attribution

Somewhere in the mountain of announcements that Adobe dropped this morning—including major updates for both Photoshop and Lightroom—the company found time to unveil a prototype of its much-anticipated "Content Attribution" tool: a system that cryptographically embeds editing and attribution info into photos so that everyone can see when a photo has been edited, how it's been edited, and who the image belongs to.

Finding the perfect photograph to use can be a challenge. Most photographers seek to copyright their work giving them the exclusive rights to its use and distribution. When you simply want to use a photo for a school presentation or your personal blog, navigating the legal landscape can be a nightmare. Luckily, the folks over at Creative Commons have created an Android app to allow you to find quickly and request images that you can legally use.

In a world where viral photo sharing accounts (such as HistoryInPics) are popping up at an insane pace, it's a necessity that there be counterparts that do their best to verify, fact-check, and credit the images these accounts share.

This increasingly necessary job has recently been taken over by a small group of accounts dedicated to doing exactly that: verifying the legitimacy of the images being shared, and making sure the original creator of the images is being properly credited.

Update: It looks like it's already been fixed. Kudos to Getty for the quick response.

Getty's embed tool has been live for less than 24 hours and ALREADY somebody has figured out how it can be taken advantage of. It turns out that all it takes is some extremely simple code to remove attribution entirely.

When it comes to images, Pinterest is a bit of a copyright nightmare. It's not unusual for people to pin photos without any information or attribution, which inevitably leads to others using or sharing the photo without permission.

Still, you have to give the company credit, it's trying to "wake up" so to speak. In addition to a deal struck up with Flickr last year, Pinterest has just announced a new arrangement with GettyImages, in which Pinterest will pay Getty so that images from the service might be given proper MetaData.

Facebook takes the copyright infringement of photographs seriously. So seriously that it doesn't think twice about instantly -- and permanently -- nuking offending pages, regardless of how popular those pages are. Case in point: two months ago, popular trend hunting blog The Cool Hunter had its popular page abruptly deleted; the page boasted over 788,000 fans, contained five years' worth of content, and was a huge source of traffic for the company's website. Facebook has since stated that the removal was due to "multiple instances of copyright infringement."

We first covered Stipple last year, when it was a B2B service that was attempting to turn microstock on its head by offering image licenses in exchange for in-image ads. Since then, the company has relaunched as a platform geared towards ordinary folk. In addition to being able to make money from your photos, Stipple now adds a useful layer on top of the images, allowing you to share, caption, and track your photos in ways that aren't possible with static image files.

Tim Olsen Gallery, a prestigious art gallery located in Sydney, Australia, has dropped popular Australian photo artist Ben Ali Ong after it was discovered that some of his photo artworks were actually based on uncredited Getty Images. An exhibition featuring Ong's work, which was set to open this week, was canceled, and a number of art buyers will be refunded.

Not too long ago, I was approached by a newspaper (Journal Le Droit, a large daily newspaper distributing print in the Ottawa-Hull area) asking if I would allow them to print a few of my pictures in an upcoming special feature on a nearby town, Rockland, Ontario. Having photographed much of Rockland in the past three years, I gladly accepted and figured that I could somewhat benefit from some exposure.

Just to make sure, I asked if they were offering monetary compensation. They responded that a photo-credit would be placed at the bottom of the image in lieu of payment. Why not?

Users of both Flickr and Pinterest will …