Stolen art
An interesting article appeared within one of my social media timelines recently. It was about controversial artist Richard Prince selecting and using other people’s Instagram images in his exhibition, New Portraits, without the original poster’s permission — and then supposedly selling them for $90,000 a pop.
It got me thinking about the growth and diversification of the various devices and platforms that many people use on a daily, and in some cases an hourly, basis to have our images critiqued, or even just acknowledged. It seems that nearly everyone has got some form of smart device, whether it’s a smartphone, a tablet, or communication camera, that will let you take a photo at the drop of a hat and instantly share it to a potentially huge audience (unless your privacy settings are on lockdown) via platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
And where do the rights to these photos remain? In your hands or the platform that you’re publishing on? In other words, do the people who originally posted the images that Prince used and sold in his exhibition have the right to claim a copyright infringement? I did a little bit of digging and Instagram and Facebook have a similar copyright section on their websites, in the way that they say you can report a copyright infringement to them, as long as you’ve got the extensive documentation to back up the claim that you are the rightful owner, but both sites also iterate that you may just want to get in touch with the person who has used your content yourself, and “you may be able to resolve the issue without contacting” Facebook or Instagram.
This suggests to me that there isn’t really a ‘one way or the highway’ enforcement surrounding the protection of photographs on the internet — and how are rules surrounding copyright on the internet enforceable when there are more than 70 million images being posted on Instagram each day, for example.
Facebook and Instagram are incredible platforms to share and promote a photographer’s work and career, and we’ve entered into the time where we really do rely on the internet to spread the word about our projects and creations. But with this instantaccess domain comes the downside of not being able to ensure that your intellectual property remains safeguarded under your control — especially with the concept of virality being a big goal in the internet world. Once an image or concept is shared from your page, it doesn’t take long to stop recognizing who the original owner is (unless every single person who shares your work is crediting you) and it’s even harder to keep track of where it’s spread and who to contact to make a copyright infringement report.
Short of putting a watermark on your images, posting incredibly small-resolution images, keeping your profiles private (with the trade-off that only vetted invitees will see your work), and publishing full copyright information underneath the images, it would appear that there’s not a lot more we can do to protect our shared images on the internet. Maybe save all that copyright documentation to your desktop for the next time you need to claim ownership.