Google Indexing of Images

Just so everyone is aware, Google Images is busy all the time, harvesting images that are posted on the internet, and displaying them on their website with a statement that "images may be copyrighted". No actual copyright warning, and no mention of the original photographer. They have them available on the site in the same size they were originally posted to the internet, not just as thumbnails. Take a look through Google Images sometime and see all the stuff there that was harvested from railpictures and other railroad enthusiast sites.

A look at Google Images recently showed photos from the website of a historical group that had originally posted them all with copyright notices and photographers credits. The copyright notices and photographer credits were not mentioned by Google Images.

MX

mxdata wrote:Just so everyone is aware, Google Images is busy all the time, harvesting images that are posted on the internet, and displaying them on their website with a statement that "images may be copyrighted". No actual copyright warning, and no mention of the original photographer. They have them available on the site in the same size they were originally posted to the internet, not just as thumbnails. So everybody who is posting their images on the internet is doing a great job of making money for Google, while giving away their photography for free. Take a look through Google Images sometime and see all the stuff there that was harvested from railpictures and other railroad enthusiast sites.

A look at Google Images recently showed photos from the website of a historical group that had originally posted them all with copyright notices and photographers credits. The copyright notices and photographer credits were not mentioned by Google Images.

MX

That is why I do not post my very best images online. The images I do post are smaller low-resolution versions of the original and also have a copyright prominently displayed.

I use tu post my pic over the net,but,I don't mind if someone take it for himself and put on it's album,for that,we can't do nothing,only a right click to do and it's done..
But if the poepple use them for comercial use,he should give me the credit,if not,I send a lettre to let them nkow they used my picture and I need them to give me a credit or pay me for the use..I'ts appen once with a newspaper who did use one of my pic for an article,but did'nt give the credit,I wrote them a registered lettre and they made an agreement to give me the credit for the pic on their next edition and they paid me for the use.I get few hunder of $$..Happiest when it come like a surpise..

But I'm always one internet,so if i see one of my pics that somebody use for commercial without my advise,now I know what to do..

Here's some of mine I get recently.
CN 309 at Theriault,on CN Ste-Hyacinthe sub..Canada,Qc


CN Kingston sub,VIA Rail meet CSX at Coteau,in USA/Quebec border


Drummond sub,VIA 23 at Charny Qc,Canada


CN 120 on the Montreal sub Montreal Qc,Canada

mxdata wrote:Just so everyone is aware, Google Images is busy all the time, harvesting images that are posted on the internet,

If you run your own site, you can block Google and other "well-behaved" robots from harvesting your images by installing a robots.txt file that tells the robots which files or folders to skip. This is the same mechanism that tells search engines not to index certain pages on your site, or indeed not index your site at all.

You can also specifically exclude the "Googlebot-Image" that is specifically responsible for harvesting images, from your entire site, without affecting the normal Googlebot that indexes pages.

http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... swer=35308

I set up the first method a long time ago on my own site. All my images are in a separate folder, separate from the actual pages, on my server, and I exclude that entire folder from search engines using a single line in my robots.txt file.

Very interesting information, thanks for sharing it with us. What amazes me is how Google assumes that everything on the internet is theirs to take despite clearly posted copyright notices, and if you want to prevent them from taking it, then you have to take all the actions to do so on you own.

MX

Also, like Railbus63, I never post anything near full-resolution images, and always add visible identifying text. My current camera produces 10-megapixel images. When I crop them and tweak the brightness and contrast for posting, I also reduce the size to no more than about 0.5 megapixel, typically about 800x600 pixels. This displays decently on a computer monitor, but doesn't make a very large high-quality print.

I've split this topic off on its own, since it doesn't fit with the original thread.

It should be noted the Google doesn't 'steal' anyone's pictures, nor do they copy them or move them. Google simply indexes them for easier navigation and searching. If you do a Google image search, the search still returns you to the original website which hosts the image (or the original image file). Google's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." They don't want to steal pictures or information, what they do want to do is make themselves a middleman between users and content providers, selling ads to the users.

More information on Google can be found here: http://www.google.com/corporate/

I'm not saying that people don't steal pictures off the internet, because they do all the time, but I'd be more careful of what you're accusing one of the worlds largest corporations of doing, and being why off mark about it.

Google does generate and cache the small thumbnail version of the image that you see at the top left of the page when you click on an entry in the image search result. As far as I can tell, otherwise they take you to the original image on your server, or to the "containing page" on your server.

The reason I block Googlebot from indexing my images is to keep the load down on my server. I use a server at the college where I work, and I don't want to use too much of its bandwidth by serving up excessive numbers of images. It's enough for me that people can find the pages with normal Google searches.

I actually worry more about hotlinking from certain forums where people love to post dozens of hotlinks to images that they've found on the net. Every time someone looks at one of those threads, bam-bam-bam-bam goes my server! If my site were on a commercial server, I'd probably have to pay extra bandwidth charges. So I block access directly to the images via links from those sites.

I dont think google is doing anything wrong..
if anything, their google images feature helps people find your webpage..which is what most people want..
and they arent "stealing" the images or doing anything with them, except providing a link back to the webpage where the image is located..
I dont see how its any different than "regular" google..or any search engine really..
and the internet cant really exist without search engines..
if you put something on the internet you want people to see, but no one can find it, what good is that?

I dont see any of this as a problem at all..

Scot

Interesting to compare with printed publication. Suppose you published a book that was a collection of images taken from magazine articles, and printed it as an "image index" without obtaining the permission of the original photographers or publishers. Think the original publishers or photographers might have an issue with that?

Looking at the displayed addresses, keeper1616 is correct, the "view image full size" link goes to the source website, but it goes to the images folder rather than the relevant page. In doing so it does not show the copyright notices and photographer credits that would be seen if you viewed the image on the page in the source website.

The last thing I heard, the rights to images were held by the original photographer unless or until they legally transfered ownership to someone else. Has anyone heard anything different?

MX