this is me

My photo
San Clemente, Cali, United States
Camera always in hand

7.14.2011

What exactly does this mean?

Trust no one / JulieFaith

I regularly peruse my own Flickr, which those of you that are habitual flickerites can identify with.  I like to check out my home page and see the comments on my pix as well as the followup comments on my contacts' pictures that I have fave'd. I also really like checking out my stats page.  Yanno, seeing my Daily Aggregate View graph spike and fall, watching all-time views grow and mostly linking back to my Referrers.  This is one of the ways I track who is using my pictures where.

So today I come across an unfamiliar link in my Referral list.  Ok, so...I follow it ...and end up here.  A page full of pictures of doors, you say?  Ya, well 5 rows down, far right pic is this:

Door detail - old school letter blocks
Door detail - old school letter blocks / JulieFaith

My picture of a door on Spring Street, downtown Los Angeles. (I love that pic, btw) Ok, that's not so bad. Kinda cool actually, right? Ok, well the text is all in Japanese but I can see a cut-and-paste code beneath the picture that allows a user to post the picture to their blog, advert or whatever. There is also a wrench tool icon which I click.  Up comes the larger image with lots more options to use the picture and lots more Japanese text.

Now I'm getting kinda worried. Especially cuz I can now see basic Exif info and my name. Ok ok, I think, calm down.  I click on my name and up comes a page with a bunch of my photos.  They all have this little cut-and-paste code beneath them and they all have this little wrench that links to a bigger image with more options to use each picture. Lots and lots of Japanese text everywhere.

At this point I am kinda freaking out.  I'm thinking it's creepy.  I post on facebook to see if anyone has heard of this site igosso.net. Meanwhile, I put Google Translator to work and find a line near the bottom of 'my' page that translates to, "Please use this license for each image. Any reuse, etc. Please note with a link. Please see the Use of Creative Commons license."

So now I'm wondering what exactly igosso is asking of their users. Their home page states via translation, "The search service is available free from commercial flickr materials free of charge." It's crappy translation but now I know that they aren't asking for money for my or any one else's pictures. And it looks to me like the code directly credits me and allows the reader to click through from the picture directly to my Flickr.  I'm actually using the Igasso codes in this post. I'm not happy with the quality at all - see pic below. What do you think? Is Igasso a bunch of pirates or are they friends?



One note:  I already have a "Attribution Share-Alike Creative Commons" on my pictures which means people can use them as long as they credit me. I actually did it on purpose thinking maybe people would become familiar with my work.  Guess I got my wish. 

Sooooo.... this is actually a good thing.  Right?

 *Siiiigh* maybe it's time to watermark everything. ;-(


1 comment: