It is just before dawn, the birds are just beginning to wake up. The overnight chill has yet to dissipate. I find comfort in some morning coffee as I retrace the tracks I followed. I remember when they used to be easy to find. A year has passed before I started on this expedition. It is getting much harder now.
I often wonder if I am growing weary of the chase, wary of the need for vigilance, persistence, and adaptation. Sometimes I think I have finally reached the end, only to find a dozen more trails branching off from that point. I think I have learned the tell-tale signs, only to find tracks mutating into more variations. I wonder, has this animal finally become my white whale? Am I chasing something that is uncatchable?
I know many have already reached this conclusion, and avoid the pursuit altogether. I can’t blame them. It isn’t very comfortable out here, the hours are long and few rewards come of it. In the beginning, I felt driven by a sense of entitlement. Unlike Captain Ahab, I was chasing what was already mine. It escaped.
I suppose escape is unavoidable, it comes with the territory. Sometimes intentionally set free with hopes others follow the tracks back to their origin. Instead, others now manipulate those tracks for their own self-interest. The more tracks I found, the more motivated I was to follow each one to see where it led.
I systematically developed a process. At first, it was a bit emotional, but as repetition set in, it simply became a matter of mundane repetition. Now a year later, the thrill of the chase is now tedious. The emotion drained to mere annoyance. When I finally think I have fully covered one complete territory, I find a set of tracks leading into a brand new one, with a new landscape, new obstacles, new challenges. I am just not sure how far I am willing to sail for this singular pursuit.
For the game is the holding territory itself, a true playground for anyone who wishes to play loose with the law of the land. The wealthy landowners do the minimum as required by law to assist the removal of misleading tracks. They are ultimately not responsible for such entanglements, only required to erase them if notified. The hunt is up to you.
This “hunt” is a reflection of a year-long pursuit of copyright infringements on Facebook of a single image of mine. A year ago, I started this post and started a tracking expedition. A year later, I calculated the advertising value of more than $456,000 in its unauthorized use. I had little idea it would last so long, or the result it would have upon my feelings about a photograph I created and the ultimate resentment of it. Maybe it’s time to just let my whale swim away.
At the risk of sounding callous, may I start off by saying that your post is beautifully worded. Very visual and engaging. Much like the accompanying photo I will add.
I do not use Facebook so know very little about the services they offer or the support they provide but I do feel sorry for your plight. I have had an experience which, while not similar in context, resulted in a similar outcome of having IP taken away (in my case, by a large company with which me and two friends had partnered) with no compensation given despite the venture eventually turning into a multi million-dollar enterprise, which—had the original agreement been respected—would have provided me with a significant passive income for the rest of my life. Instead after two years of hard work, I was left with nought to show for it. Alas, such is life. I was once told by a stock and currency trader while discussing insider trading, that if the gains are high and the risk of being caught are low, then there will always be someone to take up that opportunity. He saw that as a basic human trait. I believe that in the digital world, this may have become even more so. I only need to look at my son who, within a few hours of publishing a novel on Amazon, will see it become available on several pirate sites for free.
As I said, I do not know much about Facebook and the last thing I want to do is defend them but considering they have over 1B users (?) I can only imagine the number of cases such as yours that they would be looking at. What is more, I would strongly suspect that there would be many cases where people are crying theft of IP not because it’s true (as in your case) but because they want to make life difficult for someone else. Again, not wanting to defend FB, I would be surprised if they were not doing what they can to stop this sort of thing. After all, their business model depends on people trusting them enough to keep providing content so that people continue using it. Of course, I may just be a naive and clueless old man so, you know… 🙂
In any case, I am sorry that you have had to go through something like this and with something that I know is very close to your heart, in fact, something which I know was created with your heart. If you can let it go then good for you, and if you can’t then I wish you the strength to keep after it. Good luck Mark.
For certain, I do not know the full extent to which FB proactively tries to combat such things. To their credit, they at least made it easy to file a complaint and are quick to respond to them. I known here in the US they are protected by “safe harbor” laws that protects them from acts conducted by their users on their network.
In reality, it is quite a difficult thing to police. But I think they could push reminders more often to those pages that thrive on distributing IP. I believe this mass sharing of photos has essentially driven down the market for anyone actually wanting to own physical prints.
Thanks for sharing your own story with IP. I can only imagine the roller coaster of feelings in a situation like that. My little obsession seems quite trivial in comparison.
I would be surprised if any of FB’s business model takes this type of thing into consideration from a trust aspect. Quite frankly, a lot of people have the attitude that the “sharing” is some method of appreciation (even without attribution?!) and don’t really see the abuse taking place. I likely won’t put as much effort into this “hunt” as I have been. It is just too draining on the spirit
FB seems to violate so many norms. Nd we let it happen because of terms of service. They make money off our backs.
We are the product after all.
True
I find it reprehensible Facebook and others would have such “no responsibility” attitudes and policies when it comes to what is hosted upon their systems, especially, when it is often the case they are receiving revenue from those involved in these illegal and/or unscrupulous activities.
MY hats off to you, Mark, for pursuing this as long as you have. I wouldn’t have the same stamina. I can understand how it has tainted your feeling of the photo. It makes me sad and angry all at the same time.
In actuality, it is revenue/fee avoidance, by these pages on FB that use viral content (no matter the source) to gain reach versus paying FB to boost their posts. It is unlikely they would pay FB to boost posts, but if they did, that is the advertising value I came up with based on what FB frequently quoted to me to reach larger audiences.
You would think FB would do more to prevent this revenue loss, but it is likely the resource cost of enforcement outweighs the potential revenue. So, those that can get away with theft do, until the very unlikely instance they are caught. Just a bad situation all around.