‘Please do NOT reblog the linked post’ post: UPDATE
‘Please do NOT reblog the linked post’ post: UPDATE:
Update (expanded version) 15 Nov 2013:
I wanted to explain in full what’s happened, in case gingersnappyg is reading this.
As I noted in today’s update to my original plea, gingersnappyg sent me a very prompt PM apology and has taken her post down – thank you.
By the time that message arrived, it was well after 1am 15 Nov (GMT/my local time) and I was already exhausted and should have been in bed. (I’d already stayed up very late so that I could act promptly to limit the spread of the de-watermarked image before it had time to go viral.) So I slept on it, planning to wait till the morning to send gingersnappyg a reply. This delay meant that I also had a chance to Google image-search her source myself so that I could verify what she was saying.
But … when I logged onto Tumblr today, gingersnappyg’s apology message had vanished, and it appears she has deactivated her Tumblr. gingersnappyg, if you’re reading this: your apology is accepted, and there was no need to take this extreme step. (Unless this incident is part of a wider situation that I’m unaware of.)
You did all you needed to do in taking down the post. I didn’t make any judgement about how/where you’d found the image – I just acted quickly to ensure you understood its real source and took action.
(As an alternative, you could have just added a credit and hyperlink to my original scan/post to your version. The advantage is that my OP gives the full credits: where this photo was originally published, the date, the photographer name. But I know from past experience that this approach does not stop the spread of de-credited/de-watermarked images – so you did the best/right thing.)
In your PM message, you said you’d used Google Image to search for the source. I tested this myself with the de-watermarked version of the picture you’d found, and I can see exactly why there was a problem: the true original source does not show up. As a result of what I found, I’m making this post partly to make everyone aware of the limitations of Google Image searches.
When I dragged your (de-watermarked) lick!Rupert image into Google Images, it gave me only one internet source for this de-watermarked photo: Pinterest.
As other fans with concerns about Fandom IP (intellectual property) have blogged in more detail, sites like Pinterest and We Heart It are ‘the devil’s spawn’: they operate as collections of favourite images, but once you post an image on Pinterest and We Heart It, the site removes all traces of the original image source.
These sites are, basically, enablers of IP theft and plagiarism.
Because of this problem, the advice from most people in fandom is to avoid reposting images you found on Pinterest or We Heart It, especially if no other (real) original sources (which you can and should link to) are showing up in a Google Image search.
However, I’ve seen some posts that mis-present the Google Image search as a reliable solution for finding true original sources. From my personal experience, these posts are wrong: sometimes, the sources a Google Image search loops back to are Pinterest (and similar) or Tumblr re-posts, rather than helping us find the true original image sources and credits.
For everyone in fandom who uses Google Image searches, please be aware of this issue: Google Image results are not watertight, and can’t be taken on trust. You may need to check against other searches; and, even then, it’s not always easy to find the original.
Scary fact: my watermarked original scan did NOT show up on Google Images as being ‘similar’ to its de-watermarked copy.
Fan art is art. Credit the artist.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/67062670618.
