Irresponsible Bloggers
Recently, in the November Issue of National Geographic, there was an interesting article on Kingfishers with some truly amazing photographs that took years to capture. This article, understandably, drew the interest of many bloggers, especially those associated with birding blogs. One of my responsibilities as an intern at National Geographic is to monitor the coverage of our articles and photographs. It is amazing to me how many bloggers, many of them legitimate blogs, would publish our photos on their site with out crediting the photographer. It is not hard to get the copyright information, its right there on the Web site. We have to tell the bloggers that they must include the proper credit or they will not be able to use our pictures; and these are pictures that will surely attract readers to the blog as they are fairly difficult to get. Are the bloggers just irresponsible and not know the laws, or do they think that they can just take any picture they want for their own personal use? What do you guys think?
posted by Pete at
12:10 PM
2 Comments:
First of all, those pictures of Kingfishers are really amazing and definitely look professionally done. It seems very unlikely that anyone would look at the pictures and think that an average person without training in photography could take them. I agree that it is so easy to find copyright information and include it in small font right underneath the pictures. Many pictures on the internet are labeled “all rights reserved” and cannot be used by the public. People should respect the fact that National Geographic is nice enough to allow others to use pictures as long as copyright information is attached to them. In my opinion, bloggers who do not include sources for the pictures they use are almost abusing the Web sites that are so willing to share their content. I think that a minority of bloggers may be inexperienced and unaware of what needs to be attributed, but for the most part, bloggers may be lazy and think it’s unnecessary to take the extra minute to cite their sources. They don’t truly take into account the consequences that come from stealing the work of others. I think Web sites like National Geographic should have users agree to some kind of contract that forces users to attribute content before taking it.
By
Danielle Chazen, At
November 16, 2009 6:04 PM
I agree that most bloggers who take the pictures are probably lazy. That being said, there must be some kind of bigger consequence so that this doesn't keep happening. Otherwise, I see this as a huge problem for the future of journalism. It is great that National Geographic is so willing to share its photos. The photographer deserves to get the credit. It can be beneficial for the photographer to share his or her photos, but only as long as he or she gets the proper credit.
By
Nikki Adelman, At
November 19, 2009 6:20 PM
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