Photographs by TP Members

As we write our personal profiles and upload photographs, we build a photograph album and this can be explored by other members when they click on the profile link 'See all photographs by xxxxxxxxx'. It is easy to trace some of the profile photos of new members which appear elsewhere on the internet (search for similar images through Google by uploading the photo) and the spammers generally use a stock photograph taken from a travel website or similar such place.

Looking at one or two 'photos' recently from new members reveals several to be postcards and symbols, most likely uploaded from the internet rather than photographs taken by the member themselves. Where does Travellerspoint stand on these? Is there a copyright Infringement? Isn't it plagiarism? Is there a method by which these 'photos' can be flagged so that the authenticity can be checked, much like forum posts can be flagged for checking?

[ Edit: Edited on 03-Mar-2017, at 11:55 by Borisborough ]

Hi,

As I moderate photos I see some of them, only the ones that are mappen to a location. As far as I know stock photos are allowed but I don't like it either and if it tends to get of hand, I just delete a bunch.

Spammy photos, of course, go down the drain immediately..

You are probably talking about the photos we transferred from VT?

Please take into consideration that these are tied to and needed for our reviews, which are currently invisible. Before you start deleting anything, please contact the member in question.

Quoting Kathrin_E

You are probably talking about the photos we transferred from VT?

Please take into consideration that these are tied to and needed for our reviews, which are currently invisible. Before you start deleting anything, please contact the member in question.

Don't worry, that's not the VT case.

Almost always just spam and very rarely anything else at all

I have a 'thing' about people trying to pass things off as their own which are from elsewhere. A bit like a CV, I am not happy that people lie on their CV I don't but employers expect that there are lies because so many people do lie on them now. All my photographs are mine, I took them and I can explain exactly each and every one. I find it disingenuous that anyone would try to pass off a picture as theirs when it's not.

Sorry - rant over - there are probably far more important things to get worked up about!

I know you said the snaps in question weren't from VT'ers but worth mention?

Every image we ever posted ended up in our VT photo libraries...even those we picked up off the net just for irreverent misc. forum threads and others we may have used in the travel forums simply as visual aids to help someone.

We were allowed to do that as long as they were not used in our reviews, not used in reviews without crediting the source, when required to do so, or clearly not something we shot but were allowed to reproduce. For instance, I have screen captures of map sections I've taken from the U.S. National Parks websites to show people the route of a trail, where exactly something is, etc. The NPS website allows use of imagery - or parts of imagery - as long as it's not for profit (I checked).

It also captured screen shots of VT pages we posted to, say, show staff what they looked like when there was a glitch in the system. They needed to see what WE were seeing if the glitch wasn't happening on their end.

Anyway, the downloader captured EVERYTHING so anyone who looks might see photos/imagery a member obviously did not take or create, and that's probably why. I've started deleting my own saved from now- irrelevant misc. and tech forums and whatnot as I run across them but it'll take awhile until I find them all.

Is there an optimal photo size?

Oh good that you mention this, even if you don't mean the content that recently arrived from us ex-VTers.
In my (ex-VTer) case: the photo transfer resulted in approx. 8400 "photos". But all "photos" were imported from VT, including many screenshots I made for forum replies, etc. Also I have used many GoogleMaps/Satellite screenshots etc because our tips weren't linked to any map like it is here.
Currently I am going through my photos and delete all irrelevant plus old photos which I won't use here. That takes still a while.

But on the other hand:
yes, some ex-VTers had scans of postcards or lifted photos from the internet on their pages. Some of us were very active in sending mails to these members to clarify the postcard issue, but some of the ones just didn't care.

Quoting dromosapien

Is there an optimal photo size?

The maximum size displayed on travellerspoint is 800 pixels on the long end. The system can store much larger resolutions than that for your personal use (as a downloadable backup), but you have a limited amount of storage available for that (though it grows to be a bit less limited as you go up in member rank though being active on the site).

On a minor side-note, at some point in the future I'll be adding a new 1200px size as well. All the VT photos were actually imported with this larger size option stored also. But new TP photos are not yet resized that way. So if anyone is resizing prior to uploading to Travellerspoint, I'd recommend getting in the habit of doing that resizing down to 1200px rather than 800px.

On the topic of photos being taken from the internet and how to moderate that - the problem here is that we don't necessarily know that the person did or didn't have permission. We always assume the person has permission. However, if someone complains that a copyrighted photo is being shown on here, then we do remove it without hesitation. This has happened in a few cases, so it's certainly not unheard of.

Sometimes the copied images are also a real giveaway for detecting spammers because they often use copied profile photos as their own. Or generic travel imagery to illustrate their blog entries for example. On the other hand, we've also had schools who have used our blogging platform as an educational tool. They use stock imagery to illustrate their blog entries. These often look extremely spammy until we work out they are just kids doing their homework. All this to say - it's complicated and not always clear cut.