After a long-haul of sludging through Google Reader updates this last week, a thought occurred. ‘I see all of these magnificent images, how is it that I am not always able to trace them back to their origins.’ Yes, most blogs or image aggregators are consistent in crediting the artists work that they feature, but there have been numerous times where I truly cannot find the true credit. Just because something looks cool does not warrant publishing on a website. This is an important issue, why do you see so many ads by the GAG in graphic publications to bring this issue to light?

Tumblr pages routinely promote plagiaristic activity, not through words, but actions. Don’t get me wrong, Tumblr offers a great service. The only gripe I have is an interface that encourages people to publish images over content. Most Tumblr pages are giant archives of images with a short sentence describing the image, if at all. Which in turn leads to a lack of proper credit.

Some companies go beyond accreditation issues and have outright copied and sold products based on other artists work. Many get away with it, purely out of the vast amount of artwork in existence. Companies such as Urban Outfitters have been constantly in violation of this, yet without any punitive measures taking place. This is of endless frustration to artists around the world. So much so, that there has been a blog dedicated to finding Urban Outfitter design rip offs. Aptly titled Urban Counterfeiters, their goal is to:

Bring American consumers reports from small companies and artists who have been taken advantage of by large corporations. We wish for these corporations to be held accountable for their actions and to change their business practices.

What to do about it

The internet is growing at an exponential rate. The problem is only bound to increase unless some action is taken. What sort of action? I don’t have set-in-stone answer, but I do have some ideas ranging from a idealistic personal level…

• Actually speak up if you see something in question
• If you are creating the artwork, mention that you have permission from the artist
• Treat others artwork as if it were your own

to a more rational, global outlook…

• Improve EXIF or META data through encrypted information and allow images to be traced no matter where they are on the web
• An external service hosting every image you post online, doesn’t allow image downloads and all places that the file is in use can be deleted via user control
• Image based search engine, allows you to upload an file and searches for similar images (FeelImage is a step towards this, although not advanced enough yet for practical use)
• A tool that locks the screen grab feature from your site

I’m not claiming to have the right answers. I find it more worthwhile to spend time finding productive solutions rather than pointing fingers. I’m curious to see other suggestions people have thought of. There are plenty of minds at work at every second of the day circulating at an all-too-ridiculous pace on the Internet. I hope with this wealth of knowledge and sharing that there have been some progression towards solving this problem.