Copyright issues and use of User Generated Content
Came across this article that day while doing some research on fashion affiliates. It seems that Popsugar (who owns the Shopstyle affiliate programme) allegedly misused fashion blogger's photos and replaced their affiliate links with rstyle and changed them to Shopstyle links as part of an 'experiment'.
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.for...
While I totally condone the misuse of photos & changing of links in this case, the lines I feel are kind of blurred with User Generated Content, where other followers post photos of themselves wearing certain brands, especially on social media like Instagram. It is common practise that brands do use these UGC to share on their pages, while crediting the original photographer/creator. I have done this often with the companies that I worked for.
I guess where does the line get drawn, as the content is made public and social media is all about sharing ? Often times the published of the photo wants their image to be shared to gain more following as well. As a social media manager, we also curate tonnes of images from different sources to be included in our IG feed. There are also tonnes of IG profiles that solely consist of reposting other people's photos as inspiration, and yes some of them are monetizing off that, either by selling packages to feature bloggers or having an ecommerce store. Keep in mind fashion magazines also do this for some of their posts, all with images being credited to their original owner.
Meanwhile, there are websites like: http://www.theclosetheroes.com/shop/ that seem to be doing just that, and doing a very good job at creating a following with no original images of their own, althought they credit the images. They are using Rstyle affiliate links on their blog & webstore, and Rstyle is one of the top affiliate programmes for fashion blogs and quite hard to get into. So.. how appropriate is this? Would appreciate some thoughts.
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Hi Sherise, that is so interesting, I can see that social media has definitely changed the landscape.
It is interesting to look at the images in the closet hero, they are doing a good job for sure promoting product and collecting commissions
If you use, https://tineye.com
It is interesting to see the image as used across line, I guess it does raise questions as to the ownership of the content it is almost that the market has to develop a certain level of maturity, with the social sharing it is almost impossible to keep control over assets.
I am not a fashion guy but what a headache for the folks that are building influence only to have the rug swept from underneath them, it could be a case of adapting to survive or to hold a position in the market at the very least.
Thank you for sharing
Ooh.. thanks for the link to reverse search images, might come in handy. Thank you!
You are most welcome, Sherise it can come in very handy, it is surprising who is up to what and what is not what it seems.