- Posts tagged facebook
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facebook & LAP
nope. watermark had been cropped out. in two instances (that i know of). the client had nabbed a picture from the Facebook album, cropped out the watermark, and used it as their profile picture. no mention of LAP or where it came from, just there. this is basically where the metaphorical sleepless nights started.
[editor's note: no, i have not actually lost sleep over this. just want to make that perfectly clear. at least not yet.]
so i started to do some digging, and what i've found between now and then, and what i've fleshed out as my problems, get to be a bit unwieldy and frankly, a little disturbing.
first off is the fact that Facebook provides no tools to protect intellectual property (in our case, photographs). hell, we've probably all done it with a friend's photo: click, hold, and drag to the desktop. that simple. second, when a photo is uploaded to Facebook, all of its EXIF data is stripped out. EXIF data, as well as IPTC data, basically form the photographer's DNA into a digital image with information that includes date, place, time, geolocation, name, camera make & model, ISO, exposure, shutter speed, and copyright. yup, Facebook's uploader strips any and all embedded data before you see it in that lovely organized album. to that end, we have to stop relying on Facebook for sharing photos.
"but hey, i still retain the copyright, right? i mean, i uploaded it and its under my account, so surely i still have ownership of it!"
you see, Facebook claims that when you upload a photo to their service, you still retain the copyright.
You retain the copyright to your content.
well, wonderful. thats settled. except its not...
When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content of the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicense of the foregoing.
blah blah blah, right?
basically, Facebook says you can keep your quaint little notion of "copyright" and "ownership," but we'll still do as we please with your photos. sure, we all know about the security settings that tell Facebook to not use our personal photos, but you know where they don't exist? on business pages. because the LAP page is inexorably tied to Jac's and my respective accounts, there's no way to go in as "Little Acorn Photography" and change things around, and even if there were, there are no similar security or privacy settings for small business pages.
now, the optimist will argue, "hey, throw a watermark on everything you post and if Facebook wants to use it, it'll have your nice, fat watermark for everyone to see, and what better publicity is there than free publicity straight from Facebook!?"
well... sure. that would be great. but looping back to the original problem (no copy protection), Facebook could take that client's de-watermarked profile picture and use it for whatever, with no mention of credit or ownership. and it goes without saying, if Facebook writes a book and one of our images is included for some reason and that book sells trillions of dollars worth of copies, we don't see a penny.
le sigh.
so! i've been researching new ways to post photos for LAP. below are options with the Pros & Cons (where applicable):
- post purely via the blog- yes, we have an LAP blog (here!) and i really like writing for it. Posterous is also a wonderful way to throw photos online, as it automagically creates a tidy, easy-to-flip-through gallery without any extra steps. and (!) it keeps all EXIF and IPTC data intact. but, like Facebook, there's no copy protection. its as simple as a click and a drag, and bam, you've got the picture. leading to the next point...
- watermarking the hell outta' everything- now, we already watermark everything we put online, except anything on the website proper. one of the first personal lessons i learned though was to not make crappy watermarks. i always hated photographers who destroyed their online images with gaudy, ghastly watermarks all over the photo. it looks terrible, and it comes off as if they're compensating for something, like, "LOOK AT ME, I'M A PHOTOGRAPHER BECAUSE I HAZ WATERMARKKKKKKSSSS ALLLL OVER THE PLACE!!!lolz" to that end, i always try to place our watermarks in unobtrusive locations, almost artfully, so as not to take away focus from what the viewer should be looking at. but, as stated previously... this can lead to easy cropping out which sorta' defeats the purpose. its been suggested that i bite the bullet and just start throwing watermarks on faces, but, well... yeah.
- slideshows- this suggestion actually came from an online community i'm a member of and honestly, its not a terrible idea: create tasteful, gorgeous, quick hitting slideshows of particular events and shoots to showcase the work. its actually pretty clever and i'm beginning to lean towards at least trying that out. however, thats a whole lot more work for me to do because, let's face it, i'm a perfectionist and until its done perfectly, something i create will not see the light of day. hm.
- everything on the website- ugh. this is my least favorite option. i like our website fine, but i'm over the whole Flash thing. too many compatibility issues and extra software and plugins... and it runs slow on older machines. but it does allow for complete protection from the old click & drag scenario, and the right-click & save scenario. but... ugh. hm. i dunno.
- everything on the print site- this is marginally better. ok, maybe thats not fair. its a whole lot better than the website option. A) no Flash, and B) unlimited storage. everything we shoot as LAP goes to the print site because thats where clients view their images. so we could conceivably create special "Look At These, Potential Client!" galleries and if they want, they can explore a little deeper into other galleries. plus, you can't click & drag or right click & save. if someone was super clever and tried to turn off Javascript so they could steal, well... then no pictures show up at all. problem: i'm not particularly in love with the look of our print site. it looks alright, but its definitely more utilitarian than anything else. hm.
as you can see, there's not really a perfect solution here, and for the foreseeable future, there won't be. i do hate that Facebook is nearly a necessity as a newer photographic entity in Montgomery, but for now, its a necessary evil. however, we've yet to come across a wholly Facebook driven client. i dunno. blerg.
thoughts? comments? ideas? lemme know; i'd love to hear them!
the art of defriending, pt. 2
those of you involved in my little twittersphere know of yet another incident/run in/whatever i had with a facebook friend of mine. its the same person i had a run in with a few months back, and as you'll recall, it was quite ugly. it got very heated then, as it was over politics, he being of the right-wing nutjub type (seriously, that's about as nice as i can put it), i of the liberal lean.
a couple weeks ago, he decided he'd had enough of... something. put quite plainly, i don't know what triggered it. i've consciously stayed out of debating politics at length for awhile now, and i'd hidden him from my newsfeed, so if i perchance glanced at his profile, it was always more of a "roll my eyes, move on" sort of deal. his reaction to (whatever) recently caused him to stumble across some newly unleashed (?) privacy settings that disallowed commenting or posting on anything: shared stories, status updates, photos, links, videos, etc.
i personally thought it strange and took a bit of umbrage to it, thinking he'd made a list of his liberal leaning friends and blocked them. i messaged him, asking what the deal was and it turns out, it wasn't just our small little group (who, by the way, mostly had given up debating him because it was like throwing pebbles at a granite wall); it was everybody. no one could comment on anything.
alright, fine... whatevs.
but then he posted something about a week ago, something to do with a local UM church deciding to leave its historical home and move to a smaller, presumably safer, location and he went on and on about the members not having the balls to fight back against the (presumably) bad elements in their neighborhood and how important it was to stand ground. that's all well and good, but having the minimal amount of insight into the "church world" i have, i knew that there were probably other extenuating circumstances, likely to do with money. giving in the church is down, all across the board when it comes to smaller congregations. i felt it unfair to blast this congregation without any further background knowledge, but i couldn't share this opinion in the public forum.
so... i defriended him. again.
he found out (how isn't important) and he went on an absolute tear about it, about how his liberal friends were sissies and how we weren't raised right. of course, i didn't see this; he sent me a short message about it that was polite enough. but a mutual friend sent me a screenshot of the screed, so i felt it my obligation to give him my side of it.
here's the thing: if you're going to join a social network, the point isn't to put walls up around yourself to be completely antisocial. i know i hold a very liberal (ha) view on social networking: i take a very wide open stance in regards to what i say and what other folks say. i've censored maybe two things someone has written to me or about something i posted. but i'm in "the game" to be part of a community that shares and talks and debates and grows. what's the point of being part of a social network if you're not going to be sociable?
i completely understand and respect folks' right to privacy and know that my views on twitter and facebook aren't shared by everyone else. but what's the point of being "facebook friends" if we can't treat each like we would in public? i woud daresay that if i met you at a bar or you came over to my house and i told you i was going to talk and yell and scream and express myself but you couldn't reciprocate, we wouldn't be friends in real life for very long.
but that's the stance he took and still takes. he treats his facebook page as a closed door policy, that he and only he should be able to post what he wants without repercussion. to an extent, i get it. but i can't wrap my head around blocking off all outside communication to the point where only he is right and all other opinions are baseless and (in his words) "unAmerican."
what's the point of joining a social network if you're not going to be social? why would anyone want to be "facebook friends" with anyone like that? he has nearly 1,000 friends and as of this writing, none of them can comment on anything: not his shared links, not his status about drinking beer, not even pictures of his cats. would you stay friends with that person?
of course, i explained this to him, that this wasn't done in anger, it wasn't personal, it wasn't even political: i just didn't see the sense in keeping dead weight on my facebook account. if i can't interact with you, what's the point?
he still doesn't get it, and that's fine. his prerogative.
but if i can't "like" that picture of you and your grandmother or comment on a picture you took of the beach or congratulate you on some other life event... what's the point?
how facebook (somewhat) fails the small business owner
[facepalm]
