It Comes With The Territory
There was a discussion recently on Osbasso’s about the state of HNT. Apparently, some people are “stealing” HNT photographs to ridicule the posters or provide most of the content of their sites. Os didn’t provide links and I haven’t looked for the sites he mentioned but I’m sure that it is happening. It’s clearly unethical to take photographs out of their original context, alter them and post them for your own entertainment, or to build a site that is composed entirely of pictures which have been posted elsewhere. Unfortunately, it comes with the territory.
There are techniques which stop the casual user from doing “right-click | save as” but they are easily circumvented. So, their conscience is the only thing that stops people from downloading pictures and using them for their own use. And even if individuals aren’t archiving things, there is always Google, Yahoo, and other search sites. You can’t police the web even if you wanted to. Think of what happens to MP3s.
Before starting this blog, California Girl and I had a long discussion about how things would be out there for all eternity. Once something has been posted, there is no way to “un-ring the bell”. I can tell from the logs that some people have downloaded our photographs. And that’s fine with us so long as they aren’t reposting them on another site as their own. The inability to control content is the price we pay for being able to easily reach so many people. We knew from the outset that our posts or portions of them might end up on other sites.
We share our life together because it is something that we enjoy doing. But we are not naive enough to think that we can control what happens after something has been posted. If we are both not comfortable with a post then we never click publish. The only way to truly keep something private is not to post it. Once it’s on the ‘net, anything can happen. What I’m trying to say is that content control and posting are mutually exclusive. People have to accept it and move on or not post. Those are the only choices.
Of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without a bottomless picture of California Girl modeling one of new summer tops as our way of thumbing our nose at the people who rip off pictures.
Bravo! Well done! I wanted to say something to that effect but couldn’t get my words together.
Heh, I like how CG thumbs her nose!
Have you ever thought about put a photoshop watermark on your photos. Nothing fancy just something to deter the right clicker out there. Alot of photo clearing houses on the net do that. Just enough to annoy some people and keep them from taking your stuff, and the poeple who do take your stuff and repost it give you free publicity. Just a thought.
Jessica: Thanks. I expect other blogs will mention posts on other sites. That is the nature of blogging after all. But why have a blog if you can’t be original?
Chickie: Yeah. I’ll be doing something with my nose with the parts in the picture shortly.
Technomage: Yes, we’ve thought about it. But we’d have to put it in the center of the picture or else they would just crop it out.
I guess this is where I show my naivety. I remember when the Internet was truly cooperative and I like to act, as much as possible, like it still is. There are a lot of discourteous people out there but not everyone is inconsiderate. I don’t like it when we get painted with the same broad stroke. So I try not to do it to other people even if it is sometimes painful.
That is a cute top. That’s one of the main reasons I quit doing HNT, because I caught people swiping my photos and using them on their sites. I even caught one girl using one of my pics on her site and saying it was her. Plus it just seems like everyone is trying to be so “sexual” these days that it just lost some of the fun for me. I DO still post a picture occasionally, but I don’t know when you’ll see any REAL half nekkid pics of me again.
Melanie: You’ve got a hot bod so I can understand why people would want to swipe your photographs. But it’s still wrong; especially to pass them off as their own. The web is a big place so it’s easy to do and there is very little chance of someone being caught. We’ve been visited on more than one occasion by photo ripping bots so I know our photographs are out there somewhere. We like our photo sessions more than the event itself so we’ll keep on doing HNT. And I have to agree with you about it becoming more sexual. I’m not sure that it a bad thing but it is defiantly different that when it first got started. These days there may be more people full nekkid than half nekkid.