Pixiq

Your invoice is in the post ;)

The embed is a link to the original photo page and not a separate copy of the photo itself. Somebody using inline-linking to web content is not copyright infringement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking

No offense but I find this as a tin foil hat argument. It generates thumbnails, which have been already contested in court (the Aribasoft case) and found to be fair use. It also links back to ones 500px site. It is, essentially, no different than someone hitting the tweet this button on flickr, which then puts a thumbnail in the twitter timeline. Is that encouraging theft as well? We also must keep in mind that anyone can right click, and choose "send link to", with choices of email and others depending on which extensions one has installed. Also, by selecting the facebook option on 500px it embeds a thumbnail in to someones wall.

This is social media we are talking about.

From 500px Terms:

"By submitting photographic or graphic works to 500px at Upload page to your profile you agree that this content fully or partially may be used on 500px web-site for promotional reasons (such as photos at home page). By doing so, 500px will comply with the Canadian Copyright Act, which means your work will be properly attributed or quoted. No photographic content, emails, and other private information will be sold for any reasons by 500px."

So I'd say you did agree to this and 500px are being responsible by ensuring the author and link is included.

You do not need permission to link to somebody's content.

Since the Adoption of the Berne Convention there is no requirement of a mandatory copyright notification.

Completely agree with kkartphoto.

I don't really see how it is any different from the other sharing options. They ultimately do the same thing- link back to the original content on 500px.

"Right-clicking on a photo on Flickr has a completely different outcome: You get a pop-up reminding you that the content is copyrighted."-- This is what happens on 500px also as of a few days ago.

You are free to disagree Haje, and Wikipedia isn't exactly a good source of information as anyone can edit anything. That being said, I would urge you to look at this court case here -- http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/claw/ArribaSo.htm -- Kelly v Ariba Soft, that happened back in 2002/2003 in which a photographer sued Ariba Soft, the owner/operator of the search engine ditto.com for 'havesting images as thumbnails' within it's search engine (think Google images) The photographer lost, which paved way for things as you see them today. Thumbnails are fair use.

Now you may have an argument if 500px allowed large size images with no credit at all being giving to the photographer or no link back to the photographers page, which is a different animal entirely.

I don't think 500px is "encouraging" copyright theft as much as they're encouraging healthy exposure. Further, anyone can created the embedding code without the fancy button.. I think the best option is to watermark the bottom of your image, and add text that you do not allow duplication/distribution without prior written consent.

Hi - great set of responses to the posts, and I think I am with the group that says that the inclusion of the thumbnail is OK!

However, a wider question - what is 500px and what does the web site try to achieve? I saw that I had to register before I got very far into the site, but how does it differ from Flickr or Pure Photo? (disclaimer - I did a review of PurePhoto recently)

Steve