Live Flight Tracking

Hey guys,

I enjoy aviation photography as a hobby and try to upload good quality photos for people to enjoy on here (and other aviation sites) and have come up with some neat ideas. First, I think it would be cool to be able to have a section in the "My Alerts" where you could enter a tail number and when someone uploads a photo of that tail number, you get notified. That could be very cool for aircraft owners, or anyone who has ties to a tail number!

Second is a simple request. Could we have a little stat area on our main user page where it will show your number of photos uploaded, total number of views, average views per photo, and average rating per photo?

Thats all I have but I really think those ideas would be something a lot of users would love to have and don't seem like to hard of programming tasks to achieve it.

Thanks a lot! Hope to hear a reply!
Kyle

The problem with the photo upload section is that flightaware is taking ownership of the picture (with you still holding copyrights to it), but they can sell it to anyone in the world. If they change T&C more people would upload their photos to this site.

FlightAware Media License
Do not submit content you do not own (e.g., work belonging to someone else or that you found on the Internet).
Inclusion
Any submitted content must not infringe on the trademark, copyright, or patent rights of any third party. FlightAware has the right to moderate, modify, or delete any and all images or media without prejudice.
Image Ownership
The owner/submitter of any content continues to retain ownership to the submitted content.
FlightAware License
You grant FlightAware a worldwide, royalty-free, unlimited, irrevocable license to use, transmit, distribute, and sell any submitted content.

All of which simply means that they (FA) can use the photos on their websites, access to which some people are charged for admittance! They are not saying that they will cherry-pick the best submitted photos and sell them to others for reproduction.

How do I know about this things that you've just wrote? I'm not mind reader and I don't know that.
Text in T&C is plain and simple. If they will add remarks like yours I'll be happy to upload my shots to FA.

I understand your concern, TipekUsair although JHEM is right. The reality is that any site that accepts uploads and then displays them to users is a commercial operation that's redistributing/displaying/selling access to the submitted photos.

Our upload terms are probably the simplest and most clear in the industry. One sentence telling you not to steal photos and then three sentences explaining the license. The downside of a short agreement may be ambiguity, but I don't think most users would be happy with a 10 page license that dictated every single possible use case.

FlightAware has a great community of aviation users, but we're not trying to pretend that we're not a business. The upside of submitting photos to FlightAware is tremendous exposure on the photos section, flight tracking pages, the home page, email newsletters, etc -- something the entire aviation industry enjoys. Does FlightAware sell advertising in those distribution channels? Yes.

How about creating a partnership with those of us who are aviation photographers and actually trying to market the images so that a portion of the proceeds goes to the photographer and some to you as a finders/sellers fee? This would encourage more people to post high quality images and also take away the incentive to not post your best stuff because you don't wish to give up your rights to the image. Just a thought. Otherwise, I think your site is wonderful. Nick

You're not relinquishing your rights to an image nor are you giving FA the right to sell it to others on your or their behalf by posting an image in the photos section. Nothing in the FA agreement prevents you from selling or licensing your images to others.

What you're asking for, in essence, is to be paid to be a participant in FlightAware. I would think photographers would appreciate the opportunity that FA represents to get your images before a worldwide audience for free.

Here you go. There is your line for T&C. As simple as that and it will explain a lot.

That is the problem. It is free. People can download the image for free. In most cases they can simply remove the Flight Aware watermark and have the image. I'm not asking to be paid to be a participant. I'm asking for Flight Aware to partner with me so that there is a library of photos available for purchase without the watermark in high resolution for people who wish to use it for publishing, advertising, etc.... More or less the same setup as what Getty Images offers except tailored to aviation photography.

I was watching the news a while back and the news channel simply took images of a First Air 737 and used it in its' story directly from Flight Aware with no mention of the photographer's name and I'm a billion % certain he wasn't paid for the use of his image either. This isn't OK. People who wish to use images posted on here in a commercial setting ought to pay for their use.

N.

You're absolutely correct.

News reporting is an example of "fair use" of copyrighted material without permission, so it's typical that a photo could be taken from the Internet and used on TV without remuneration. This is true for content on FlightAware, Flickr, or anywhere.

As for being a commercial reseller, the Getty model is an interesting one but can become very complicated from a tax perspective.

Well, I am a Getty Images contributor and it was very easy to fill in the tax related material and get everything squared away. I don't know what it would look like from your end but it could be done.

To me, fair use implies that I was asked first if the material could be used and that I be compensated for it. If anyone can just steal my work, how would they feel if I just stole theirs and presented it as my own? If this is the case, I will not be uploading any longer.

I did not mind sharing my photos with other enthusiasts as a community and for individual use as a screensaver or desktop wallpaper but i am completely opposed to having someone use my work without giving me credit for it and not paying me for it.

Unless a distinction is made between commercial use and non-commercial use, I would like to know how I can delete some of my photos from this site.

N.

ConcordeNick -- I think you may be confused about the definition of fair use. It's not a term that's specific to FlightAware. Pretty much anything on the internet or in the world is subject to fair use.

You need to read and comprehend the copyright law, and especially the fair use doctrine, before setting foot in the professional photography arena.

Hell yes!

And to quote one of FA's most argumentative posters...
"If you don't want your photo stolen, don't post it on the internet!

I understand the copyright law as it pertains to me in my country, Canada. Your laws are yours. Shrug.

Nick

This is the LAW in my country: Using images on the Internet

"Although there are Web sites that allow free downloading of images, mostly for personal use only, many Web sites include copyrighted images. Permission to use images must be obtained from the copyright owner."

Canadian copyright law is more stringent than American law. As an International website, you may have run afoul of our laws. I'm certain that other countries have different laws from ours too.

You might want to consider that angle of things.

Lastly, when I upload an image to Flickr, I retain all rights to it and can select from a variety of creative commons/fair use policies to cover each and every image or individual images:

None (All rights reserved)
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons
Attribution Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons
Attribution-NoDerivs Creative Commons

I think we need to be able to do the same here with our images.

Nick

I think we need to understand that FlightAware is a site to track airplanes. Anything else, such as pictures, is secondary. If you don't like the rules here for pictures and want to post pictures then go to the dedicated picture posting sites.

However, as FA is a US based company with its primary servers in the US, then US copyright law applies.

Your sanctimony aside, CA allows for "fair dealing" by news organizations with proper credit for the source.

And isn't the copyright done according to an international copyright thingamajig? I'm basing this on what is shown at the start of every movie DVD - the Interpol & FBI warnings.

I am not being sanctimonious in the least. I was simply asking that we have a system here of letting the user decide which level of use is allowed for his or her images. Just like Flickr which is also a US company with primary servers based in the US.

N.

I don't believe we've fallen afoul of Canadian copyright law since we have the uploader agree they own the image and provide us the necessary license to the image.



WIPO helps to harmonize and integrate national intellectual property laws.

...hmm...glad I read this thread...I have to say I'm on the side of ConcordeNick and will have to be a bit careful when uploading in the future...

I was going to post my suggestion that those of us that do upload images, would appreciate if it was possible for us to go to our account and from there see what it is that we have uploaded...I do not keep a careful track of that and so it is very possible I might attempt to upload a picture I had already uploaded...

I don't know if that causes an alert, but I don't think so – I did upload one pict twice, but not by mistake – but because I noticed that the pict got cropped in an unfortunate way, so I re-worked pict and uploaded again – with same name, and no "alert"...

There is also the thing that some of us may be contributing to agencies that require exclusivity...so if we upload picts here, then we have forfeited our privilege to contribute same image to such site...but that's a choice we will have to make in advance....

So now I'm going to upload a dazzling pict just for FlightAware...thanks for the thread...