading the photos yourself. Generally speaking**, most photographs taken before 1923 are 'public domain'. (**Copyright law is complicated and has changed over time so there is no easy rule.)
It is because of the T&C that I choose *not* to upload photos to Ancestry.
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Re: People dowlnloading and re-uploading photos as their own...
Ihave had this happen. They are private. so I send a message asking to share not just take. I am really open and share. Why would you not share? thanks Lillian
Law/Bass
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Re: People dowlnloading and re-uploading photos as their own...
This post was deleted by the author on 25 Jan 2013 9:35PM GMT
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Re: People dowlnloading and re-uploading photos as their own...
This post was deleted by the author on 25 Jan 2013 9:34PM GMT
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Re: People dowlnloading and re-uploading photos as their own...
I dont mind sharing to REAL family interest. I do not want those to copy my information as their own or build up their profile and want compensation.
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Re: People dowlnloading and re-uploading photos as their own...
I am new. I wanted to upload all the information that my mother has gathered for years. i thought that by uploading the pictures and documents she has that it would spark interest From others that at researching the same families that I am. I am happy to share what I have with everyone and hoping others would be willing to share!
I am not sure what you would like people who are borrowing your pictures to do. Would you like them to acknowledge that they came from you? Is there even a place on Ancestry to give credit to the photographer? Or would you like to sell pictures you have worked on?
I Am not sure how to do it but you can put a watermark on your pictures. For someone who has done a lot of work cleaning up their pictures this would be a good way to go!
I am not sure about the rules here but sometimes people use their web address as a watermark, so that others can SEE who did the work and also If you put a watermark with your web Address on it then perhaps some of the "takers" would be willing to PAY for hard copies that you could send them?
Basically I feel like Jerry. If they are just using it to Share Family interest that is one thing! (i am not sure what building up their profile means), but IF they are selling OR publishing the pictures that is something else again!
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Re: People dowlnloading and re-uploading photos as their own...
I see a difference between someone who simply downloads images and someone who "makes them their own." Every time I find an image (a photo or copy of a document) that applies to my ancestors I attach it to my tree so it stays in its original location. That helps other researchers because my tree leads to others. At the same time, I download the image files because one never knows how long it will stay on Ancestry. It stays on my hard drive AND a flash drive. I'm not claiming its all my work. I'm not publishing the information for sale. I'm just making sure that it doesn't go away.
Now here is an example that might bother some people, but doesn't bother me. I uploaded an old photo of my moms grandmother, mom, and aunts (when my mom died I became the keeper of the old photo collection.) There were 5 people in all. A distant relative took the image file and made 5 separate images of it, so each person would have a photo associated with their page. They popped up as shaky leaves and I used them. I COULD have done that myself, but for some reason it didn't occur to me.
Now there is one thing that might make a difference in the above example. We had communicated in the past. He had a number of grave photos of my ancestors in Michigan (I'm in Florida) that I could not have taken, so I dropped him a note and thanked him. We have been borrowing and editing each others photos ever since.
Its just my opinion, but one of the reasons to have a tree on Ancestry.com is so we CAN share information. I am very appreciative of the fact that other have spent hours and pay a lot of money, because I have as well. If the hours and money I have spent enable someone else to further their family history so that they can put THEIR hours and money elsewhere, I'm all for it. Who knows, it could end up benefiting ME, and if it doesn't. it will benefit someone else. I like to think we are all in this together.
On the subject of watermarking. Picasa, a free basic photo editing app from Google does have the option when you export photos to add a watermark. Option 2 would be to use any basic photo editor that allows you to add text to an image will do it, but you will likely have to do it on each and every image manually. I believe even the built in photo editor in windows will do that. But realize that with todays more advanced editing software, it can be wiped out with the swipe of the cursor, or it could just be cropped out. So if your watermarked images suddenly pop up without the watermark, THOSE are the people with whom we should have a problem.
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