We live in the age of the SHARE! People of the masses generally think that they have the right to freely share everything and anything, digital. It’s all good, just SHARE it all. You had to have heard about the SOPA dilemna by now, partly involving these issues.  While sharing content can be great, in some ways; in other ways it hurts businesses. Some reason: why pay for something when you can get it for free? That’s what mothers have been saying all these years to their daughters. Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free? If you run a business of your own, you probably already know that it’s always good to give a little something away for free.  I’m not talking about being free and loose with your goodies, whoring out the whole store.  It’s a simple fact that quality content helps you to get more traffic, to advertise, to get backlinked to, and even to grow a large following. We do that here using giveaways, coupon codes, even by posting creative inspiration and tutorials, or maybe even some funny stuff.  Content is key, with any online business. Free samples work great in grocery stores, and restaurants. You need to woo potential customers over with a little something something, in this age of information overload, and fierce competition.

Pinterest is one of the hottest social bookmarking networks right now, along with Tumblr as another major blogging and bookmarking platform.  Both platforms are really cool, and many actually enjoy using them.  Another similar one is VisualizeUs, and there are probably a slew of others.  What’s the big deal about them?  These websites make it a cinch to “reblog” or “repin” anyone else’s posts.  That means you can easily take; no wait, “SHARE” someone else’s post with a few clicks of the mouse, so that you will then have that content on your own page.  You don’t know where the content of the post really originated from, but it’s all in good fun… right?  Sharing and hotlinking random images with these services right now might seem innocent to most.  If you have a Pinterest or Tumblr account, you’ve probably done it yourself.  Maybe you’ve reposted a cute comic, or a photo of an adorable kitten playing with string.  Maybe it was that really cool car photo, or the hilarious stock photo that nobody can find any real use for, other than to laugh at it.  Guess what?  This is going to change a lot about the way most people think about hotlinking.

Issues arising over content posted on individual websites- that’s nothing new.  AwkwardStockPhotos is a blog that shares some of the funniest stock images people come across.  They were hit with a DMCA claim from a stock photo industry giant, over the fact that they were posting their stock images there.  Maybe it was embarrassing to them, or they felt their product was being insulted.  Other onlookers, myself included, thought that this was a major over-reaction.  These blog posts no doubt led to a lot more traffic to their stock image website, and probably even to a lot more sales.  Many times I’ve gotten a kick out of images posted on these funny stock photo blogs, but just as many times I’ve also found some amazing stock images that I could actually envision a practical use for.

I see posting images to websites like this: if someone shares our stock images on Pinterest or Tumblr, it’s free advertising for us.  They are 99% of the time posted with links leading over to the image licensing page, and this is always a good way to promote our links.  We watermark the snot out of our stock images, so that there is no doubt where they came from.  Sometimes we even get the ball rolling, by posting and pinning our images in as many places as we can online.

Anyone in their right mind knows that you can’t just take random images off of the internet and use them for commercial purposes… or do they?  Surprisingly enough, I know for a fact that a lot of people out there still take images from Google image search that are unwatermarked, and use them for whatever purposes they want.  That’s the absolute riskiest thing you can potentially do, if you’re using them for commercial or public purposes.  If you are one of those people, be warned.  Don’t wait until you get a legal letter in the mail, sent right to your doorstep.  Should you share anything you can find on the web via Pinterest?  Should you share anything you find on Tumblr, without checking out the legitimacy of the content origin? That’s for you to decide.

Now this wasn’t intended to be a blog post about legal mumbo jumbo or copying and pasting from the Pinterest or Tumblr terms of service.  You can do that on your own spare time.  In the meantime, if you don’t want your images hot-linked or shared at native web sizes, then you can do any of the following 4 things:

1.  Don’t post anything on the web you don’t want to see reposted anywhere else in use on the web (especially high-resolution, which could be used in a lot more applications, from printed commercial products to billboards).  It’s only a matter of time before it happens to your image, your audio, or your video; whether you wanted to make money off of it, or not.  Avoid posting on busy places like Flickr, Facebook, Twitpic, Instagram, etc.

2.  Modify your website’s htaccess files so that hotlinking will not even be possible.  Please note: this does not stop screen capture ability.  Anything posted on the web can be captured, be it a still or video.  Right click can also be disabled, for those that aren’t savvy enough to figure out how to screenshot stuff.

3.  Thoroughly watermark your content, so that even if someone wants try and share it, post it, or distribute it in any way dishonestly, there will be no doubt that it originated with you.  Watermark your videos, and even use audible “sound watermarks” when dealing with music or audio content. Worried about posts with your content potentially losing the link back over to you?  Then include your url in the watermark, or somewhere in your audio / video clip.

4.  Strictly note around your content with outright and blatant terms relating to how you want to allow your content to be used and/or distributed, if and when.  Creative Commons licenses offer the most universally accepted guidelines for proper sharing.

Lean towards #3 if you’re worried about possible lack of attribution of your content, because #1 doesn’t really matter as much.  Whichever method someone shares content, be it through a hotlink, or a screenshot, or a capture of any other sort… how they got it isn’t the point.  They could have acquired it ignorantly, shared through hundreds of prior individuals.

In the end, and after all of this hype and hubbub floating around about “Pinterest is evil” or “Tumblr is the devil”, we all need to be responsible with our own “digital stuff”.  There are two ways of looking at the matter.  All you need to do is this: Be responsible with your content.  If you don’t want to ever find it shared somewhere, then abstain from posting it in the first place. Learn from the story of Noam Galai and his story of The Stolen Scream.  Yes, Pinterest and Tumblr are going to change the way people look at rich content sharing a bit further.  Most of the users on these platforms are not there for commercial gain, however – they are simply having a good time, trying to share stuff they thought was unique or noteworthy, and almost always linking back to the originator of the content. Even before social bookmarking and blog sites became a big hit, there were these things called “search engines”, which snatched up your images anyway, displaying them for all to see.  How is this much different!? Rather than pointing the blame at them, I choose to embrace the change – and to see the positive side of these free social sharing services.  Large Fortune 500 companies are already staking out a presence on these networks, so it looks like they are seeing the benefits of them as well.

Tags: backlinks, blogging, content, pinterest, seo, social networking, SOPA, stock images, stock photos, the stolen scream, tumblr

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 at 12:15 AM and is filed under Business and Marketing, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.