Trophy hunters threaten to sue people who use photographs of them with their shot animals

In a rather nasty development, trophy hunters are threatening to sue a British Member of Parliament, Sir Roger Gale, because he used photographs of trophy hunters with their kills in an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Banning Trophy Hunting report dated June 2022. This looks like the trophy hunters are using their intellectual property rights to try and delay the passage of the bill to ban the importation of trophies into the UK and to send out a general signal to others.

I plead fair use in using the photo of the sport hunter and his bloody lion kill. I don't think the photographer of Lineker will mind me using the photo. There is an educational requirement here that needs to be fulfilled.

The report contains 78 photographs. The trophy hunters are demanding £1200 per photograph. They are therefore demanding a grand total of £93,600. And if they don't pay up, they are going to sue him they say.

I have used photographs of trophy hunters with their kills on my websites and criticised them heavily for obvious reasons. It concerns me that they may try and sue me as well. But if they sue me, they'll have to sue thousands of others and newspapers. It is not going to happen which is why they've targeted on special document.

I have always stated that these photographs have ended up in the public domain through general usage. And in addition, I would plead fair use because it is highly important that people are educated about trophy hunting and its cruelty. It has to stop. In the interests of the planet generally and wildlife particularly, trophy hunters must be stopped.

And this is also in the interest of humankind's attempts to interact with animals in a humane manner. I'd be disappointed if a judge found in favour of the hunters. They might as technically this might be seen as a breach of copyright.

The argument that trophy hunting improves conservation of wild species is highly erroneous. You can't kill animals to protect animals. Logic dictates that. But the trophy hunters constantly wheel out these poor arguments to defend their obnoxious habits.

As I said, this is a worrying development. The report comes from PA Media. A group of sport hunters say that the photographs which show them posing with their dead animals, often lions, have been used without their permission and they are therefore entitled to payment.

But who owns the photographs? That's the big question. I guess they were taken by the sport hunters or friends of the sport hunters. But they've found their way into the news media. I would bet my bottom dollar that the news media have not paid for these photographs.

The photographs are all over the Internet by the way. The photographers have done nothing about that. They can do nothing about it as it is too widespread. But this, to me, has resulted in the photographs being in the public domain. By implication, the photographers have accepted their presence. That's my argument. It might not be a completely solid one but nonetheless that's what I would state.

The important aspect of this is that you would plead fair use for educational purposes. Sport hunting is so immoral in my view that it justifies using someone else's photograph without their permission in order to bring about a ban on this practice.

And the British government would agree that because they are in the process instigating a ban on the importation of trophies by sport hunters into the UK.

Catmoji, Cat Lovers Pinterest Must Fail

The people at Catmoji say "“Catmoji is on a mission to make the Internet a better and happier place with cats. Join and help us distrupt (this is verbatim but is not a word!) the Internet with cats and happiness,” Rubbish. You are on a mission to squeeze what the hell you can out of the internet while disregarding intellectual property rights.

I really hope that this new, Catmoji. website fails. We have enough copyright violations with Pinterest. Catmoji pretty much copies Pinterest but the photos are of cats.  Boring. There are enough cat photos on the internet and enough people gawping at stupid cat photos and making stupid childish remarks.

Yes, I have a website called Pictures-of-cats.org but there is hardly one silly cat photo. They are sensible and they support the article that makes a real point.

But just to recirculate cat photos and to steal them from bona fide cat sites and put them on Catmoji seems a backward step to me.

It is time to move forward and refine the internet. It is time to make it fairer and to eradicate the sloppy intellectual property rights abuses that abound without regulations. There is no regulation on the internet other than Google and their complaints procedure - hardly inspiring.

I despair with the sloppiness of the internet. To let Catmoji grow is akin to the dumbing down of society, the new laziness of the youth and the rampant acquisition of debt by nearly everyone.  Catmoji is a negative influence. It achieves nothing other than cheap laughs and amusement at the expense of others.

People are running out of ideas about what to put on the internet so all they do is just regurgitate and recycle what is already there and then make some money out of it. It is diluting the internet and dumbing it down.

No doubt some ars*hole will steal something from my site without even realising they have done something that is immoral and illegal and put the image on bloody Catmoji. People are ignorant.

I have read that horrible Catmoji is an Asian idea. In general Asians have a very low regard for intellectual property rights in my experience.

Please can someone bring on some sort of sensible low level regulation of the internet so proactive steps can be taken to curb rampant copyright violation?

Bizarre Pinterest Terms of Service?

Pinterest's terms of service have recently changed (on November 14th 2012). The terms are a contract between Pinterest and the people who are account holders (members). I suspect the change is because a lot of disgruntled people were chatting in a critical way about the terms on blogs and social media sites.

in this post, I am addressing the new and improved terms and they seem bizarre to me. It seems they are struggling to get the contract correct, which does not surprise me because the basic model upon which the website is built is flawed in my opinion. It does not respect intellectual property rights sufficiently or hardly at all. Pinterest depends on a certain amount of copyright violation.

We know that a lot or most of the photos on Pinterest are pinned there - uploaded and posted - by people who neither created the photos nor have any rights in them. This activity is facilitated by Pinterest because it provides code that a website owner can use on his site which allows visitors to lift photos off the site and pin them on Pinterest. Then Pinterest allows people to re-pin these photos.

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Note: website owners can put some code on their site which blocks the use of the Pin It button but do website owners know about it or do they know how to use it? Also this code does not stop people downloading images from a site and uploading them from their computer's desktop.

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In summary, the company expects that a photo created and owned by Mr. A will be uploaded to Pinterest by Mr B and copied and moved around Pinterest by Mr C and embedded on another website by Mr D.

Mr B, Mr C and Mr D have no rights in the photo and it is not their content. The content (the photo) belongs to Mr A. And Mr A has no idea what is happening and has not granted any rights to B, C and D.

Yet bizarrely at Pinterest's Terms of Serivice clause 2, which is headed "Your Content" it states that...

If you post your content on Pinterest, it still belongs to you but we can show it to people and others can re-pin it.

So Pinterest is saying in the terms of service that the content that is posted on their site belongs to the person who uploaded it. But we know this often does not happen. And, as mentioned, Pinterest encourages people who have no rights in the content to post it on Pinterest.

Clause 2 goes on to say that a person who posts content (usually photos) on Pinterest grants to Pinterest and other users total freedom to do as they please with the photos. Once they are on the site you can kiss copyright protection goodbye unless you complain and get the content deleted. That is very troublesome for the copyright holder. So, when they say the content "still belongs to you" it is meaningless because you have no control over it.

The terms completely annihilate intellectual property rights. Pinterest encourages and expects people who have no right in a photo to post it on their site where it becomes public property. They say "We respect copyrights. You should, too."

Notice the word "should". They should have used "must".

The company limits its liability to $100 under any circumstances. "IN NO EVENT SHALL PINTEREST'S AGGREGATE LIABILITY EXCEED ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS (U.S. $100.00)."

There you have it. Some bizarre Pinterest Terms of Service that simply do not stack up and bear no relation to what actually happens and which Pinterest expects to happen.

People with websites who have photographic content on their site that they want to be protected by copyright must not put the pin it button on their site. If they do they are, without knowing it, potentially putting their protected images into the public domain and they'll never get them back.

The big boys of the internet don't like copyright because it gets in the way of the use of social media sites. It is also a barrier to the viral-like spreading and expansion of the internet that these big companies want to happen as it expands their business. Copyright is under huge pressure at the moment from the internet. Pinterest erodes it.

Although Google do have a decent complaint service. I expect that Google receives millions of complaints regarding intellectual property violations and are probably drowning in them. Something needs to happen that stops it (i.e. proactive action) as opposed to removing it (reactive action).

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Note 2: My apologies to cat lovers who want to see and read about cat stuff. However, sometimes website owners have to stand up against the big sites because they tend to walk all over the smaller sites run by individuals.

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Where can I get pictures that are not copyrighted?

I will tell you where you can get pictures that are not copyrighted. There are only so many options. The bottom line is there are three basic types of picture when it comes to copyright:

1. Pictures protected by copyright;
2. Pictures that are copyright protected but which you can use under license (permission) from the creator of the picture;
3. Pictures that were copyright protected but are no longer because the protection has expired under copyright law. The picture is in the "public domain".

Note: Copyright law is complicated. It varies across the world. Therefore assume all pictures are protected by copyright unless there is some obvious reason why it is not. For example, next to the picture the creator says you can use it.

Note 2: Obtaining permission to use a picture does not mean the picture is not copyrighted. It just means that for you it can be used.

Here is how you get pictures that are not copyrighted:

1. License to use. Assume the picture is copyright protected. Find out who took the picture. This is often not too hard to do. Find out their contact details (email usually) and ask the person whether you can use the picture on your website. Example email asking for permission:

"Hi, I love your picture of the xxxx. I have a website about xxxx. The URL is xxx. I wonder if you would be kind enough to let me use your picture on my site. I would be pleased to provide a link to a website of your choice and promote your work. I look forward to hearing from you. Best Regards John Doe"

You will be surprised how many say, yes. This is because the market place for photography is very competitive and photographers or artists are pleased to get a bit of publicity.

However, you must always do as they ask and do it well. Never scam someone who has been nice to you. Be generous to them and you will get your reward.

Technically the photographer will grant you a license to use the picture under certain conditions. He or she can withdraw the license if the conditions say he can, but he rarely if ever will. The terms of the license are negotiable but they will be very simple and uncomplicated and normally unspecified other than a link.

Note: this can be a slow process and you might not get an answer. It can be frustrating but you'll get some successes and it is worth doing.

2. Creative Commons. You have probably heard about this or seen it. You might be unsure what it means. Forget the name 'creative commons'. It is confusing. Creative commons means that the creator of the picture has given permission up front, in advance, for people to use his or her work under certain conditions. This is very efficient as it avoids the need to ask, which takes time. There are various types of creative commons. It depends on what type of permission the creator, usually a photographer, grants. At on end of the spectrum is permission to use in any way you like with one condition: that you credit the photographer. At the other end of the spectrum permission is granted provided you use the photograph "as is" and provide a credit and not use the picture commercially. Flickr has the full spread of creative commons licenses on this page. They also provide a nice explanation of use. All the big photo repositories will allow use under creative commons.

On catch under this method is that on Flickr a person can protect their work under copyright but Flickr allows you to embed the photo on your website using code provided by Flickr. That is incorrect but it is up to the photographer to organise their settings properly.

3. Wikimedia Commons. this is like creative commons. Go to this page to see lots of freely available pictures but comply with the conditions. This is usually means crediting the author of the work. I would also quote at the base of your page the authority under which you can publish the picture on your web page. This is the page.

4. Public Domain. The time is takes for copyright to expire various in different countries or regions. Basically is is 50 years plus the lifetime of the author of the work - a long time. You can see pictures that are in the public domain in old books because the books are in the public domain. You can see old books and the contents on Google Books.

5. Purchase. Of course you can purchase the use of a picture. This does not mean the picture is not copyrighted. It just means that you have a license to use it which is the same as a creative commons license really except you are paying.  iStockphoto is the biggest.

Note: I have not discussed 'fair use' here because it is not part of the subject matter of this page.

Associated: Internet Copyright Issues.

Copyright Laws -- Internet

Copyright laws on the internet are like any other. Works are protected in the same way they are protected in books or any other medium. OK, some people seem to think that anything goes. It is a kind of anarchy on the internet sometimes although it is gradually getting better. The internet is still growing up.



Please presume that everything you see on the internet is protected by copyright unless something or someone says otherwise. The best route is to ask for permission. Sometimes you get that permission up front without asking.

For example, Wikipedia allow you to copy their work under a Wikipedia commons license. This applies to images and text but please read the terms and conditions.

I know you are in a hurry and it it a bore but there is no other way. Creative commons is one way to use text and images. Some work can be used if the author provides users with a license either under creative commons or a license of their own making. These licenses are are often forms of the creative commons license. If a license to use is granted the terms and conditions must be complied with. The barest minimum will be providing the author with a credit and perhaps a link back to the original work. The later is both polite and possibly a legal requirement.

I discuss free public domain photos in more detail.

Copyright is easy to breach on the internet because everything tends to be immediate and instantaneous and it is almost impossible to enforce copyright laws considering the enormous amount of new material uploaded to the internet daily. Google, though, is beginning to take it seriously and the time will come when breaches will be prevented electronically, I predict. This would be proactive rather than the current cumbersome reactive measures.

The single most pervasive and important copyright law regarding the internet and any other medium is the Berne Convention, an agreement between 164 countries at the date of this post, under which they enforce copyright under the same rules. I mention this in the video above but you can read more on Wikipedia.

Copyright laws are complicated if studied in detail. I think it best to take an overview, understand the basics and play safe. This is legal and polite. One problem is that the internet is an international medium and laws change country to country. The Berne Convention is an umbrella agreement that provides minimum copyright protection. Some countries may have tougher legislation.



From Copyright Laws Internet to Home Page

PlusPets.net in breach of copyright

A website called Plus Pets is in breach of copyright and Google has helped to stop the website owners taking advantage of it. It is a good example of how Google is now more concerned about and aware of the rampant breaches of copyright that are taking place on the internet on a daily basis.

Google is naturally concerned that unless it does something about the problem of violations of people's intellectual property rights as the premier power on the internet then one day the governments will step in and create an international body that regulates the internet. There is a good argument that it does need to be regulated by an impartial, international body that is not driven by commercial gain.

At the moment though I am very pleased with the help offered by Google under their copyright complaints procedure.

Google cannot delete offending pages unless it is a Google Blogger account. But it can blacklist the offending page. What I mean it can delist it from search results which is the same as burying it under a pile of billions of webpages - the offending page becomes invisible. Of course Yahoo and the other search engines can still find and list it but Google is the dominant force in search enquiries on the internet.

In this instance Plus Pets had blatantly used copyrighted material from my website. The images copied were by Helmi Flick a well known international cat photographer of considerable repute.

In fact they copied and republished other photographs by other photographers too but I have no authority to act on behalf of the these photographers and so cannot make a complaint to Google for them.

I won't link to the offending page as that would undermine the process! Google also make a record of the complaint on a website: ChillingEffects.org, which is a public website.

This is the page on Chilling Effects where my complaint is recorded and which was upheld. I have made many more complaints and they are all acted upon.

People who violate copyright are irresponsible in their behavior. If it were allowed to go on unabated ultimately the internet would break down and become a place that could not be trusted.

The internet is a wonderfully useful facility but its integrity must be protected in order to foster long term growth.



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Free Public Domain Photos

Cat - by kevindooley

To all the people who are tempted to violate someone's copyright here are some ideas about free public domain photos. First let's remind ourselves that everything on the internet is protected by copyright unless there something on or around the work that says otherwise. Nothing can be copied unless it is expressly allowed. That is the default position. Update: this was written around 14 years ago! :-?

All images in public domain?!

Things have changed. Pinterest pretty well single-handedly destroyed the concept of intellectual property rights for images on the internet. Everything they publish is almost certainly a breach of copyright. No one complaints. If they can do it why can't I? The true is that all I have said below is true but in practice at 2021 no one cares anymore. You can be sure that almost any image is in the public domain nowadays :)  !



Creative Commons (CC)

Perhaps one of the best ideas to come out of the internet (did the internet give birth to this idea? - not sure) is creative commons. It appears that a lot of people don't know how it works.

Creative commons is a licensing system. In using creative commons the author of a work - be it a photo, words, music etc - can give permission to anyone to use the photo under the terms of the license.

These photos are not strictly speaking free and in the public domain but their allowed use is as good as public domain photos.

Types of CC License

There are four different types of license; each one allows use of the work under the particular conditions of the license.  A "license" is a form of permission to use the photo.

Some are more restrictive than others. And importantly the licenses are used together (I explain this below). Each type of license has its own symbol.

This license allows people to use the photo in anyway they wish. You can use it "as is" or adjust it, crop it etc. All you have to do is give the photographer credit (the symbol of the person indicates that - called "Attribution License"). This form of license is always included. When giving credits I always copy the photographer's name and drop it under the photo on my site (see header photo on this page). I also give a link back to the photographer's page as a thank you. In fact Flickr asks that we do that as it helps Flickr. Let's do it. We got the photo for free didn't we?

This license allows use provided you use it exactly as it is published on Flickr (the symbol of the equals sign indicates that - called "NoDerivs License"). You can't change it and you have to provide a credit on your website where the photo is re-published. Please stick to these conditions. Often there are lots of nice free public domain photos under this heading as good photographers like their photos to be unaltered for obvious reasons. The photos can be used by use for commercial purposes too provided the symbol below is not attached.

This license means that you can use the photo but not for commercial purposes. The symbol of the dollar sign struck through indicates that ("NonCommercial License").

This license means that you can use the photo and derivatives of it (modifications of it) and distribute those modified images ("ShareAlike License").

As I said above, these different types of license are balled together. For example, I often use the the top two licenses balled together, attribution and no derivatives. The photographer allows use of these photos provided you don't alter them and give a credit (and a link back but this is not obligatory under the license - it is just a Flick requirement). This page on the creative commons site shows the different forms of license.

I use Flickr for free public domain photos. I think it is the best of the photo library sites and they have a clear creative commons section.

There are about 180 million photos on Flickr that are usable under creative commons. We should thank the people who grant permission to others to use their photos.

I'll explain how to get to them so that you don't feel like "stealing" the photos of Helmi Flick on my websites.

Go to Flickr - click on this link. Then scroll down the page to the footer menu. You will see creative commons. Click on it. You then come to a page of icons of the six different versions of creative commons together with thumbnail samples of the photos under each license. These licenses are what might be called combo licenses. Two or more types of creative commons license are balled together as mentioned above. The attribution license is always present.

I would suggest that initially you use the second one down (Attribution-NoDerivs License). If you use a non-commercial license there is the added complication of deciding what "non-commercial" means. There are various interpretations. I would suggest that a Google Blogger blog with a low visitor count and perhaps a bit of AdSense on it could be classified as non-commercial. That is just my thought.

Select which license that you prefer but stick to the conditions as laid down by the license please.

If you don't see a picture that appeals you can then search the whole of Flickr and select copyrighted photos. These are expressly protected by copyright but it does not mean that they can't be used. All you have to do is ask the photographer using the Flickr email service. The photographer will probably be happy to let you use it provided you give a credit and publish the photo as is (unmodified). But you have to ask first. This is a must - sorry.

Flickr's repository of hundreds of millions of photos should satisfy your needs one way or another. Play by the rules please. It makes life so much less complicated in the long run.

If you don't like Flickr there is Photobucket and Webshots which are large sites with more millions of photos and similar methods for use of the photos.

Finally if you want to search globally for creative commons, free public domain photos, use the creative commons site: CC Search.

Other Free Public Domain Photos

The most obvious way a photo becomes free from copyright and in the public domain is through lapse of copyright over time. Copyright law is complicated unfortunately. I wrote an article about it some time ago: Definition of Copyright - this page also covers some of the ground covered on this page.

Google provide a book service - Google Books -  and some of the books are copyright free due to lapse of time. Sometimes these old books have useful photos. You can link to them and embed extracts using Google software. Or you can take a screenshot legitimately. Try Public domain only books.

Pixabay is good. Try it. I use it quite a lot. Search for it using Google or Bing.

Fair Use

Use of copyrighted material is sometimes permissible under fair use but great caution is required. I would not use this concept unless you know what you are doing an if you do please argue your reasons why you think you can use the photo under fair use.

The Wikipedia authors use fair use sometimes and their arguments are instructive. Here is Wiki's page on the subject.

Wikimedia Commons

This is another excellent resource for free public domain photos. Search it thoroughly and please comply with the terms and conditions. Wikimedia Commons home page.

Free Cat Clipart

I have a page on PoC on this.

Stock photo Sites

Sometimes these sites provide the odd photo for free. Here are two examples of stock photo sites:

1. Dreamstime
2. iStockphoto

Please don't violate the copyright of Helmi Flick on the pages of my website: PoC - thanks.



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Internet Copyright Issues

The internet is becoming worse. I have more internet copyright issues now than before. People "steal" photographs and text from my website all the time. Despite warnings on the homepage, despite placing clear copyright notices under photos - which is not obligatory as all work is automatically protected by copyright - unscrupulous people just download them and upload to their website. I can add software that prevents right-click downloads but that does not stop a person stealing a photo - they can take a screen shot and crop out the image. A watermark across the image will make it almost useless to steal but make it far less effective as a image on my site.

Once they have placed the stolen photo on their site they fail to protect copyright so other unscrupulous and immoral people steal it again from their site and that enlarges the problem substantially. It also simply duplicates what is already on the internet - hardly beneficial.

Then Google image search finds the stolen photo and presents it higher in search results than your original - it is just ghastly and totally unfair.

WARNING: I ALWAYS TRACK DOWN WEBSITES WHO STEAL COPYRIGHTED IMAGES. I MAKE A FORMAL COMPLAINT TO GOOGLE under their DMCA policy

See: PoC copyright violations and Definition of Copyright.
See also an example of a website in breach of copyright being delisted in respect of the offending page. The upheld complaint is listed in the Chilling Effects website for public view. Update 30th September 2011: I have made approximately 40 complaints in respect of image violations to Google DMCA. Almost all have been agreed by Google and the relevant page delisted from Google search results. It is possible too that this process damages the website concerned in respect of Google's perception of it. Here is another example of a DMCA complaint I made on Chilling Effects. Don't violate copyright please.

The problem is massive and Google, very late in the day, are beginning to do something about it but it is perhaps too little too late. The mentality of many website creators is that they can do as they please and get away with it and a lot of the time they are correct (at least for a while until I have tracked them down).

I always make an application to Google under their complaints procedure. Removing Content From Google. This can now be done online rather than by post. "Removing content from Google" in my experience means one of two things. If the stolen image or text is on a Google Blogspot Blogger site, Google deletes the page that contains the offending text or image if they uphold your complaint. If the copyright breach is on a website not hosted by Google then Google de-lists the page from its search results. This means that no one can find it using Google. This is obviously a serious blow to the person who stole the image or text.

However, it is far from a conclusive result. Google's search will still bring up the image for a potentially long time after the image has been removed. This is because it can take a long time for the Google bots to get to where the deleted page was and report back, if it was a Blogger page. If the image is on a non-Blogger site the search results will still point to the offending page for quite some time. This is depressing for people like me because you want the problem fixed immediately and you want the person who stole the image(s) and/or text to be punished.

There is also the fact that the other search engines, Yahoo, Bing, Ask etc, might still be finding and listing the offending web page. Although these search engines are relatively unimportant compared to god Google.

Some people say, "it's only a picture, chill out". They are wrong and do not understand the consequences of internet copyright theft. It can have a severe impact on the income generated by the victim of the copyright theft.

Internet copyright issues are very important indeed and they have been almost ignored for a very long time. There almost seems to be an acceptance of it. You don't buy a book and copy it and republish it unless you are a scamming business in Asia. But internet copyright theft is rampant and unabated and can be carried out by anyone.

Internet copyright issues are a major headache for someone like me. I manage my entire site alone. I have no fancy software or help to monitor and stop internet copyright breaches. It is very difficult to stop it under these circumstances. Google should have done much more to assist the single webmaster long ago. Yet Google's new algorithm has hurt lots of websites that are run by individuals. The internet is not really a nice place for individuals who build their own website. It is a place for the big sites.

Why can't Google detect breaches of copyright? It should be able to mark when an image first comes on the internet. If it insists that copyrighted images have a notice under them, "photo copyright John Doe" then their bots can read that. Surely that would let them detect when the image has been used elsewhere. Alternatively Google could devise some code that people can put in the image html so that Google can track it and mark it as the original image (first on the internet).

That in turn would let them de-list the page without having to receive hundreds of thousands of complaints which must be a nightmare for Google to process. They are probably having problems coping with the complaints procedure although I am very pleased with their service to date - thanks Google. Google notify you by email when they de-list a webpage from their search results.

However, it is up to a major organisation such as Google to take PROACTIVE steps to prevent internet copyright issues occurring. Reactive measures are ultimately unworkable. If Google can't or won't do something about it for the long term rather than fire fighting then someone else should.

It is sad to say that, inadvertently, Google promotes internet copyright issues and breach of copyright through its Adsense programme. Anyone can make money using Adsense. Anyone can start a blogger site in seconds. It is these casual, fly-by-nite people who are the biggest offenders.



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