Last night, jenpet got a message from a fellow FetLife member who informed us that someone had posted one of our images on their profile without permission or credit. First, I'd like to extend my thanks to that member, I won't mention names here but you know who you are. Thank you for taking the time to let us know what you found. I find it interesting, on one hand I'm flattered that one of my images of me and my slave was iconic enough for someone to want to take. On the other hand, with the proliferation of cameras these days, fuck sake they are in our phones, how hard is it to take one one's self? I would want to see it. I love seeing other people's images. Pictures from their play sessions, their lifestyles, even just the mirror shot of a nice booty. I also love to get comments and feed back on my images and videos. Lets face it, I'm a comment whore:D. I was ecstatic, literally, when I reached thirty comments on this picture. What really gets me is that my image that they re-posted received more comments than my original. Ha!
To have someone take one of my images and re-post it is somewhat flattering I think. I'm sure I would feel a lot different about it if I were trying to make money off of my photography, one of those pay sites with pictures and videos. I've thought about it, but really I like being able to share our lives in the way that we do now. I might one day open up a clip store for some of the videos I've made but that would probably be about it.
Still, this photo theft thing is the reason why FetLife recently went through a major security overhaul. Now all pictures are protected from saving, copying, or capturing. This extends retroactively to all pictures, not just the new ones posted. There is even an option to report an image violation right on the profile picture page itself. Handy, except...
The whole reason I first got involved with FetLife was that it was a great place to find free porn related pictures. Even better the images themselves range from amateur play time snapshots to professional quality images. Not to say that I haven't come to, or even didn't from the start, appreciate it for what it is, a great place to be part of the community, make friends, share ideas, etc. But come on, free porn! Hell, I vaguely remember Fetlife promoting itself as a free pic place, they just asked that you only post your own work.
I have always made it a point to never post an image that belongs to someone else, period. Or failing that, at the very least give full credit when I can. Here on the blog, I've posted internet captured pictures a couple of times, but I do not take any credit for it. On my Fetlife profile, I only post my own pictures. I'm not bragging nor making a moral judgment, I'm just saying that it is because of people like this that I can no longer save some of the beautiful images that have been popping up on FetLife for my own private "appreciations" later. I collect massive amounts of porn; videos, pictures, you name it. I've got gigabytes of things that I have come across and just had to have. But now, I'm cut off. It's like coming to the end of a previously unknown introductory period and now you have to pay full price for the free things that got you hooked. Damned addiction peddlers ;).
Having now been a victim of the thing that has gotten so many, especially the professionals, so up in arms, I can see the benefit to having this security measure. I believe that it is also optional, that you can change the settings of any new pictures posted, from secured to unsecured. However, I might just be thinking wishfully there.
Regardless, it finally happened to me, so now I know what it is like. Even if I'm not sure whether it upsets me overly or not...
3 comments:
What do you all think? Would you be interested in a clip store type site with videos of jenpet? I might have to look into it, depending on the responses...
This was a great post and I think everything you said made great sense. The beauty of Fetlife are that the picture are real. Sure, some porn is exciting to watch or view. However with Fetlife it's real people sharing the inner workings of there lives or D/s relationships. Not a bunch of actors just doing it for the money.
Now when it comes to why some people chose not to put any pictures of themselves online I can understand why. As for myself I'm kind of in a tricky situation. Kara plans on going into a career in broadcast journalism. If years from now some recognizes the local News Reporter/Anchor (Kara) and ties her to something kink related, that's most likely the end of her career. You wouldn't see a local Politician posting his/her picture on Fetlife because it would be career suicide. I' sure you understand what I'm saying. My point is due to Kara have to be very protective to who I let view Me (or her) to protect her future.
Anyway great post.
~Jessica~
Thanks for the comment, I'm glad that you enjoyed this post.
First let me apologize, I do understand that need and I did not intend to leave the group of people who need that identity protection in the cold on this post. There for a while, I also needed to be careful about the images I posted, lest someone put two and two together.
For us, though, it was always my face that we needed to keep out of the pictures. That still left plenty of images of jenpet to be had. If we both needed to be kept out, it would have been different I'm sure.
I have seen others do interesting things to get around this; heavily contrasted images, body only or close up shots, even the unfavorable censorship lines or boxes over people's faces.
I also don't really have any problem with people posting random pics from the preponderance of images on the internet. The majority of those are from professionals, many of which are posted as freebies or just so circulated around the net that their origins become obscure.
Art, such as what you use is also fine to see. Mostly because I don't see too many people claiming them as their own creations. When I do and I know the artist, it is hard not to say something.
However, like you said, the great thing about FetLife is that most of the profile images are of real people doing what they do. I feel differently about people taking those images and re-posting them elsewhere. It just seems, unneighborly;)...
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