The complaints about search engines (Google and others) go back to the practice of serving a cached page - which was a big issue here ten years ago and not so much these days.
That IMO isn't because it is any less of a problem, but merely because the newer and younger webmasters have grown up with "cache" and thus think it is "normal " and "right"..and legal challenges require very very very deep pockets ,,and the search engines alway fight those cases in the USA, in front of judges and a legal system which is very "friendly" to major corps and IT corps in particular..it is almost considered "un-American" to return a verdict against a US corp in a US court..( which considering how they all avoid paying their taxes in the USA like other US businesses, and instead are claiming to be run from my "ould country" Ireland, is ironic to say the least )..they are able to bribe/ lobby US politicians and legislators to be able to "have their cake and eat it"..whilst taking the food from the mouths of those who are not so well connected and whose pockets are not so deep..
The younger generations seem to have a lot less concern about the whole issue. I'm not sure what that's all about.
Most of those who are unconcerned are not creators ..they are torrentors or downloaders who are convinced that by not paying they are "sticking it to the man"..or as with the users of pinterest they are looking for their attention , and waving or pinning someone elses work gets them that attention..they don't care how, because they don't have to work to get it other than copy paste..those who are creators are not at all happy working for free, they too have businesses a to run and bills to pay and in some cases kids to feed..working long hours to create content be it text or images only to have it instantly "claimed" by a search engine directly or by another site and then by the search engine doesn't sit well with them either, but they are too busy playing catch up to the ever increasing larceny to be able to come and post in these sort of marketers forums..
Visit the creative forums and they are full of complaints about how they are expected to work for free and make all of this in their spare time or do it for the "exposure", ..what spare time, what exposure..you cant take "exposure" to the checkout at the supermarket or the gas station and use it to pay for anything.. !
Seems to me technology itself is at the root of this challenge, and that technology ought to be part of the solution.
The big rich players have no incentive at all to use or promote or research any technological solutions to this..because it suits them exactly as it is now..A solution to this would mean that they would have no content to hi-jack, whether by crowd sourcing , a la pinterst and ehow, or by scraping using other sites as proxies as Google has done, both now and previously..
Image Search has always been terrible at proper attribution
They could fix all problems of attribution easily..they have no interest in doing so..only showing the original of anything would take out 90% of the content that they use to pad their SERPs and to get the eyeballs to their ads..So much easier to say publicly that it is too hard, but we'll do our best and remove it if you tell us, whilst privately knowing that their entire business model is based upon showing IP that they do not have the rights to show..thje negotiations that were made public after Google's acquisition of Youtube showed that they knew and know exactly what is happening and use it as the foundation of their business model..
There ought to be a way for technology to offer a fix, but so far no one seems to be championing the cause very effectively
The voices of the "I don't create anything but you should let me have your creations for free or let Google have them for free so I can make some money with Google and don't rock the adsense webmaster welfare boat are louder and more strident than the combined voices of us creators..and Google can afford fancier layers, more bribes / lobbying, and string out court cases until the creators have to choose between paying the lawyers for years to fight..or have no money for their businesses or maybe even food..
The DMCA was written not to protect creators but in reality to give the Google and the other IP abusers a get out with no penalties to them if they took down what they already knew was not theirs fast..
Google got their start in an educational establishment ( whose use of content and images was protected under US law by fair use..they abused that right from the get go ) then as they moved away from there and into the garage and onwards via the IPO , they just kept right on claiming that they still had the right to do so as if they were still and educational establishment "reviewing or quoting brief passages"..Their SERPS have never been "reviews"..and you can't quote a brief passage of an "image"..you are either showing the "image" or you are not..it is either yours to show ..or it is not ( funny how they don't show any that they just found that belong to Getty images or the Image bank, they know damn well which images are attributable to who.."they don't mess with the big dogs" )..they began by showing thumbnails ..now they are showing full size images , and masking the sites that they get them from with a lightbox..
The searcher need never turn into a visitor for the creators site..Google have seen that crowd sourcing IP theft has worked for Pinterest so far...so they have put it on steroids..
Yes, that includes Google - but they are far from unique or alone.
They may not be alone..but they are by far and away the worst serial offender, the others didn't even exist when Google first began abusing the IP of image creators, hiding behind the fair use of the desktop in a university where they began even long after they had left that "fair use" haven..
Now they have taken it to the ultimate stage..it is no longer of any use to block them via htaccess , because they are using and image stolen by your visitors and claiming it to be "found" on the internet..and taking it as theirs and slapping ads around it for page after page..
They always said .."if you don't want your stuff in our index, block us with robots.txt..and or block us at the server via htaccess or similar..and we'll leave your stuff alone"..
They invented carousel as away to not have to keep their word..they are now using stuff that is not theirs to use and which they are blocked from and knowingly doing it using human proxies..upon whose sites Google "found" it ..
Like I said they don't find any Getty images, nor any thing from the other big image banks, attribution is working alive and well behind the scenes ..so as to avoid them big public scandals and legal bills..
They want to use just wikipedia..that is fine by me..but wikipedia doesn't have images for everything , and Google were hoping that those who create the images that they just "found"..wouldn't notice..
Yeah ..that is evil..
It is a shame that some here don't want to have the sound of "stop thief" interfering with watching their adsense stats..and that others are helping to find and furnish Google with excuses, Google and they know exactly what they are doing and Google knows exactly what belongs to who..they choose to pretend otherwise..because it suits their bottom line..
