FAQ - Copyright Concerns

This page will attempt to address some people's concerns about copyright infringement.  Apparently, PaqRat has caused concerns across a relatively broad cross-section of content providers out there in cyberspace.  While we are flattered and amazed by the amount of recognition and attention which PaqRat has received in such a short time, we are also concerned by the way the debate is centering around PaqRat in particular, rather than triggering a debate about how the creative community could better protect itself from all types of copyright infringement.

We have created this page to attempt to explain how PaqRat fits in to the larger picture of how the web is used, and also to advise creatives in how to protect their intellectual property.

  Distinction between Copyright Issues and PaqRat Issues

First, it is important to understand that PaqRat is not some magical software that is going to automatically copy down the entire web.  PaqRat is a Computer-Assisted Browsing application, which simply does some of the manual labor of saving pictures for the user.  PaqRat in fact uses a browser in the background to actually do all the technical work of getting the pages from the website, as Microsoft recommends, so it is impossible for PaqRat to do anything that browsers cannot do.

While it may be true that there is nothing special about PaqRat, it certainly appears that PaqRat may have focused the attention of photographers and models on the problem of copyright infringement.  The author, Keith Fulton, has fielded many questions and concerns from these groups, and has created this web page in an attempt to address some of those concerns and fears.

However, the web already has hundreds of thousands of sites which contain copyright violations and which pre-date the existence of PaqRat.  Whether webmasters acquired these pictures with web browsers, newsreaders, bulletin board systems or from CD-ROMs, the fact is that pictures are being distributed to millions of people without legal rights to those images.

But guess what?  That is just the tip of the iceberg.  For every webmaster out there with unauthorized pictures on their website, there are 1000 casual web surfers who do not have websites who nonetheless have copied the pictures for their private collections.  In this age of cheap hard disk space (we recently bought a 36GB hard disk for $250), it is very routine to hear of Internet collectors that have 25,000 pictures or even 50,000 pictures.

Clearly, with or without PaqRat, a new approach to copyrighted content is required.

  We recommend merging your copyrighted content with your advertising messages.

In the advertising industry, the trend is for ads to be more and more entertaining or informative in order to hold the attention of the consumer and deliver the sales pitch.  In the age of the remote control, it is too easy for consumers to skip advertising messages if those messages aren't entertaining to watch, so we end up with situations like the Super Bowl, where the advertising is more compelling and anticipated than the game itself.

So what is the equivalent for Internet content providers?  What should a photographer do if he/she wants to display his/her capabilities on the web, but doesn't want those photos plastered all over the Internet or on people's machines?  What should a model do if she wants to show off her portfolio to potential clients, but doesn't want to be the next "Pinup of the Week" on a hundred websites she's never heard of?

What we recommend is that content providers make sure that their marketing messages are a part of their content.  (And to the vast numbers of surfers out there who are not photographers, the images are the content, not the text of the website.)

What this does is cause alignment between the goals of the surfer/collector and the goals of the model/photographer.  For example, does anybody think that a company with a banner advertisement gif is going to be sensitive about that banner ad being copied thousands of times by surfers?  No.  On the contrary, that advertiser is happy that the banner ad is being copied, because every time the violator of the copyright (who copied the banner) looks at that picture, he is getting hit with the marketing message again.  In effect, the advertiser is getting free "impressions" through the fact that his marketing message is embedded in his copyrighted material.

Here are a couple of examples of how this could be applied in the photography market.  These pictures below are photos that Keith Fulton took on his recent honeymoon in Hawaii.  There is no question that he holds the copyrights to these pictures, but he realizes that by putting his photos on the web he is putting them at risk of being copied thousands of times and even published on other websites.

But look again...  he has put a plug for his Wallpaper of the Day business (fake, for this example, btw) in his photographs.  He has put the URL to his website in the picture, as well as a watermark of his company logo across the middle of the picture.  He has created a situation with these pictures that the more his photos get copied by others, the more people will learn about his business and see his branding message of his logo.  Due to the nature of his modifications, it would be very difficult and labor-intensive for a copyright violator to conceal the origins of the photographs, which would also have the effect of devaluing a collection if the violator is trying to resell Keith's pictures on a CD-ROM, for example.  It is analogous to The Club, which deters potential car thieves just with its visibility.  Car thieves will just go to the next car rather than try to overcome it.

We believe that if this sort of image branding was widely performed by creative content providers they would run a significantly lower risk of being the victims of serious copyright violations, and would actually gain in some ways if copyright violations occurred.

  Conclusion

We at Insanely Great Things are very pleased that in our email discussions with concerned content providers we have been able to address their concerns satisfactorily.  We are strongly in favor of protecting their rights and their copyrights to whatever extent possible.  But the Internet provides all kinds of new opportunities for marketing which we believe the photography community is not fully leveraging.  Perhaps we can get together and agree on standards which enable everyone to win in this new environment.