XACKAMAS
Do not steal this headline™
BY JAMES HARLEY
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2:08 PM
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.. In a perfect world, people
f l l i can Post whatever they
w ant o n lin e, and not
worry about it getting
stolen or used elsewhere
w it h o u t p e r m is s io n .
Unfortunately, as everyone knows, this
isn ’t a perfect world.
Social m edia has becom e a b ig way
fo r a lm o st everybody w ith m o d ern
technology to connect w ith fam ily and
friends, or share im portant, interesting
or fu nny topics w ith their friends and
follow ers. It has becom e so big that it
is com m on to ask someone w hat their
Sn ap ch at or In sta g ra m usernam e is,
rather than asking for a phone number.
However, flaws exist.
W hen someone posts som ething that
is w ell-liked, people may share it to the
point that the post becomes viral, which
is w hen thousands or more can see it.
O n Tw itter, if a viral tw eet is going
around, num erous accounts out there
intentionally seek these posts and repost
them to their account using the almost
too useful “ copy and paste” tool. These
people don’t credit the original creator
and es$entially claim it as their own. They
som etim es even take the tim e to crop
out an artist’ s name from th e corner of
a picture, and never credit them in the
picture.
The type o f content stolen can vary.
Most often it is words or funny phrases
that are copied and pasted, then shared.
In other situations, photos are stolen,
m od ified , and som etim es have added
content that can be misleading or even
incorrect.
I Most of the time the motive has to do
W H H jH
PicPedant
@PScP6daw
,@EarthPixHD No acknowledgment of
photographer @ivanslosar who spent
days and nights in the Sahara to get
this photo
PM
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±
James Harley found an example of
questionable attribution while Scrolling
through his Twitter feed.
w ith getting hits, more followers and/or
even for profit.
“ Some social media accounts use other
people’ s content for m oney,” said Janne
A h lb erg, a security p rofessional from
Finland, "who runs the Twitter account
@ hoaxeye and a blog th at is used for
identifying fake orhoax pictures. “ These
could be described as ‘ picture spam
acco u nts’ . The business is o ften very
simple: more followers, more m oney via
online ad s,” said Ahlberg in an em ail, e
In many cases, the accounts that steal
content have hundreds o f thousands of
followers, which is usually more than the
person who created the content. Followers
o f these accounts, who -just follow to see
fu n n y content, share and retw eet, not
knowing that the content is stolen.
A c c o r d in g to C C C lib ra ria n Ja n e
L ittle fie ld , w ho h as k n o w led ge o f
cop y righ t law s, people w ith Tw itter
accounts technically should not do this.
“ As soon as you create som ething, it’s
copyrighted, it’ s a constitutional righ t,”
Littlefield said. “ W hen you post online,
you’re publishing it and you still have that
copyright protection, but nobody thinks
about that when they go online and grab
som ething and use it .”
But m any people still get away with it
every day.
“ Putting a picture in a PowerPoint slide,
you’re allowed to do that because it’ s an
educational setting,” she said. “ In the real
world, a Twitter for profit setting couldn’t
do that under copyright law. But this is
broken every day m illions of times, so no
one is going to go after anybody for it. ”
We are far from ending the problem, but
there are ways that artists can stop people
who have stolen and used their content.
“ They can issue a cease and desist letter,
and if the person doesn’t take it down
then they can go after them law fully,”
Littlefield said. “ However, that doesn’ t
m ean the im age is going to go o ff the
in tern et if it is retw eeted m illio n s of
tim es.”
Ahlberg addressed how content stealing
will likely never stop online.
“ I don’t think people will stop stealing
photos or other content especially when
money is involved,” Ahlberg said.
“ In the case of photos, reverse image
search is a good tool to look out for stolen
content,” Ahlberg said. “ Other people can
try to raise awareness in various ways.
One éfficient way is to stop following the
professional content thieves.” f.
The next tim e y o u ’ re on Twitter or
anywhere on social media, watch out for
w hat you report o f retweet. Reposting
art you see is n ’ t w rong, but"you could
be sharin g a picture th a t was stolen
originally, and in the end, the original
creator may not get anything for all the
hard work he did to create it.
ON THE COVER: Timberline got 9 inches of snow between Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 28-29. Photo by Victoria Tinker and design
by Austin Boltz.
Most Trafficked Story This Week: Instructor lights up welding department. .
2 Clackamas Print NOVEMBER 30,2016theclackamasprinteom
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