We have recently heard some disquiet comments on how images turn up on Google without any information. While it is debatable whether Google is helpful or a hindrance to the stock photography industry (keep reading) it is certainly our responsibility to make sure that all images shown in photo library websites contain the authors name in the EXIF (IPTC section) data of the image. The only place that Google can extract data from is the EXIF data, and obviously, Google is not going to show an author’s name if the image doesn´t contain it. As the images that are available to download from Google’s search results are often large and plentiful, copyright infringements are becoming more and more rife, and are impossible to track if the photographer’s name is nowhere to be found.

Remedy? Protect your images, use your EXIF!!!!

age fotostock will never remove the EXIF submitted to us, but it’s up to you to include it in your image data. Click here to read more about submitting your photos with EXIF.

Facebook however strips the EXIF data of the content you post there.  So if you download an image either from facebook directly or from facebook via a google search result, there´ll be no EXIF data found at all.  Is this a blessing or a minefield? Facebook states:

While you are allowing us to use the information we receive about you, you always own all of your information… which is why we don’t share information we receive about you with others unless we have: removed your name or any other personally identifying information from it.

Adios EXIF! Fine if you have privacy concerns, but a complete nightmare if someone has `published your holiday snaps on their website and you want to prove copyright infringement.

Remedy? Watermark it! Click here to see the watermarked images that age fotostock posts on facebook everyday.

On this topic, there has been another interesting blog post regarding Google in the last week, published by Cepic. It’s recommended reading on the full story of our industry’s fight against the unlawful use of third parties’ content in the latest features of the new Google Image search:

Google indexes and uses images for various GOOGLE services. The vast majority of those images is copyrighted material, used without any authorization by the rightholders. Recent developments relating to image search show more clearly than ever how by unauthorized indexing, ranking and displaying of images in a certain way, GOOGLE is slowly but surely turning into a large picture library for free content – without and sometimes even against the explicit will of the content owners.

– 27 May 2013 CEPIC – Center of the Picture Industry

Be savvy: protect your images, and get informed about the internet platforms that you are working with. A stitch in time always saves nine…