Pixiq

Internet photo sharing is here to stay, and any photographer that wants to build a name for him(her)self needs to upload photos and put them in front of as many viewers as possible. Sure, it’s a risk — the more viewers the greater the chance of image theft. Not only is it copyright infringement, but it makes it harder for the professional photographers to put groceries on the table.

Can it be possible to find who is using your images? Now there’s an answer, at least a partial answer. www.TinEye.com is an image search engine that uses image identification technology to find exact matches of the image you ask it to search for. It’s as easy as right clicking on your image and asking TinEye to search the more than 1.7 billion images in its index for an exact match. It doesn’t matter if the original image has been resized, edited or cropped — TinEye will find it. Although the creators of TinEye at Idée Inc. work hard to add millions of images each week, there are still many images to be added to the database.

If you decide you like TinEye, then you can add right-click functionality to your browser. The TinEye plugin for Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari and Opera creates a fast way to check your images when viewed in a browser. With the plugin installed, select any web image, right click and choose: search image on TinEye.

TinEye was able to find a bunch of my images being used without permission. Some were part of blogs: “Look, here’s a cool pic,” which I really don’t mind if they include a link back to my blog; however, some were downright copyright infringement and used for commercial purposes.

So what do I do? Spend an entire day sending invoices for the image use? Hire a lawyer to track them down? I need to do something out of respect for all the photographers trying to make a living by selling their work. Good photography only comes with lots of effort and time, and it's frustrating to see how easily others steal images without compunction. Look at the images below. They are the originals. In the "old" days thieves would scratch out the serial number; now there is no fear — how bold.