As an old chinese lady once told me: "4 eyes, still can't see".
I just noticed this on the 'dashboard' (managing) space on this blog:
"Ever wanted to see all the photos you've uploaded to your blog in one place? Head over to Picasa Web Albums and now you can! We've been working closely with the Picasa team on this project - all the photos you've uploaded since December will appear in an album there, and we're working on migrating your older photos as well. (It'll take a while though - there are a lot of them.)"
So I followed the link, signed in, and found the terms of agreement, from which I extracted this little nugget:
"By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Picasa Web Albums, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, distribute and publish such Content through Picasa Web Albums, including RSS or other content feeds offered through Picasa Web Albums, and other Google services.
In addition, by submitting, posting or displaying Content which is intended to be available to the general public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, distribute and publish such Content for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services."
I am not so blind that I can't see a sweet deal for Picasa. You will note from the first extract that all the photos I have uploaded since December are supposedly in a file already. Presumably Google/Picasa could now use any one of them for their own promotion without paying a thing. Not that they are likely to use any of mine, but there are professional photographers blogging on this same service.
The freedom that a free blog hosting service such as this offers has allowed me to explore the web more constructively, to practice a little web presentation and to play with a variety of designs without having to learn a new coding language first. Thanks. Great while it lasted, but if this is the way they plan to take it I think it may be time to move on. The other option is to watermark and downsize all photos before uploading. Certainly simpler.
It is naive to think that any image uploaded onto the web is not open to being copied and used elsewhere, but are you really going to sign over the rights to your image to an organisation that has an intent to use them?
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2 comments:
cheers Nick for pointing this out, I hadn't yet read about the Picasa website.....
Seems like trouble down pit, like you I'll now have to rethink how I post my images, or whether I post images, or whether to copyright mark them all, or whether just to give up on Blogger and create somethng more unique....
aye yai yai, where will all this grabbing of images and copyrights end?
cheers for highlighting a serious issue....
jsh
Problem is that the blogger network is so easy to use! No managing of anything but your posts, a very flexible layout and clour scheme managament system etc.
still, time for a good look into this horses mouth.
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