There is no photo for December 6, 2017. I had an idea for a picture, but fell asleep and didn’t wake up until after midnight.
This is as good a time as any to say that I will stop loading my original photography to tumblr at the end of the year. I noticed in June that tumblr had started stripping all IPTC metadata and almost all EXIF information from photos. I wrote to them, but they have not changed their policy. Besides technical details of exposure time and camera settings, tumblr is also deleting date and time, my descriptions and keywords. Most importantly, they are erasing copyright ownership information that I deliberately incorporated in the file.
Would tumblr crop out artists’ signatures on drawings? Would tumblr remove the artists’ names and song titles from audio files? No. So why do they think it’s a good idea to rob artists of credit for original photography? By the way, this is illegal in some countries. A German photographer sued Facebook for stripping EXIF data, and won.
A notice for those of you who may not look at my photography page every day.
You sure have seenthis post. It has spread like wildfire over the past few days so I doubt there is any artist out there who hasn’t seen it. But even if you didn’t, you should read on because I’m about to tell you a handy little thing that can help you to protect your art from such assholes as the anon who submitted this bullcrap, as well as art thieves in general.
The magic word is Metadata.
Metadata is like an invisible signature that is embeded into a file. It can contain all kinds of information, like Title, date, keywords for online seach engines, and copyright information. And the best thing is, since this information is “hidden” in the code of your picture, it’s hard to remove it.
There is a nice basic tutorial on how to add Metadata, or “additional file information” to your images in photoshop. It’s really, really easy so check it out!
I’m not sure if you can do the same with any other art program. If you know how to do this in other programs / can confirm that it works the same way there, please tell me so I can add the information to this post.
Adding the Metadata will not stop idiots from taking and reposting your art. It also won’t make them stop editing out your signature. It WILL however, help you prove that you are the original artist whenever you have to. Always remember my friends. You, the artist, are protected by law. No one has the right to take your intellectual property and hard work and repost, use or edit it without your permission. Ever.
art thief: well how can you prove its yours??
me: /opens metadata
I spread the word as it is important to all artist who ever suffered from art thieving or so.
You guys, metadata is super important, you guys. In an everday and legal sense. People legitimately look at and rely on metadata to know the basic, but important bits of information about a digital product (paintings, photographs, exe files, etc.), ESPECIALLY the source.
Lawmakers in the United States House of Representatives are poised to pass the USA Freedom Act on Wednesday, leaving it up to the Senate to decide the future of the National Security Agency’s bulk phone records collection program.
If the House approves the bill as planned, the fate of the telephone metadata operation exposed in 2013 by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, will fall into the hands of the Senate, and from there lawmakers will have to decide if they also want the spy agency to stop collecting call records in bulk.
The outcome for now remains up in the air, especially after recent remarks by Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), the Senate majority leader, who called the program “an important tool to prevent the next terrorist attack.”
As a congressional showdown on the issue seems imminent, here’s what you need to know about the USA Freedom Act.
