IPTC data

As everyone knows, it’s easy to righclick&save RB preview pictures.
What I don’t understand…if you add IPCT data (copyright, title and so on)
to your images before the upload, why is this data gone if you save and open the preview pictures (after upload)?
/Ben

This has been raised before – see here

Redbubbles considered view appears to be:

• adding a few hundred bytes to the image will slow down page load times unacceptably.

• if they do this, at some point in the future someone might possibly add GPS data accidentally and that would be a privacy issue

I’m not impressed by their reasoning

EXIF/JIFF/IPCT data is trivially easy to strip without altering or recompressing the image in any way

jpegtran −−copy none infile.jpg outfile.jpg

Unless you can ensure that your digital file is read only, the potential protection offered by adding additional information is easy to circumvent.

@Mike, we strip all exif / ipct data from uploaded images for all images because they drastically impact the size of the resultant file. We’ve found cameras that embed 64k!! blocks of blank scratch space into the image for exif data, etc. While on the main view this overhead may be acceptable, it’s not when you are trying to produce small, fast to load, preview thumbnails for the galleries.

Should we retain the exif data on the main view images? It’s not really for me to say, but given the easy of which the data can be stripped I would suggest it’s sadly a placebo.

It is not about protection.

I’ve already said elsewhere on here that the only way to protect your images from theft is never to show them!

Its so that the file contains a way of identifying the author

to quote from another post I’ve made:

---

if you upload images to redbubble, they are almost inevitably going to get copied around the internet, and eventually the connection back to where you posted them will get lost.

One way to try to alleviate this problem is to embed within your update files information about the author, copyright, and links to connect back to the author. This is easy to do with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, and is probably easy to do with other packages. (There is a long-standing standard place to put this information in JPG, TIFF and other imaging formats – the IPTC data within the image metadata.)

It makes a good deal of sense to add this information to you files before uploading. Much of the copying is done not to steal the image, but initially to reference in some way the original site/artist. (I’m aware that much of my work related to Lower Moss Wood has been copied in this way, for example, and have no problem with this).
Its unlikely that anyone doing this innocently will remove the relevant data from the file. Having the information in the file allows someone further down the line who wants to contact the original author to do so. I like to believe that the majority of potential users of images are honest, and if they can easily find the original author will contact them if they want to make commercial use of an image. If they can’t easily locate them, however, they are not going to put a great deal of effort into searching for the author – they’ll either decide not to use the image and find another, or they’ll decide that the author simply doesn’t care and go ahead an use it

---

Its about making if feasible for someone to get to the original artist when they want/need to.

You don’t need to keep all the other EXIF stuff in place just to keep the IPTC stuff there, so the size of the other stuff is, as I said in the the other forum thread, completely irrelevant (as is the theoretical GPS tag sometime in a hypothetical future).

I’m not a lawyer, but appears to me that removal of copyright notices by RedBubble is a breach of s116B(1)(a)(i) and s116C(1) of the Commonwealth Copyright Act 1968 – both of which allow the owner of the work to take action against the person removing copyright information.

I think it might be a good idea if RedBubble reconsidered the rather ill-advised decision to remove copyright notices from their customers’ art.

Dave, copyright notices are not a placebo. They are there as a warning to people who could potentially infringe the rights of the copyright owner. Of course, the absence of this warning doesn’t affect the rights of the copyright owner. However, it could make the difference between someone breaching those rights and not doing so.

Anyone who’s had their copyright breached is able to take legal action against the person who breached it, but that’s time consuming and expensive. It’s considerably better to try and prevent them breaching it in the first place.

Images which don’t contain a copyright notice could lead someone, who is rather less aware of these protections than they should be, to believe that either the work isn’t copyright or that the owner doesn’t care. Legally, that’s no excuse, but it could make the difference between them pirating it and not.

As one who often posts the “right click is a useless safeguard” response, this is one area I’d have to agree with Mike on.

It isn’t about keeping people from copying your work, it’s about keeping your name (therefore your copyright) attached to your work – this orphaned works bill might be getting pushed through in the US, but if it’s successful it is going to affect all of us as artists – any single person who puts their photos on the web.

Dave, copyright notices are not a placebo. They are there as a warning to people who could potentially infringe the rights of the copyright owner.

You’ve misunderstood me Will, I said that the belief that the notice could not be removed from the file is a placebo.

I think it might be a good idea if RedBubble reconsidered the rather ill-advised decision to remove copyright notices from their customers’ art.

You’ll find that most popular photo sharing sites also do this. Please understand, this is not a malicious act, its simply a result of the preprocessing of images that happens when we process an upload.

I said that the belief that the notice could not be removed from the file is a placebo.

A belief that no-one has mentioned but you. Its glaringly obvious they can be removed since the complaint is that you have done so!

> You’ll find that most popular photo sharing sites also do this.

sorry, I thought this was a site for selling art, not a photo sharing site

Ditto what Mike said – this wasn’t supposed to be a “photo sharing site”.

The only site of that nature I belong to is Flickr, and I’ve just gone and checked the images I have loaded there – the ones I know without a doubt have the copyright information included. Not being logged in I copied one, and the information in my file is still there. I don’t know about other sites though.

sorry, I thought this was a site for selling art, not a photo sharing site

Indeed, but don’t change the topic

Well, if you stop raising spurious points in defense of your removal of copyright, I’ll stop trying to debunk them.

You’ll find that most popular photo sharing sites also do this.

That may be true, but it doesn’t mean it’s alright. And, anyway, they’re probably not bound by Australian copyright law in quite the same way as RedBubble is.

Reading the Copyright Act, it looks to me that if someone pirates an image which RB has removed the copyright notice from, and they make lots of money from it, the copyright owner could sue RB for quite a lot of money. Such an action could be disastrous for RB – and would, therefore, be a bad thing for all of us.

If someone pirates the same image and RB hasn’t removed the copyright notice, then there’s no comeback on RB. It all comes down to the basic common law principle of duty of care. If you don’t mess with it, you have no duty of care in that respect.

I think it’s reasonable to strip exif data from thumbnails, as there’s not much mileage in pirating images of that resolution – although Australian Federal law says you mustn’t do that without permission. But larger images really should not have copyright information removed – regardless of whether or not it’s “simply the result of postprocessing [......]”

What RB does, in fact, seems to be considerably worse than just stripping copyright information. It appears that the image is re-labelled as copyright of Hewlett Packard!

Taken from the exif data attached to one of my images:

Profile Copyright : Copyright© 1998 Hewlett-Packard Company

Now i don’t know what “profile” means or what it’s supposed to refer to in that context, but in the absence of any explicit information about what it does mean, the implication is that HP are now claiming some form of copyright over my image!

If it’s ok to put HP’s copyright in the exif data, why isn’t it ok to leave my copyright information there?

Hi Will,

Profile Copyright : Copyright© 1998 Hewlett-Packard Company

Was this on one of the images under buy/preview ?

It’s the image on the page i get to by clicking on one of the thumbnails on my profile.

http://www.redbubble.com/people/willkemp/art/896269-1-blossom

Microsoft gets a mention in the exif data, HP gets to make some spurious copyright claim – but my copyright notice has to be stripped!

Hi Will,

I opened the file in PS3 and there is no information in the metadata.

Edit – although I am interested to know why HP and Microsoft get a mention :-)

I opened the same image Will and found no data – no IPTC, no exif, nothing. But profile is likely relating to either a camera profile or the colour printing profile.

I’m not sure why PS3 doesn’t show anything. But i’m using exiftool (i run Linux).

I suspect PS3 only displays particular exif tags – probably the standard set. I know pretty much all the graphics software i’ve got (that’s about half a dozen different apps) don’t display everything – just what they think should be there. Exiftool, on the other hand, shows everything – standard tags and non-standard tags.

If i download the first Nowra Classic pic (http://images-1.redbubble.com/img/art/size:large/view:main/999372-1-nowra-classic-2008.jpg), from your profile page Alison, this is what exiftool tells me about it:

Profile CMM Type : Lino
Profile Version : 2.1.0
Profile Class : Display Device Profile
Color Space Data : RGB
Profile Connection Space : XYZ
Profile Date Time : 1998:02:09 06:49:00
Profile File Signature : acsp
Primary Platform : Microsoft Corporation
CMM Flags : Not Embedded, Independent
Device Manufacturer : IEC
Device Model : sRGB
Device Attributes : Reflective, Glossy, Positive, Color
Rendering Intent : Perceptual
Connection Space Illuminant : 0.9642 1 0.82491
Profile Creator : HP
Profile ID : 0
Profile Copyright : Copyright© 1998 Hewlett-Packard Company
Profile Description : sRGB IEC61966-2.1
Media White Point : 0.95045 1 1.08905
Media Black Point : 0 0 0
Red Matrix Column : 0.43607 0.22249 0.01392
Green Matrix Column : 0.38515 0.71687 0.09708
Blue Matrix Column : 0.14307 0.06061 0.7141
Device Mfg Desc : IEC http://www.iec.ch
Device Model Desc : IEC 61966-2.1 Default RGB colour space – sRGB
Viewing Cond Desc : Reference Viewing Condition in IEC61966-2.1
Viewing Cond Illuminant : 19.6445 20.3718 16.8089
Viewing Cond Surround : 3.92889 4.07439 3.36179
Viewing Cond Illuminant Type : D50
Luminance : 76.03647 80 87.12462
Measurement Observer : CIE 1931
Measurement Backing : 0 0 0
Measurement Geometry : Unknown (0)
Measurement Flare : 0.999%
Measurement Illuminant : D65
Technology : Cathode Ray Tube Display
Red Tone Reproduction Curve : (Binary data 2060 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Green Tone Reproduction Curve : (Binary data 2060 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Blue Tone Reproduction Curve : (Binary data 2060 bytes, use -b option to extract)

I’ve tested files with no exif data and files with no exifdata downloaded with Firefox – and the above is not something that exiftool has added. I’ve deleted the data that exiftool does add (information about the image itself). What’s above is in the file when it comes from RB.

Oh, by the way, this is the exif data in the thumbnail files (from the thumbnail for the same pic as above) :

Profile CMM Type : Lino
Profile Version : 2.1.0
Profile Class : Display Device Profile
Color Space Data : RGB
Profile Connection Space : XYZ
Profile Date Time : 1998:02:09 06:49:00
Profile File Signature : acsp
Primary Platform : Microsoft Corporation
CMM Flags : Not Embedded, Independent
Device Manufacturer : IEC
Device Model : sRGB
Device Attributes : Reflective, Glossy, Positive, Color
Rendering Intent : Perceptual
Connection Space Illuminant : 0.9642 1 0.82491
Profile Creator : HP
Profile ID : 0
Profile Copyright : Copyright© 1998 Hewlett-Packard Company
Profile Description : sRGB IEC61966-2.1
Media White Point : 0.95045 1 1.08905
Media Black Point : 0 0 0
Red Matrix Column : 0.43607 0.22249 0.01392
Green Matrix Column : 0.38515 0.71687 0.09708
Blue Matrix Column : 0.14307 0.06061 0.7141
Device Mfg Desc : IEC http://www.iec.ch
Device Model Desc : IEC 61966-2.1 Default RGB colour space – sRGB
Viewing Cond Desc : Reference Viewing Condition in IEC61966-2.1
Viewing Cond Illuminant : 19.6445 20.3718 16.8089
Viewing Cond Surround : 3.92889 4.07439 3.36179
Viewing Cond Illuminant Type : D50
Luminance : 76.03647 80 87.12462
Measurement Observer : CIE 1931
Measurement Backing : 0 0 0
Measurement Geometry : Unknown (0)
Measurement Flare : 0.999%
Measurement Illuminant : D65
Technology : Cathode Ray Tube Display
Red Tone Reproduction Curve : (Binary data 2060 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Green Tone Reproduction Curve : (Binary data 2060 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Blue Tone Reproduction Curve : (Binary data 2060 bytes, use -b option to extract)

So much for stripping exif data to save on download time! ;-)

I’d guess that that is the sRGB colour profile. HP were one of the proponents for this, if I remember rightly, which would tie in with the HP copyright.

Images which don’t contain a copyright notice could lead someone, who is rather less aware of these protections than they should be, to believe that either the work isn’t copyright or that the owner doesn’t care.

If someone really isnt that aware of these protections – surely they wouldnt know where to look for them anyway!

Im not against what you are proposing, or for it – Im on the fence, but thats one part thats puzzling me. To place embedded info into a file to protect it from people who are not aware of copyright, seems a bit pointless, as they wont know where to look for it anyway.

Julie, to summarise my post earlier in this thread:

It is not about protection.

Its so that the file contains a way of identifying the author

If you add copyright and contact information to your image file its unlikely that anyone innocently copying the image file to show it elsewhere will remove the relevant data from the file. Having the information in the file allows someone further down the line who wants to contact the original author to do so.

Its all about making if feasible for someone to get to the original artist when they want/need to.

The long version version is near the head of this thread. The even longer version is in my journal.

Will has pointed out that it may also be against Australian law to remove the copyright clause without permission.

Well as I said Mike – I,m neither for or against on this one. I dont add information to my image details property tab as I dont see the point in it – a thief will usually know how to remove it anyway, but I see your point if you add it, and want it retained.

Hi Will,

That has to be something to do with RB, not my image Profile Date Time : 1998:02:09 06:49:00 or I’m living in a different time than everyone else :-) .... twilight zone music …..

So much for stripping exif data to save on download time! ;-)

You have a point there :-)