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We recovered an actual stolen camera this way. But it really only worked because the buyer used Flickr, and otherwise this kind of metadata is pretty hidden.

by herf 13y ago

mattburns 13y ago
Excellent! If we haven't already spoken, I'd love to hear your story. matt@stolencamerafinder.com
tombrossman 13y ago
I post photos online and take the time to put my contact info in the EXIF metadata, and sometimes hear back from people who like the images. This is great and I release many of the photos with a public domain 'CC0' license so copyright isn't a big concern, plus I get to see some of my images used on Wikipedia. What troubles me is how many services (looking at you, Facebook & Twitter) automatically strip _all_ EXIF data from images, thus preventing others from being able to email me. What's worse is the UK's new 'orphaned works' law [1] which basically lets others re-use your images for free and without attribution if they can't find the original photographer. Effectively this means that Facebook, Twitter, and others are making it easier to steal copyrighted images by providing lots of plausible deniability. I understand about stripping the GPS coordinates from images taken with a smartphone for example, but do not see why all data must be stripped by default. In your case and mine, EXIF metadata is desirable and stripping everything seems like a really crude tool. Hopefully a better standard approach will come about as people get more switched on to metadata (thanks Snowden) and how it can help or hurt users. [1]https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/orphan-works-the-new-law-in-the-uk https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/orphan-works-the-n...
- parksy 13y ago
  I still think EXIF should be stripped by default on social sharing sites but there should definitely be an opt-in feature for informed users to invoke rationally.

We recovered an actual stolen camera this way. But it really only worked because the buyer used Flickr, and otherwise this kind of metadata is pretty hidden.

by herf 13y ago

We recovered an actual stolen camera this way. But it really only worked because the buyer used Flickr, and otherwise this kind of metadata is pretty hidden.

mattburns 13y ago

Excellent! If we haven't already spoken, I'd love to hear your story. matt@stolencamerafinder.com

tombrossman 13y ago

I post photos online and take the time to put my contact info in the EXIF metadata, and sometimes hear back from people who like the images. This is great and I release many of the photos with a public domain 'CC0' license so copyright isn't a big concern, plus I get to see some of my images used on Wikipedia. What troubles me is how many services (looking at you, Facebook & Twitter) automatically strip _all_ EXIF data from images, thus preventing others from being able to email me. What's worse is the UK's new 'orphaned works' law [1] which basically lets others re-use your images for free and without attribution if they can't find the original photographer. Effectively this means that Facebook, Twitter, and others are making it easier to steal copyrighted images by providing lots of plausible deniability. I understand about stripping the GPS coordinates from images taken with a smartphone for example, but do not see why all data must be stripped by default. In your case and mine, EXIF metadata is desirable and stripping everything seems like a really crude tool. Hopefully a better standard approach will come about as people get more switched on to metadata (thanks Snowden) and how it can help or hurt users. [1]https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/orphan-works-the-new-law-in-the-uk https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/orphan-works-the-n...

parksy 13y ago
I still think EXIF should be stripped by default on social sharing sites but there should definitely be an opt-in feature for informed users to invoke rationally.