That’s super easy, and there are many ways (but yes, @Craig_Palmer is right, and your first course of action should be to take said picture down): just to get rid of the low-hanging fruit, a Raw file could do the trick. Hell, most people still don’t upload full resolution to the internets - “send me a crop of that guy’s left eye”. “Send me the three pictures you took before this, and the one after it”. Etc, etc, etc.
Meh - just downgrade to licensed content / the previous state while you figure things out. Then there’s common sense - what are the odds that the same guy photographed musical geniuses as different as, say, Eugene Ysaÿe and Donnie Wahlberg, or both Lothar Zagrosek and Maurice Starr ?
You’d conceivably want it to be immediate with user uploads (since you’re the ones aggregating and distributing it, so you’re most liable), and to set up some type of procedure to let your providers know there’s been an issue with content that was distributed to you, so you might be able to have a higher threshold there.
If the photo were, say, a photo of a band taken at a set they performed in 2013, and I could send a link to my Flickr page where that photo and others from the same event were posted in a gallery of similar photos whose EXIF data all show the same date and camera and indicate that I’m the author… that’s not un-spoofable, but it would seem to support a solid presumption that the photo is mine. The amount of work required to fake that legend seems out of proportion with what someone would bother to do in pursuit of a false photo credit just within Roon.
Or… maybe just my copyright in the submitted photo’s IPTC data could be presumed to be more fuss than someone wanting to fake a credit – with no avenue to extract money from that fake credit – would be likely to bother with.
No, these are not guarantees. But I expect they’d probably be sufficient in most cases of conflicting claims, if such claims even come up much at all.
In the case of UGC, a DMCA driven takedown (assuming it is a valid DMCA request) is the cure for any noted infringement and once again is the defined process to enable sites with UGC to exist and still respect copyright. By your definition of mass infringement, google, Facebook, YouTube, redit, twitter and dozens more etc are all mass infringers and you’re putting Roon potentially in the same category even if they follow appropriate DMCA processes. If so IMHO, you just don’t like UGC sites and the way the current legal process works in general – and many don’t – and that’s fine but then you should just say so.
Having said all this, I am NOT arguing that its easy for a single copyright owner like a professional photographer to police all these sites. It is not. But IMHO that is a flaw in the way the current process works vs a view of “mass infringement” by UGC sites who are properly following defined legal process.
I’ve made absolutely no comment on this at all. Have no idea where you got that from.
And to close this off for me, I’ve said all I want to say on this topic.
I think Roon has built a great product for photos which will greatly enhance the utility of their product. And if anything they almost always lean toward more caution in areas like this than I think necessary but good for them. Kudos for an excellent release!
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How do others handle this? You posted a lawsuit involving WaPo… If that photo was behind a paywall, how would one find it?
In the case of Gattoni v Microsoft, I don’t know the background, but the WaPo had licensed the material, so there was no paywall involved there. I don’t know how Gattoni found out that Microsoft (or rather, MSN) took that material and posted it publicly, but any reverse image search would pick up on something like that. It’s also entirely possible she used a monitoring service.
In Roon’s case, I’ve mentioned pixsy already, and there are a number of services in that space. If you’d like a pretty established player, you could get in touch with the Getty spinoff PicScout, for example, or ask your counsel if they’d know who to speak to at the Copyright Alliance. I’m sure they’ll be happy to point you towards something that’d allow holders to search for material on your servers, either directly or through existing reverse image search services.
Yesterday I was adding photos of my favorite Polish jazz artists all afternoon and from what you write all my work can go to the trash. I wanted to help, contribute to the changes that I care about in this software, but I’m letting go.
I will add that I did it on the ipad 3mini iOS remote control which, despite the next update, roon remote was still crashing.
May I remind you that Google figured that Getty had a good enough case in Europe to settle out of court ?
In my mind, Roon isn’t a UGC site at this point, if only because much of the content on Reddit or Twitter is user-generated, i.e, generated by the users. Yes Valence “expert listeners” or whatever, and yes support via the forum, but in Roon’s case, almost all of the added value comes from content that isn’t community generated or a community derivation of licensed content. I’ll of course hear the argument that they’re pivoting, and that Valence Images is a representation of that, in which case I could only give @danny a round of applause for having found a group of suckers (myself included) willing to give him money for the privilege of working for him.
You are right that I’d be extremely curious to see an infringement suit brought against, say, Fanart, but it isn’t for the reasons you seem to assume: it’d be because it’d potentially ask an interesting question about the nature of art and the importance of the curator.
My misunderstanding, and my wrong. Please accept my apologies for misrepresenting what you were trying to get through.
So @danny, basically I have to say that I’m not the owner of any of the pictures i’ve uploaded. And i cannot say for any of them who is the owner, or if they are “open”.
I can think of uploading if the logic is “in the end, it’s a Roon Labs problem to manage the copy if it turns out that something is protected”.
But if uploading amounts (… as said in the FAQs… ) to say that i’m the copy owner, then honestly i cannot upload anything.
And i think that 99% of the uploaders would be in the same situation…
…hey, i’m not a law maniac… but if i want to infringe, i’ll do it by myself.
It is always our problem if there is a dispute. We resolve that problem using the DMCA, and it does not impact you, the uploader.
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“The posting on a website of a photograph that was freely accessible on another website with the consent of the author requires a new authorization by that author,” the Court of Justice of the European Union writes.
@Danny, you are in very tricky water with the Art Director upload… Just google ‘Online photos can’t simply be re-published, EU court rules’ and you’ll find a lot of details about it.
Yes! I pay (not the least amount of) money for Roon and I expect Roon to respect the above for this. Photography is a job, it is protected content and the rights to it should be respected accordingly!
It is not about if you can get away with it, it is the question if you are doing it the right way.
Why not use platforms with these photos and metadata, like Muzooka?
No more endless searches for photos with proper clearances. Pre-approved, hi-res artist images, updated by labels and artist managers, are always available via our API.
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Ok thanks for clarifying. That is what I asked further up this conversation.
Just curious how many folks are checking the copyright status of the pictures you’re uploading to Valence? I noticed if I search for Pink Floyd in Google there are at least 20 to 30 pictures of the band (not including logos). If I apply the Creative Commons license filter there are no usable pictures of the band. I have no way of obtaining approval from the copyright holder (also I think that should be Roon’s job), and if I use only Creative Commons images, there will be very little artwork in Roon that Roon hasn’t already bought.
I can’t check right this second, but a quick glance tells me that all the Pink Floyd photos are licensed photos and that no uploads were done for Pink Floyd.
Remember, there is a tiny number of uploaded photos compared to the hundreds of thousands of licensed photos.
I am interested to understand the potential implications. If I find a picture of a artist on line and upload. That then gets accepted as the face of the artist. I guess the concern is around the person that took the photo getting paid? Because there is nothing in it for me, or so far as I can tell roon (I suppose they could more easily sell their product with better artist pics)
I guess what I would like to know is, could the person that say took a photo of YES in 1971 expect to get paid for that shot in 2021 on say spotify?
They could. They would have to contact Spotify about the photo and request a license fee or removal of the photo. Either way, they’d have to provide evidence of ownership. Spotify could then choose whether it wanted to comply with the request or not. If not, a negotiation may occur, or litigation if no understanding can be reached.
A very minor correction: it’s not request a license fee ‘or’ removal. More likely, if the photographer is intent on pursuing his or her rights, there will be a usage fee - irrespective of whether it gets removed at that point.
Sorry, I should have said licensING fee.
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Hi @danny, I hope you are doing well so far.
Since you have quoted me (anonymously), I must of course also contribute my part.
As I mentioned before, for me listening to music is (mostly) not only the listening itself, but also the presentation.
So I have already done some work in this area and will continue to do so.
I’m just taking a little break right now. On the one hand because I currently have various other projects, a broken arm and on the other hand because I want to observe the development en little.
Apparently the permissions are not yet finally clarified.
I have understood it basically so that I can first upload everything, and that in case of the case, the image is taken out again. But this question seems to be not yet finally clarified.
I must confess that I have not cared much about copy protection rights so far.
Of course, I have always tried to accept the ownership rights and have uploaded many images from the artist’s homepage or Wikipedia.
But in some special cases there are none
choice.
So it’s up to the artist himself (or the rights holder) if he wants you to advertise or “pay homage” to him in this way.
The fact that I uploaded mostly pictures of (very) unknown artists should hopefully not be a crime yet. I could imagine that one or the other artist would even be happy about getting recognition in this way. But this is one thing that may have to wait and see.
Roon for me is software by freaks for freaks. So I think when artists are honored in this way, it should be a tribute, not a crime.
When I say honored my took well over an hour to find a halfway acceptable image.
The quality of some of my uploads is really bad. But just from these artists concerned, unfortunately, there are no better pictures.
In this case I think that a worse picture is better than none at all.
Let’s see what else happens here.
And @danny again, get well and I hope you are not too bad.
We need you.
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