iGliss - Any Concerns?

kygarden

I assume this shows up because of RSS, right?

http://www.igliss.com/viewpicture.aspx?id=225221&Page=1&Total=13&Index=0&ref=PictureClips.aspx%3fs%3dtrue%26st%3dtag%26mt%3d0%26pagemt%3d1%26query%3dlush%26Page%3d1%26id%3d225221

Any reason to be concerned or would this actually be a benefit to me (more traffic and no risk of stolen images somehow)? I found this when I did a Google search on my smugmug site. Those are my photos there in the iGliss site.

Thanks

jfriend

kygarden wrote:

I assume this shows up because of RSS, right?

http://www.igliss.com/viewpicture.aspx?id=225221&Page=1&Total=13&Index=0&ref=PictureClips.aspx%3fs%3dtrue%26st%3dtag%26mt%3d0%26pagemt%3d1%26query%3dlush%26Page%3d1%26id%3d225221

Any reason to be concerned or would this actually be a benefit to me (more traffic and no risk of stolen images somehow)? I found this when I did a Google search on my smugmug site. Those are my photos there in the iGliss site.

Thanks

If that's your photo, then what they are doing is probably not technically legal without your permission. They have copied your image and are hosting it elsewhere and are using it to promote their own product/service. If you contact them and tell them to stop, they probably will.

On the other hand, the photo I saw is relatively small, has a watermark in it and a link to the Smugmug source gallery. So, this may just be free promotion with no downside so you should take it as that. It's all up to you.

BTW, you have absolutely beautiful colors in your flowers gallery.

kygarden

Thanks John. I assume what they're doing is grabbing the links and/or images via RSS. Doesn't everyone's smugmug gallery automatically get sent out via RSS (not sure if I'm terming that correctly) unless you have the gallery private and password protected. Is that correct?

So would what they're doing be legal because of RSS??? Anyone that has some input as to the potential benefits or hazards of what they're doing, please chime in. So far to me it looks harmless unelss I just didn't want them having my photos on their site...but you tell me....

Thanks

Oh and thanks for the comment on my photos. I appreciate it

jfriend

kygarden wrote:

Thanks John. I assume what they're doing is grabbing the links and/or images via RSS. Doesn't everyone's smugmug gallery automatically get sent out via RSS (not sure if I'm terming that correctly) unless you have the gallery private and password protected. Is that correct?

So would what they're doing be legal because of RSS??? Anyone that has some input as to the potential benefits or hazards of what they're doing, please chime in. So far to me it looks harmless unelss I just didn't want them having my photos on their site...but you tell me....

Thanks

Oh and thanks for the comment on my photos. I appreciate it

I have no idea if they are grabbing it via RSS or just grabbing it from the web URL. RSS doesn't actual "send out" your images. It just advertises URLs to your images on Smugmug to anyone who decides to read the RSS feed.

But, it doesn't really matter. Those mages are yours and they aren't allowed to make copies of them, put them on their own web-site and promote their own business with them.

If you're a pro looking for sales, then I'd say you are probably getting exposure on their site and have nothing to lose. They do link to your Smugmug gallery. It looks like they are trying to aggregate interesting things found on the web and provide a new interface for people to view them. I don't know what their business model is (probably advertising).

kygarden

I think I'm going to contact them and ask them to remove links to my photos. I got to looking at this more and first of all, quickly found more smugmug photos on there. The thing that really bothers me is they allow you to (via the links below the photo) post my photos in a blog or anywhere else where you can paste in the html info to make the photo display. Then when you click on the photo in the blog (I tested this in my blog), it takes you to the igliss site, not my smugmug gallery where the photo lives. If it weren't for them offering people the ability to share my photos in a blog or discussion forum online, I might not be opposed to this.

The more I look at this the more I don't like it.

Check out this search for smugmug on thier site....lots of smugmug photos. Is this a problem for other people???

http://www.igliss.com/pictureclips.aspx?s=true&mt=0&pagemt=1&query=smugmug


..

NWMtnGuy

Wow, very interesting. I searched for some keywords on their site that match some of my keywords, and sure enough I found my photos there too. Like you, I need to think about whether this is a good idea or not.

My gut feeling is that I don't like it because they are displaying my work on a commercial site without permission or compensation. On the other hand, it links straight back to my page if someone figures out enough to click in the right place, so they are providing a direct path to someone who wants to purchase a photo from me.

I would be curious to hear what other Smugmuggers think of this.

Dale
http://www.dalebaskin.com

kygarden

Yeah I was ok with it since they do link back to my galleries on smugmug if you click the right spot...BUT...again, they allow you to get a link to embed in your own blog posts and so on so that you can share just the photo and nothing else that ID's it. So it's not like in a blog you'd see anything that tells viewers that this photo belongs to John Doe or a link to his gallery. That's my big issue. I don't want them giving people an option to share my photos online when I purposely turned off the sharing option on SmugMug.

NWMtnGuy

Some more information:
This is how iGliss describes their service on their site:

iGliss is all about helping you access and share your personal and favorite media content such as pictures, audio podcasts, video clips, and blog posts, from your PCs and the Internet.

iGliss lets you create your own media catalog for your online favorite content as well as content from your PCs. It automatically synchronizes interesting content from your favorite Web sites and PCs in your catalog, so that you can easily enjoy interesting pictures, audio podcasts and music, video clips, blog posts in one place, without constantly searching for them. You can easily collect and organize the content in your catalog, and share it with your friends in groups.

<!-- end of core content-->
On a very basic level it looks as if the idea is to provide a service where someone can catalog all their favorite multimedia content from various websites in one place. In that sense, it doesn't seem too bad. A good analogy might be that some of us have customized Yahoo or Google pages that reach out and grab news content from lots of different places and display it on one page according to our interests. (I haven't decided if this is a good analogy yet...)

Of course, if you look at their terms of service it has the usual language that you see on so many websites now:

9. Content Inclusion
iGliss does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service, you grant iGliss the following world-wide, royalty free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable:

With respect Weblogs and Content that you publish in those Weblogs, the perpetual, irrevocable and fully sub-licensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

So, I suppose one could claim that a photo site is a sort of blog. Maybe. Are they claiming that content that I publish in my "Weblog" is now licenced to them because it has been made available for inclusion in a publicly accessible area of their service? I don't think that would hold up in court very long since I never gave permission for somethng to be displayed on their site, but they can claim anything they want until someone challenges it.

Still curious what other think about this.

Dale
http://www.dalebaskin.com

NWMtnGuy

kygarden wrote:

Yeah I was ok with it since they do link back to my galleries on smugmug if you click the right spot...BUT...again, they allow you to get a link to embed in your own blog posts and so on so that you can share just the photo and nothing else that ID's it. So it's not like in a blog you'd see anything that tells viewers that this photo belongs to John Doe or a link to his gallery. That's my big issue. I don't want them giving people an option to share my photos online when I purposely turned off the sharing option on SmugMug.

That's a really good point. I guess one of the really important questions is how are they getting SmugMug content on their site? Are they just displaying images produced by an RSS feed, or are they copying images directly off of sites and embedding the original URL into the image in the process?

Can any SmugHeroes comment on how they are getting the SmugMug content?

Dale

kygarden

It appears they've somehow got a small version of the photos on their site - they're not directly linking back to SmugMug to host the photo - which is at least a little better so they're not eating up the bandwidth I paid for for my account.

Check this out. Here's an example of me posting the html code they provide for MY photo that they snagged and put on their site (sort of, but you know what I mean). See how that looks? Just looks like a normal shared image right? Now click on the picture and see where you go. I don't like that. But first and foremost I don't like that they allow people to share my pictures in this manner.

<a href='http://www.igliss.com/viewpicture.aspx?id=225221&Page=1&Total=13&Index=0&ref=PictureClips.aspx?s=true&st=tag&mt=0&pagemt=1&query=lush&Page=1&id=225221'><img src='http://www.igliss.com/LocalCache/MFJawPNe+9kzPHilzEKaxA==.jpg' border='0' alt='OpenBloom's photo'/></a>

It's clear they have a version of my photo on their server somehow because look at the image source: img src= 'http://www.igliss.com/LocalCache/MFJawPNe+9kzPHilzEKaxA==. jpg (I intentionally messed up the html so the link would show as text)


...

Andy

NWMtnGuy wrote:

Can any SmugHeroes comment on how they are getting the SmugMug content?

Dale

The images were available as a feed.

kygarden

This may have been asked before in another discussion...but is there any way at all to turn off the feeds without locking the galleries with a password?

Also, are you saying I'd have no legal standing in asking them to remove my photos since they were snagged via the feed?

jfriend

kygarden wrote:

This may have been asked before in another discussion...but is there any way at all to turn off the feeds without locking the galleries with a password?

Also, are you saying I'd have no legal standing in asking them to remove my photos since they were snagged via the feed?

The images weren't snagged via a feed. They may have been discovered via a feed, just like they can be discovered via a Google search or a Smugmug search or just browsing your site. The images were copied by downloading them from your site. It doesn't matter if they discovered them via a feed or how they discovered them. They aren't allowed to copy them and use them for their business if you don't want them to.

kygarden

Somehow they're getting the watermarked version of the image (my watermark)....but that's the part I don't understand - how they're getting a copy of that version. If you look at the RSS feed for that gallery, the images are smaller than they appear on that igliss site and there's no watermark on the RSS version. See?...

Here's the feed: http://www.openbloom.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=4125998_xtHfn&format=rss200

And here's the individual photo I'm using as the example. See how small it is? See that there's no watermark? http://www.openbloom.com/photos/347697556_QvrDp-Th-2.jpg

But their version has my watermark and is larger. So how did they get it? I have all the security features enabled on SmugMug with the exception of passwords for this gallery and making it private - which would defeat the purpose of having a public photo site.

CORRECTION - ok I see that there are different sizes available on RSS that give the watermark. Still, bummer....

jfriend

kygarden wrote:

Somehow they're getting the watermarked version of the image (my watermark)....but that's the part I don't understand - how they're getting a copy of that version. If you look at the RSS feed for that gallery, the images are smaller than they appear on that igliss site and there's no watermark on the RSS version. See?...

Here's the feed: http://www.openbloom.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=4125998_xtHfn&format=rss200

And here's the individual photo I'm using as the example. See how small it is? See that there's no watermark? http://www.openbloom.com/photos/347697556_QvrDp-Th-2.jpg

But their version has my watermark and is larger. So how did they get it? I have all the security features enabled on SmugMug with the exception of passwords for this gallery and making it private - which would defeat the purpose of having a public photo site.

CORRECTION - ok I see that there are different sizes available on RSS that give the watermark. Still, bummer....

I'm not sure you understand RSS feeds. The feed itself contains URLs to lots of different sizes of your images. It's up to the consumer of the feed what they want to display. In Firefox, going to the feed above chooses to display the thumbs which don't have watermarks on them (see the thumbs don't even have watermarks in your own Smugmug gallery). But, the larger versions of the images do have watermarks. This is a sample of what's in the RSS feed. You can see it has links to lots of different sizes of the images. If they download and display the thumb sized version, no watermark. If they download and display a larger version, there is a watermark.

[PHP] <item>
<title>OpenBloom's photo</title>
<link>http://www.openbloom.com/gallery/4125998_xtHfn#289647902_dNtm8</link&gt;
<description><p><a href="http://www.openbloom.com">OpenBloom</a&gt; </p><a href="http://www.openbloom.com/gallery/4125998_xtHfn#289647902_dNtm8&quot; title="OpenBloom's photo"><img src="http://www.openbloom.com/photos/289647902_dNtm8-Th-6.jpg&quot; width="150" height="150" alt="OpenBloom's photo" title="OpenBloom's photo" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" /></a></description>

<category>NATURE & LANDSCAPES</category>
<pubDate>Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:22:43 -0700</pubDate>
<author>nobody@smugmug.com (OpenBloom)</author>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.openbloom.com/photos/289647902_dNtm8-Th-6.jpg</guid&gt;
<enclosure url="http://www.openbloom.com/photos/289647902_dNtm8-Th-6.jpg&quot; length="12564" type="image/jpeg"/>
<media:group>

<media:content url="http://www.openbloom.com/photos/289647902_dNtm8-Ti-6.jpg&quot; fileSize="7516" type="image/jpeg" medium="image" width="100" height="100">
<media:hash algo="md5">c15793b70b760c1ec525005303155169</media:hash>
</media:content>
<media:content url="http://www.openbloom.com/photos/289647902_dNtm8-Th-6.jpg&quot; fileSize="12564" type="image/jpeg" medium="image" width="150" height="150" isDefault="1">
<media:hash algo="md5">d0c31f4b9ca8cf012724c1e524310e30</media:hash>
</media:content>
<media:content url="http://www.openbloom.com/photos/289647902_dNtm8-S-6.jpg&quot; fileSize="32244" type="image/jpeg" medium="image" width="219" height="300">
<media:hash algo="md5">4f10906bfb927d42ab87b190f32f2582</media:hash>

</media:content>
<media:content url="http://www.openbloom.com/photos/289647902_dNtm8-M-6.jpg&quot; fileSize="56129" type="image/jpeg" medium="image" width="328" height="450">
<media:hash algo="md5">34c131ebc8b8f040b8cc2f40a5b90a4c</media:hash>
</media:content>
<media:content url="http://www.openbloom.com/photos/289647902_dNtm8-L-6.jpg&quot; fileSize="85838" type="image/jpeg" medium="image" width="438" height="600">
<media:hash algo="md5">ba40f0a0815ba4ac93754dca994c322b</media:hash>
</media:content>
</media:group>

<media:title type="html">OpenBloom's photo</media:title>
<media:text type="html"><p><a href="http://www.openbloom.com">OpenBloom</a&gt; </p><a href="http://www.openbloom.com/gallery/4125998_xtHfn#289647902_dNtm8&quot; title="OpenBloom's photo"><img src="http://www.openbloom.com/photos/289647902_dNtm8-Th-6.jpg&quot; width="150" height="150" alt="OpenBloom's photo" title="OpenBloom's photo" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" /></a></media:text>
<media<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >nail url="http://www.openbloom.com/photos/289647902_dNtm8-Th-6.jpg&quot; width="150" height="150"/>
<media:category>NATURE & LANDSCAPES</media:category>

<media:keywords>bloom, branch, cornus, deciduous, dogwood, flower, petal, red, spring, stamen, tree, vibrant</media:keywords>
<media:copyright url="http://www.openbloom.com">OpenBloom</media:copyright&gt;
<media:credit role="photographer">OpenBloom</media:credit>
</item>
[/PHP]

kygarden

Right, the RSS feed will apparently give people the option to see several sizes depending on what max size you allow. In my case I have the size capped at Large. So they see thumbs up to the Large size. The watermark starts appearing on the Small size photo - doesn't appear on the thumbs.

I think if we just had a way to turn off the feeds that would be great. I'm pretty sure the feed issue was debated quite a bit in the past.

jfriend

kygarden wrote:

Right, the RSS feed will apparently give people the option to see several sizes depending on what max size you allow. In my case I have the size capped at Large. So they see thumbs up to the Large size. The watermark starts appearing on the Small size photo - doesn't appear on the thumbs.

I think if we just had a way to turn off the feeds that would be great. I'm pretty sure the feed issue was debated quite a bit in the past.

This particular site has many other ways to access public images on Smugmug. They are public and this is the web. I won't offer an opinion on RSS feeds, but you should know that just disabling them wouldn't stop people from doing this if they wanted to.

Andy

kygarden wrote:

Right, the RSS feed will apparently give people the option to see several sizes depending on what max size you allow. In my case I have the size capped at Large. So they see thumbs up to the Large size. The watermark starts appearing on the Small size photo - doesn't appear on the thumbs.

I think if we just had a way to turn off the feeds that would be great. I'm pretty sure the feed issue was debated quite a bit in the past.

You can disable feeds sure - but I don't worry so much - IF you are looking to sell your images (you are). I wouldn't want to miss any opportunity for exposure and reach.

http://blogs.smugmug.com/pros/2008/07/05/repeat-after-me-feeds-are-our-friends/

You can block the sizes available in your gallery settings.

You can have feeds off by making the gallery unlisted, or passworded, and/or even SmugIslands set to no

Haigh

If external links are off will the feeds still work?
If external links are off will they be able to see/download the images while not on our smugmug page?

If so, I seem to be missing the point of an external links selection....

Robert

kygarden

If I'm not mistaken, unless you actually put a password on the gallery and make it private, the feeds will still work.

I think the only thing missing that I don't have right now (as far as features go) is the ability to keep my galleries as they are right now (public, right-click protected, watermarked, no password) , but just not allow them to feed out.

renstar

jfriend wrote:

The images weren't snagged via a feed. They may have been discovered via a feed, just like they can be discovered via a Google search or a Smugmug search or just browsing your site. The images were copied by downloading them from your site. It doesn't matter if they discovered them via a feed or how they discovered them. They aren't allowed to copy them and use them for their business if you don't want them to.

This cannot be any more correct. Bill them or send them a DMCA takedown notice or something along those lines. Just because they can view your photos does not give them permission to copy them and display them. More over, they can't claim rights to them (as it appears they do in the EULA, though IANAL and cant grok the legalese) just because someone else submits it to their site.

Make no mistake, they are trying to make money off of this. They are not our to do you any favors. You are not doing anything wrong if you bill them.

caroline

http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/igliss-com-automatic-sync

WinsomeWorks

I'm really glad to see discussion of this here, because I accidentally found my stuff there on iGliss too through a vanity search for my stock photos online. I was a bit confused about what it is. This helps me understand, but I have yet to completely sort out who is benefitting, and how much of it is truly legal usage. I don't like that the photos link back to iGliss either. Can someone compare this to the free use of music on blogs, etc. ? I don't know much about that, either. I mean, is there a similar spot like iGliss where you could just grab any tune you want and it would link back to some company rather than the artist? This is a tough one.

Andy

I don't see how this is legit usage. They have our photos http://www.igliss.com/viewpicture.aspx?id=40152&ref=pictureclips.aspx%3fs%3dtrue%26mt%3d0%26pagemt%3d1%26query%3dinfrared%26Page%3d1%26id%3d21343 and then they sell google ads along side of them. Can't see how I've given permission do do this.

It doesn't seem right, at all. Please write them and see what they repsond with, I'm doing the same.

kygarden

Cool. I'll write them and be nice about it....asking what on what legal basis are they displaying my photos and see what they say. I'll also ask at the same time they remove my images.

kygarden

P.S. If you think we certainly have a legal leg to stand on, could someone from SmugMug in an official capacity contact them and tell them to stop? I mean, after all...it appears they are snatching any photos on SmugMug they can get their hands on.

Andy

kygarden wrote:

P.S. If you think we certainly have a legal leg to stand on, could someone from SmugMug in an official capacity contact them and tell them to stop? I mean, after all...it appears they are snatching any photos on SmugMug they can get their hands on.

Can't comment one way or another yet. But I've written them, as I mentioned just above.

caroline

I emailed iGliss yesterday and received a response - interesting that the site is now down

Caroline

kygarden

Yes, very interesting that the site appears dead to me now. Curious if this is happening to everyone else too? Everyone?

I got a response from them too saying they removed my photos and that my photos got collected because they have a program that goes out and searches the net for images on public feeds.

It will be interesting to see if the site comes back alive. Hopefully the site is really down and they haven't just blocked the subnet my IP address was coming from so it simply looks dead to me and others that complained. That's why I'd like to know if this is happening to people that have never visited that site at all. Please chime in people. Let me know if www.igliss.com appears dead to you too.
Thanks

Andy

Andy wrote:

Can't comment one way or another yet. But I've written them, as I mentioned just above.

reply:

iGliss wrote:

Thanks for your notice. Our site relied on a computer program to pull images from other sites that made them publicly accessible through Web service APIs. Some of our users have also posted pictures from other sites, and shared them with public.

We have removed all your pictures from our site. We will continue to remove those pictures that are shared without the publishers' permission.

iGliss

caroline

Interesting to note the use of the past tense "our site relied" etc