Plagiarism

[John Harris <>]

I am sure that is all true. It is obviously a more particular issue facing those members of the bird-watching community for whom high-qualty bird photography is an important feature of what they do. Understandably, such enthusiasts need to take great care and some I know never put their best photos up on any site at all, whatever the watermarks or security techniques.  They certainly don’t put their best shots up on the COG chatline and why should they? The chatline is not, in my view, there for that purpose. It is a place for the sharing of information and for asking questions. One important function is a request for help with an ID and there a photo is helpful.  I hope that can always continue. Another function is to share an interesting observation such as unusual colouring or behaviour. I like seeing those photos and rarely would they be images anyone would want to publish elsewhere.  So I do hope all these uses of images continue unabated. Julie’s  problem was not that someone reused high quality images but that she had recorded interesting and unusual events which were obviously thought to be worth reporting elsewhere. I think it a rare thing that COG chatline images will be so important as to be plagiarised. Julie’s important images were in that sense an exception. I think, for this reason, that  use of chatline images without permission will  be unlikely to reoccur.  John    

From: David Rees <>
Date: Monday, 2 February 2015 10:10 am
To: Margaret Leggoe <>
Cc: Julie Clark <>, chatline <m("canberrabirds.org.au","canberrabirds");">>
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Plagiarism

Margaret

Thank you for your insight. One of the reasons why I do video rather than photos is that I believe I have more control over what people can do with it. I use a full paid for service via a professional provider and  I am able to manage downloads and embedding, and you the viewer do not have to put up with ads. Its not perfect I know, as I can think of ways to off-take video or frames via playing, but the quality will not be great. I don't load my video at its full quality anyway.  Thought about the internet bird collection site, but the engine it appears to run is not up to current industry standards and I do not like to provide video files for download without an agreement being in place first with a potential user.

David

On Sun, Feb 1, 2015 at 7:32 PM, Margaret Leggoe <> wrote:

Dear Julie,

I have read your email and the responses concerning the illegal use of your photos, i.e. use without permission, which is a breach of copyright.

Google images has a search engine into which you can upload an image of yours and it will come up with all the websites where that image appears. 

I did that recently with a couple of photos of parrots that I had placed on the Internet Bird Collection website.  One search came up not with ten websites, but ten pages of websites, i.e. nearly 200 websites had taken and used my photo.  A little more than half had left my signature intact, only one had acknowledged that I was the author, and the rest had cropped off the signature/watermark, or superimposed their own logo over the top.  Few of these websites  had contact details, and many were in foreign languages.   And beware of some of these websites as I found out.  A couple were bait pages to lead you into filthy pornographic sites. 

As far as I can see, the only way to stop it is to not post your photos on the internet in the first place.

It seems we are trying to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Best wishes

Margaret Leggoe