Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Can you take words from one website and use them on your own?

We've all seen the anti-piracy advert at the start of DVDs - all edgy music and grainy images with shouty captions: YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR... Ed Byrne does a good bit about it.
The message is, it's not ok to download films, because it's stealing.

We probably all agree. But then we've probably all downloaded something illegally at least once in our life - an mp3, a film, some software - it goes on.
What also goes on is the theft - yeah, I'm going to call it theft - of images and words online.
I've already blogged about the photos thing, but this week I've been driven over the edge by the words.

I'm a journalist by trade (not that you'd know from reading this blog, right gang?) so I'm a bit more precious about my words than most. I accept this. I also accept that not everyone has had to sit through libel and copyright training many, many times, so I think I try to be quite forgiving when I see some of our original content being used by someone else.

It has happened five or six times since we launched the current incarnation of our website: I've found words, written by me for relovedvintageinteriors.co.uk, lifted wholesale and used to sell someone else's painted furniture on another website. Sure, sometimes they've changed the odd word here and there, but not enough to make the words their own.

"So what?" you might ask. It's only words. To that, I say: "Who are you? Cat Stevens?" (one for the kids, there).

Those words were crafted in my mid-range brain specifically with the intention of promoting and selling Reloved Vintage. They are personal to me and the business. If you just copy and paste them into your website, it says two things about you:

1. You're a bit lazy
2. You don't have anything original to say about your business.

Going back to illegal downloads for a second, if you illegally downloaded a film, and then you got caught bang to rights when the owner of that film showed you proof. You'd admit it and apologise, right? If they then simply asked you to delete that film from your hard drive, you'd probably do it straight away.

Yeah, me too. And I'd consider myself lucky that they didn't sue me or tell my mum.

Most people I've contacted do just that. They apologise and remove the offending words immediately. Some blame whoever built the site for them, which may be a cheap excuse or, more likely, it reveals there are a number of unscrupulous website builders out there.

These people, by and large, are just like us. They run a small business. Some do it full time, some do it in their spare time, but none seem to be vindictive. They've gone about their word-pinching with innocence and act quickly to put things right. They're alright as far as I'm concerned. Decent people doing the right thing.

Which is why it's very strange when something like this happens.

Extract from the Commissions page of another website

Extract from the Commissions page of relovedvintageinteriors.co.uk

I was doing my roughly quarterly check to see if our copy was being used by anyone else (my highly technical system? Pasting phrases into Google) when I found this website.

A lot of the wording has been changed, but key phrases, written especially to reflect the stye and approach of Reloved Vintage were there, word for word.

This was also the case on the About page:

 

From the other site's About page

Extracts from our About page

I sent messages via social media to the owner of the other site, expressing my concern. They replied to say they had never even seen my site and that, most definitely, nothing was plagiarised. I pointed out the similarities. They replied. No apology, just a note that they were off to work and would have a look later. Then nothing. I chased them up a few days later. A full week later, after another nudge from me, they said they were too busy to look at it. I said that wasn't good enough. I've given them a deadline.

The owner of the site has a full-time job on top of the furniture side of things. So do I. So did Laura until a month and half ago. We get it. It's hard. You're always busy, but it doesn't take much time or effort to delete some words from your site.

While all this was going on, I Googled again. I found another website using our words. Seriously! You should try this yourself.

It wasn't word-for-word, but it had definitely been copied and altered slightly. I sent off an email and got a reply the next day. They apologised and said their site had been created for them by an external website builder. It seems there really are lots of lazy website builders out there.

If you're reading this and you have a website you paid someone to create for you - words and all - perhaps you should do a quick check on where those words came from...

I worried that I was being too precious and whingey, but everyone I spoke to about this was outraged - perhaps more than I was. They had no idea this kind of thing went on. Colleagues, fellow small business owners, friends - they were all "Call your solicitor!" "Some people have no shame" "That's unbelievable".

I get it though, not everyone is confident with words. It's easier to 'borrow' someone else's than write your own which might not be very good, or pay someone to do it for you. It's certainly cheaper, and for a lot of people, the furniture's just a hobby, or it's their livelihood and times are tight.

Doesn't make it right, though. Just like that downloaded film.

I'd love to hear what you think. Am I over-reacting? Should we just accept that once you put something online it's going to get stolen? Or does more need to be done to protect our intellectual copyright? Let me know below...

Thinking of booking a place on a furniture painting workshop?

Do your homework before you hand over your cash to learn how to paint furniture

Thinking of booking a place on a painting workshop? Take a good look at the company's website first - I've seen one company offering classes, but the main images on their website and Facebook page have been lifted from Pinterest. 

That's not to say they don't know what they're doing, but a little misleading, maybe...

If you see an image on a company's website, you assume that it is an example of their work - and if that company is offering to teach you to do something, you want to make sure you're going to be taught to the standards you expect.

So, if you see an image like this, for example:

Wow! Did they really paint all that? No, someone else did 

The chances are it's just been pinched from another site. Unless the company whose site you are looking at has lots of photos from the same photoshoot, or has a large showroom in which to take such photos, it's unlikely that it features work by the business in question.

If in doubt, go to Google Images and simply drag the photo into the search box to do a reverse image search.

For the image above, taken from the homepage of a painted furniture company that holds workshops, you get this result:

Page after page of the same image

The image is widely shared on Pinterest - which is probably where the website found it. They do have photos of their own work on their Facebook page and their website, but they are somewhat hidden.

I'm not suggesting there is any malice or deliberate deception intended by this company - it's more likely a case that they needed some images and it was easier to find professionally shot photos on the internet than it was to get some taken. But this is something I've blogged about before.

While it may seem harmless, it's misleading, and when you've seen first-hand just how hard some people work to take their own photos, of their own products, it really grates and seems a little bit like cheating. And remember, somewhere, the person who painted and styled that bedroom, and took the photograph, is having to watch it get used by people all over the world to make money for themselves. Is that really fair?

There are plenty of well-qualified people (French Grey Tales, Sugden and Daughters - not to mention all the trained Annie Sloan stockists such as Chalk) offering painted furniture workshops - and a quick look at their sites will tell you straight away how good they are. 

So, if you're thinking of booking a place on a workshop - even if it seems like a really good deal - just spend five minutes doing a bit of research into the company before you click that 'pay' button. Better safe than sorry...

7 Reasons Pinching Other People’s Photos For Your Website Is Just Not Cool

The rights and wrongs of photo copyright online

A year or so ago, we noticed a lot of our web traffic was coming from people searching for a shop with a vaguely similar name to ours. Out of curiosity we Googled that shop and found their website – there, right on the homepage, was one of our photos. Taken by Laura, in our house, for our website. The nerve!

The site had other photos that had clearly come from various sources around the web – and the company’s Facebook page was the same (they were also building Likes by offering competition prizes they didn’t have – pictures stolen from US Etsy stores, that sort of thing - but that’s another story – though it did help us to build a mental image of the owners as either unscrupulous liars or simple idiots).

We immediately contacted the owner and asked them to remove our photo from their site and Facebook page.

 

The photo we found on someone else's website

In their defence, they replied within minutes to apologise and they took the photos down (replacing them with a photo lifted from another site…).

Their excuse? “We found the photo on Flickr and because there was a tin of Annie Sloan paint in the photo, we thought it was Annie Sloan’s copyright”

Where do we begin?

1. We couldn’t find the photo on Flickr anywhere, but that’s by the by…

2. How would it be Annie Sloan’s copyright? Does that make every photo of a bottle of Coke the property of Coca-Cola?

3. Even if it was Annie Sloan’s copyright, why would that make it ok for you to use?

Maybe it’s because I’ve worked all my adult life as a journalist and therefore am well-versed in copyright law and avoiding being sued at all costs, but it just seems completely bizarre to me that people think it’s alright to just steal photos for use on their own business website.

Painted by Laura, photographed by Laura, lifted by me

Here are our seven reasons stealing photos of other people's work is not okay.

1. You give a false impression of your business

Customers will automatically assume that the photos on your site are examples of your work – and if you’ve chosen particularly nice pieces of work to decorate your site, it’s unlikely that your work will live up to your customers’ expectations.

One of our most shared photos. Sharing's cool, stealing's not

2. You might get sued

Pinch a photo from the wrong place and you could be in trouble. Big companies take their intellectual copyright very seriously. We once used a piece of wallpaper featuring a well-known design and found ourselves on the wrong end of a solicitor’s email asking us to remove all images from our website and never do it again. Expect the same treatment if you nab the wrong image.

3. Someone else worked hard to make that thing

To you it’s just a photo of a chest of drawers, but to the person who created it, it’s the result of hours of work, financial input and creativity. They worked on it, they photographed it, they put it online to show off their work. And you just dragged it onto your desktop. 

I never noticed that wheelbarrow until now

4. It’s lazy. Quit being lazy.

Seriously, if you’re painting furniture, or making cushions or painting faces – whatever it is you do – how hard is it to take a photo of your work? Not happy with your camera or photography skills? Pay a local photographer to do it for you. Maybe you could even offer them payment in furniture/cushions/face-painting.

5. A great photo is the result of years of training and expense

Swiped a photo from another website because the photography’s great and better than you can do? Why not just break into your neighbour’s house and steal their TV because it’s bigger than yours? Good photography comes from years of practice, investment in a good camera, time spent setting up the shot and than editing it until it is just right... or you could just steal it. Your call.

One of our earliest pieces, complete with mini bunting

6. It’ll probably look a bit crap

A good website has consistent photography. The images all knit together and create a satisfying whole – because they’ve been taken by the same person, with the same camera and had the same post-processing applied. A bad website has images pulled in from here, there and everywhere – different shapes, sizes and resolutions. The site we mentioned earlier had photos lifted from a minimalist  apartment in Japan and a French farmhouse – and tried to pass off the furniture in both as examples of their past work!

7. It’s just not polite

It’s very rude to just take a photo from someone else and use it for your own benefit. Even on Facebook, where seemingly anything goes, it’s just plain ignorant to take a photo of someone’s work and post it on your page without tagging your source. Ask first, and even if you can’t ask/don’t get a reply/can’t tag – use your fingers and your keyboard to type in the name of the page or website where you found the photo. It’s just common courtesy.

What do you think? Have you had your photos stolen? Do you disagree and think it’s harmless to borrow images from other sites? Let us know here or at facebook.com/relovedvintage