What is the current policy for downloading photos?
Is this a free for all - download everybody and anybodies photos - with a catch me if you can attitude for the original photographer, or is their an actual or implied policy that photos downloaded are our own???
Or nobody cares???
Huh - who knew - ask and you shall receive.
FlightAware sent an email with the following info, when you click to upload a photo - you will get this page; flightaware.com/photos/upload
It says; Please do not upload images you do not own or photos with a watermark; they will be deleted.
Below that there is a link; ( License Agreement ) it is an agreement between you and FlightAware.
It states;
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.
Not much seems to be done about users posting images they do not own or have not taken themselves. I know of two, Paul Paul and cophel53 that post almost exclusively images like those. Forgive me for posting their user names, but I have strong feelings about people stealing others’ images and these two are among the worst I have seen. I have reported some and a few have been removed, but some, very obviously not taken by the user, still remain on the site. I feel like I am just ‘spinning my wheels’ and wasting my time, considering the volume of ‘illegal’ images posted and the fact that some are not removed.
I would like to see this dealt with but until a FlightAware member takes a little time to investigate the images that a particular user has posted, I’m sure the ones in question will continue to do as they do with impunity.
If you copy the link to any photo, click on google images, then click the little image in the window, it lets you paste the link - and it will search the internet where that photo is.
Besides being a violation of FlightAware’s own policy - it seems to me quite unethical - the uploading of other peoples photos - and by posting them under your avatar - you are clearly implying they are your photo.
As for FlightAware - by allowing this to occur along with failure to take any meaningful action - it seems to take away from the respectability that I would assume FlightAware is working very hard to maintain and grow.
Seems with 6 million registered avatars, and 40 employees - it’s time to take some responsibility and up their game.
Just my 2 cents.
I agree exactly and the Google search is how I have found violations. I really get burned when I see the blatant arrogance by some users posting obviously stolen images. FlightAware definitely needs to “up their game.”
I have to disagree. Most of the internet is a mix and match of people sending out “other peoples” images. If you are a pro photog, put your water mark, trade mark or what ever.
I am pretty sure that FlightAware is not making a profit with any commercial aspect of the images. It is not like the members (that I have seen) have posted “Check out this image I took”, rather it is “Check out this cool image, it will be a cool addition to FlightAware”
I am very sure that I paid nothing to be a member. I am sure I am not paid anything to be a member. I get to see some cool images. A good pro photog who makes his money with digital images…
does not post high res images with out their copyright on the wild wild internet
always has a record of their metadata handy
is the only one with the functional reason to complain, and then only if their image is being used for commercial gain
You disagree with what???
FlightAware Agreement you agree to by posting a photo on FlightAware;
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).
Can’t be anymore clearer than that.
That FlightAware should spend even one man hour trying to remove images, unless the owner of the image is the one complaining. They dont take an active roll in many things that are “illegal”…oh, and as an international community, lets just try to enforce the laws for people who are outside of the purview of most of the legal ease that is in the TOS.
Please don’t be so dismissive about our oversight of the photos, as we actually do collectively spend quite a bit of time each day looking briefly through new uploads, updating/adding tags, rotating, deleting obvious watermarks, deleting non-aviation content, rating and picking, etc. With the volume of photos we receive every day, it’s very easy to miss something that you might think is obvious. We do rely on the photo comments and ratings by other users to alert us to images that require our attention, so continue to do that on things that need it.
Additionally, an image already found on Google does not automatically mean that the uploader was not actually the original creator of that image, so we don’t always delete an image just because it can be found elsewhere. Many of our top photo contributors are actually professional aerial photographers that also publish their images to other websites and magazines.
I do realize that it can become overwhelming as far as the volume of images; I’ve seen how many get uploaded each day. My main concern is for those where the user is obviously not the original photographer and yet nothing is done. With so many images, you no doubt have to rely on other users to report a suspect image and provide proof of copyright violation. I myself have reported some and only report those that I find with proof, and I make sure I submit a link or some kind of proof that the copyright has been violated. Even with that having been done, some images are still left in the database. For one example, the photographer himself provided a link to his work in the comments of one image, I reported the same photograph with the link, the user and photographer being two different people, and yet the photo is still there; no action taken - flightaware.com/photos/view/3675 … ate/page/1 . I don’t mean to be overly critical, I just have strong feelings about other photographers’ work being stolen and posted and then the user getting away with it. I also don’t report military photos since the military releases most their photos into the public domain. I still think it’s wrong to post them, especially considering the TOS for posting photos, but there’s no copyright so I look the other way with these. Just my thoughts and opinions.
As I said in my prior post, just because a photo is also found to exist on another website, that does not automatically mean that the FlightAware user that uploaded it was the one in violation.
In particular, the image you linked to flightaware.com/photos/view/3675 … ate/page/1 indeed also exists on airplane-pictures.net, however their image has a watermark at the bottom and superimposed on the image. Neither of those watermarks exist the image that was uploaded to us, so the FlightAware user appears to have access to an original version of that image. Although the image uploaded here is cropped slightly tighter, it also has a higher level of detail than the one on airplane-pictures.net. Although the upload date on that other site is several years ago, and ours is from just two weeks ago, that isn’t conclusive either. The usernames don’t match the claimed watermark on airplane-pictures.net, but that could be a pseudonym or an authorized party of the original photographer, or the name claimed on airplane-pictures.net could actually be the one in violation with a false name.
In any case, I’m still not personally convinced that it is definitely an unauthorized upload so I’m not going to delete it, but another staffer might choose to delete it later.
In general, an image that has a visible watermark is a much easier decision to quickly delete, but other images are not so easy.
Photos taken by US military personnel are non-copyrighted and free to the public because we’ve already paid for them. However, such photos almost invariably contain text advising who the photographer was (e.g. “U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Melissa Sheffield” or “Credit: Indian Air Force”) and it has been my experience when re-using military photos that a simple indication of the source and photographer’s name is very greatly appreciated.
I have yet to see credit give by anyone posting military photographs. That should definitely be done since the user isn’t the original photographer and doesn’t own the copyright. However, another issue probably too much trouble to pursue and better left alone.