Imageline Research Discovers Tens of Millions of Copyright Infringements Through the Image Search Engines of Google and Others
Posted on: Tuesday, 28 August 2007, 09:22 CDT
Imageline, Inc. of Ashland, Virginia today issued a warning to all Internet users who access and download electronic graphic arts content (clip art illustrations, design templates, animations, or logos) from the Internet via image search engines or directly from web site publishers who are known copyright infringers. See the official News Release at http://www.imageline2.com.
"It is estimated that 85% of all the downloads involving this kind of content contain unauthorized images," states George P. Riddick, III, the founder and CEO of Imageline. "We are not approaching these end users directly, but are trying our best to stop these cascading infringements from the top down in this industry," continues Mr. Riddick. "This is a major intra-industry problem."
According to research conducted by Imageline over the past five months, all of the leading image search engine companies in this country (Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, IAC/Ask.com, and Time Warner/AOL), and some of the major ones abroad (including Baidu in China and Rediff in India) are guilty of direct infringements from their web sites and servers. "These publicly funded search engine companies have traditionally blamed the small independent web site publishers for these illegal activities," states Mr. Riddick. "But during our research we found that many, if not most, of the infringements were, indeed, direct copyright infringements and not 'indirect' or 'fair use' as these major public companies have proclaimed."
Imageline, in conjunction with other copyright holders, intends to conduct a major public awareness campaign beginning this fall to inform Internet users of their potential risks and liabilities and to educate them as to how they can cease the unlawful activity and help hold accountable those companies who systematically ignore the copyright laws in this country and the international guidelines agreed to by the Berne Convention and the WIPO treaties in the late 1990s as well. Imageline is also asking other legitimate copyright holders to help.
Mr. Riddick continued, "The DMCA does not protect these giant image search engine companies from this type of direct infringement. It is time that these companies come clean and admit what they do is illegal. What kind of copyright example do they set for the rest of the civilized world?"
Specific examples of how this "image search" infringing activity actually works can be found by visiting the Imageline web site at Image Search... The Unknown Crisis with "Chilling Effects."
For more information on this and other copyright-related issues pertaining to the Internet, contact George Riddick at griddick@imageline2.com.
Contact George Riddick Email Contact
SOURCE: Imageline, Inc.
Source: MARKET WIRE
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User Comments (2)
| 2. |
Posted by Imageline on 12/22/2008, 06:30 George P. Riddick, III is a man with a mission. A man with a singular and almost fanatical crusade to seek out and destroy those he claims to have violated his copyright and therefore should be burnt in hell (or pay out substantial amounts of cash, whichever the courts decide first, I guess)! What George P. Riddick, III is possibly unaware of however, is that his collection of bitmap clip art is vastly out-dated crap that no one in their right mind apart from the odd backwater church community or primary school would ever nowadays use. Although he still viciously pursues and targets those as well. On the other hand, maybe he does realise this and has devilishly discovered that the only way to generate vast amounts of income, is to sue people. For example, say your clip-art was selling for $20 a piece, but you could in fact gain 150 times the value by threatening to sue them for infringement, wow. I would say at least George is a good businessman, maybe he should have been a stock broker instead because he certainly isn’t that great at drawing. |
| 1. |
Posted by George Riddick Image on 12/22/2008, 06:28 George, if you’re reading this, please do everyone a favour and move on. Clip-art like the one’s you produced 20 years ago are from a time when computers ran on 32k of memory, had 8 colours, went ‘blip’ and where Winchester hard drives only existed in large corporate firms and science labs. Whilst everyone else has accepted technological progress, gracefully thrown all their old junk to the public domain and started afresh, you’re clinging to the past like a scared child clings to it’s mother, frightened to cope in the big commercial competitive world. I mean, it’s not like your works are ‘classical masterpieces’, are they? You proudly claim that Imageline, Inc. holds one of the largest archives of high quality vector-based clip art illustrations, page designs, digital logos, cartoons, and animations in the world. For an example of this ‘high quality’ just look at the image below. A crudely drawn, black and white picture even a five year old can draw. It’s probably sad for you to know but everyone in the graphics design world is laughing behind your back. |
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