Mail to the team

My own views on this are www.ipernity.com/blog/15711/29765 Basically I think that a site where people 'bookmark' other people's work and then receive votes and comments on strangers' (ours!) work is wrong, wrong, wrong. Linking back to here and all the other sites, where the owners with copyright have uploaded, doesn't make it right. No, no, no.

I have very mixed feelings as well.

But then again, all people see over there is a version of the picture a bit bigger than a thumbnail, or am I missing some bigger version?

As far as I know, it's just a thumbnail. The point for me that makes this more than 'bookmarks', is that people are displaying our work and collecting comments and votes on work that is not theirs. I could care less about votes on my work in my account, but for someone else to take credit, even on a thumbnail? That disturbs me.

The site has captions like 'share your work' and then it is actually sharing work that belongs to other people, not necessarily the user of the pixrat account. Yes, there are links to our original works, but the site and the way in which people are using it is misrepresentative. I can't imagine why someone is voting on my image that someone has bookmarked. Is the vote celebrating the act of bookmarking? Somehow I doubt it.

Rob Young pro says: (4 hours ago)
I just had an email from Christophe in ipernity support, he said they would be looking into this to see what could be done.

And by the way, he replied to my email within 10 minutes. These ipernity people are good!
h

Ich hab da auch gerade eins gesehen, was ich vor ein paar Minuten hier kommentiert hatte!

Ich weiss nicht so recht, was ich davon halten soll.
Man sollte zumindest die Wahl haben, ob man da mitmachen moechte oder nicht.
Wie bei technorati oder digg it oder was auch immer.
:S

Ich hab auch schon wieder ueberlegt, ob ich alle meine Tags nur noch fuer mich selber auffindbar machen soll - aber das wird eine irre Arbeit ...

Immerhin sind ja da auf der Seite alle Fotos zum Original verlinkt, und nur in ganz klein zu sehen. Trotzdem ist das eine merkwuerdige Sache.

Ja, mich stoerts im Moment auch nicht weiter.
Solange die Bilder nicht im Originalformat da zu finden sind oder als download, grmbl....

There is no deal between ipernity and Pixrat, we are not involved in Pixrat and we do not support Pixrat activities.

Bookmarking is a common practice on Internet.

However, we've sent a message to Pixrat, asking them how an ipernity member could prevent bookmarking of his/her pictures by Pixrat.

We'll keep you informed.

Christian

Thank you, Christian!

Here is a reply we've just received from Pixrat. Apparently, there is no automatic way to prevent bookmarking of copyrighted pictures, but you can send Pixrat and email and they'll remove the related bookmarks. On the other hand, I've just deleted an ipernity account created only for Pixrat bookmarking. If you see accounts like that, feel free to inform us. Hope it could help. Christian

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
De : contactus@pixrat.com De la part de Pixrat Team
Envoyé : jeudi 22 novembre 2007 16:31
À : ipernity support
Objet : Re: Complaints from ipernity.com members

Hi Christophe

Pixrat is a social picture bookmarking site. It allows users to bookmark their favorite images from the web. However we don't store the original image but just a small thumbnail for preview. Also we link back to the original site from where it was bookmarked from. But having said that, we also respect privacy and copyright concerns of the owners of photos and take steps immediately to address concerns as and when it is brought to our notice, since it is impossible for us to determine the copyright issues programmatically.

We completely understand your concern and appreciate that you have brought this to our notice. We have removed the specific bookmark.

Please feel free to write to us anytime you have any queries or concerns.

Thanks and Regards,

Pixrat Team.

Thank you for keeping us up to date, Christian!

A lot of users are upset, because they just don't understand social bookmarking.

Well, and the border between social bookmarking and copyright infringement is somewhat undefined. As with all the stuff on the intartubes, there is different opinions on what is still citing and linking and what is already copyright infringement...

Ipernity users might not be aware of it, but a lot of pictures are legally dubious, e.g. pictures of people where you do not have the written consent of them that the picture can be published on a website. While these picturese were completely OK when you only showed in a slideshow to bore your family and neighbours, it is different on the web. Is it the same as a private slideshow or is it publishing? Same with social bookmarks, opinions vary.

Not helping is the fact that every country has a different approach to stuff. Technology is well ahead of the law and the understanding of rights and wrongs for non-law-people (like me). So actually pixrat may be legal in some countries, illegal in some others. It might be acceptable for some people, not-acceptable for others... There's just no simple solution to it.

I agree with Nils.

And to the point that some may not understand social bookmarking, I understand it but am not comfortable with the voting and commenting that can occur on my work, without my knowledge and consent, on other social networking web sites.

I only consented to discussion in the Iperity social network ; ) through the use of its settings for privacy, who can comment, tag etc : )

It would be nice to have a feature to see who links to this, but wait, technorati should be able to help there, no?
If I put Ipernity on my watchlist I should be able to see who links to my pics??
*scribbles note on to do list*
;)

Agreed.
It is a good sign in my opinion, that they at least did send a reaction like that.

Anyhow, I'm not going to check all their pictures to see if I find one of mine :)

It just completely slips my sense of understanding why someone goes through that bunch of pictures I have and bookmarks an old, dusty Mercedes and a Korean bug?!

;)

Thank you for the troubles.
At least they sound decent and have reacted promptly.
We shall see what will develop here :)

maybe Ipernity can do a htaccess to prevent such kind of hotlinking
the same princip like trafficklau.de

Goes to look what htaccess means :)