Jump to content

How not to caption.....


Recommended Posts

Just bought a new thermocouple for the gas boiler so needed to photograph it before I fit it, as you do.  Checked on Alamy to see how many results for 'thermocouple' it throws up and came across this...

 

https://tinyurl.com/2c9aaj4n

 

Click on the contributor link 'Reading Room 2020' - the mind boggles.   I assume there must be some sort of automation involved to create this mess.

  • Love 1
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting find. I got curious and digged a bit and found that a sample 2CT21H0 is available from https://archive.org/details/staatenzedekundi00hoog/page/239/mode/1up?view=theater

 

Based on the Caption and "More Information" field, it appears this should be some automation from or similar source here https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14745498562/ . On this page it also says "No known copyright restrictions

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are quite a few of  these 'contributors' who simply scrape content from multiple public domain websites without any intervention. 

 

I've come across others with more than a million images. 

 

One problem is that there is enormous duplication of some images, and another problem is that some of the content is just total rubbish. 

 

But Alamy knows what is going on so why should we worry?

  • Love 1
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, wiskerke said:

If it didn't pay off, he/she/they wouldn't put that much effort into it.

 

wim

 

 

Why would someone pay for this here whilst available for free elsewhere 🤔

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a bunch of OOC scans from an old book, but I manually captioned them all. No zooms yet, but one PU sale.
Surely the ones reffered to above will cause problems in the ALAMY search alogrithms, and be a waste of server storage space?

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On a slightly different issue of questionable captioning I have seen Alamy live news photos by two different photographers re the Sarah Everard case which both assert that she was murdered by the police officer who has been arrested. He has yet to be tried and convicted. Should the court find him not guilty surely both photographers and Alamy could be sued. Or am I missing something? 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, zxzoomy said:

On a slightly different issue of questionable captioning I have seen Alamy live news photos by two different photographers re the Sarah Everard case which both assert that she was murdered by the police officer who has been arrested. He has yet to be tried and convicted. Should the court find him not guilty surely both photographers and Alamy could be sued. Or am I missing something? 

 

+1

Very serious issue. LiveNews should have been on top of this and alerted the togs concerned immediately - who themselves should be much more alert to their responsibilities. 

  • Love 1
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have some public domain images and they sell well. I enjoy working with old images and making them available for publication. But I'd like to think that I add value to them by doing some research, writing good captions etc. Some I had to translate into English, do a little Photoshop work etc. Some are quite easy to find, others less so. They are all clearly identified as being in the public domain so the buyer has a choice. Quite often they will pay a fee, can be reasonably high, for the convenience of buying at Alamy. Alamy keeps 60%.

 

But that is totally different to the sort of thing raised by the OP which is literally automated scraping of content - sometimes they must use software to upres to the 5mb minimum and the results look terrible. 

Edited by geogphotos
  • Love 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, zxzoomy said:

On a slightly different issue of questionable captioning I have seen Alamy live news photos by two different photographers re the Sarah Everard case which both assert that she was murdered by the police officer who has been arrested. He has yet to be tried and convicted. Should the court find him not guilty surely both photographers and Alamy could be sued. Or am I missing something? 

 

 

not even sure you need a non-guilty verdict, as of this time the person is just presumed. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And there are examples of trials collapsing after prejudicial reporting. From BBC: "In 1991, two sisters, Lisa and Michelle Taylor, were convicted of stabbing to death Alison Shaughnessy in 1991 - but they were cleared on appeal in 1993 because of prejudicial reporting during their trial. The Sun had published an article featuring a photograph of Michelle Taylor in the background at Ms Shaughnessy's wedding with the headline: The "Killer" Mistress Who Was At Lover's Wedding. There was an arrow from the word "killer" pointing at Michelle's face.

A photograph showing Michelle Taylor kissing her former lover, John Shaughnessy, at his wedding had also been doctored. A judge ruled that the coverage had been "sensational, inaccurate and misleading".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, zxzoomy said:

On a slightly different issue of questionable captioning I have seen Alamy live news photos by two different photographers re the Sarah Everard case which both assert that she was murdered by the police officer who has been arrested. He has yet to be tried and convicted. Should the court find him not guilty surely both photographers and Alamy could be sued. Or am I missing something? 

The ones where he is named say merely that he has been charged. But I agree there is some rather partial captioning. I suspect Alamy may not have been able to deal with the volume, there are a lot of spray-and-pray submissions.

On the wider point, there is a world of difference between an inaccurate caption and biased reporting.

Edited by spacecadet
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, spacecadet said:

I don't see one in which he is named.

No I haven't seen the name of the officer used. But surely one can't caption today with 'murdered by a serving police officer' when there is only one police officer arrested and his name is all over the media? Re a 2001 assault case which collapsed the Sunday Mirror was fined £175,000 for what the judge saw as prejudicial reporting. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, zxzoomy said:

No I haven't seen the name of the officer used. But surely one can't caption today with 'murdered by a serving police officer' when there is only one police officer arrested and his name is all over the media? Re a 2001 assault case which collapsed the Sunday Mirror was fined £175,000 for what the judge saw as prejudicial reporting. 

 

 

you would assume Alamy's lawyers would be comfortable that they are just a depository..  i've seen enough wrong and misleading captions that they must feel protected.  But i am always curious what happens if a buyer is mislead by these captions.  don't forget this could be licensed down the road by someone from a foreigner not as aware of all the local laws.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, David Pimborough said:

 

To quote Alamy "This image is a public domain image, which means either that copyright has expired in the image or the copyright holder has waived their copyright. Alamy charges you a fee for access to the high resolution copy of the image. " 😃

 

Few of the microstocks allow public domain images so Alamy has a niche I guess

 

Saw one public domain image from Alamy in the NY Review of Books last night, along with two from Getty, which also appears to do archiving of public domain images that would otherwise require a trip to various international museums.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, zxzoomy said:

No I haven't seen the name of the officer used. But surely one can't caption today with 'murdered by a serving police officer' when there is only one police officer arrested and his name is all over the media? Re a 2001 assault case which collapsed the Sunday Mirror was fined £175,000 for what the judge saw as prejudicial reporting. 

I don't think an inaccurate caption is going to end up in a report.

The Mirror was fined £75000 for contempt- reporting is protected and I'm sure a caption would be as well.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

I don't think an inaccurate caption is going to end up in a report.

The Mirror was fined £75000 for contempt- reporting is protected and I'm sure a caption would be as well.

I think such captions are defamatory until an admission of guilt or a guilty verdict, not just inaccurate. And we don't do them because we want to protect ourselves, protect the agency, and avoid any risk of collapsing a trial. From BBC: "In 1991, two sisters, Lisa and Michelle Taylor, were convicted of stabbing to death Alison Shaughnessy in 1991 - but they were cleared on appeal in 1993 because of prejudicial reporting during their trial. The Sun had published an article featuring a photograph of Michelle Taylor in the background at Ms Shaughnessy's wedding with the headline: The "Killer" Mistress Who Was At Lover's Wedding. There was an arrow from the word "killer" pointing at Michelle's face."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, zxzoomy said:

I think such captions are defamatory until an admission of guilt or a guilty verdict, not just inaccurate. And we don't do them because we want to protect ourselves, protect the agency, and avoid any risk of collapsing a trial. From BBC: "In 1991, two sisters, Lisa and Michelle Taylor, were convicted of stabbing to death Alison Shaughnessy in 1991 - but they were cleared on appeal in 1993 because of prejudicial reporting during their trial. The Sun had published an article featuring a photograph of Michelle Taylor in the background at Ms Shaughnessy's wedding with the headline: The "Killer" Mistress Who Was At Lover's Wedding. There was an arrow from the word "killer" pointing at Michelle's face."

 

 

is the defamatory nature based on time of Image? Caption? or punctual?  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

is the defamatory nature based on time of Image? Caption? or punctual?  

The two captions on Live News now which I suggest are defamatory include: "Everard, the British woman murdered by a serving UK police officer" and "Everard 
was walking to her home in Brixton when she was kidnaped and murdered by a London Metropolitan Police officer". 

Though no name is mentioned there is only one police officer charged and his name is all over the media. One might have captioned: "XXX was charged with Sarah Everard's kidnapping and murder on 12th March. He appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 13th March and was remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey on 16th March." I appreciate doing captions for live news may not be easy: maybe in the street, in a hurry, hassled. But we are in the news business and this is day one of the reporters' course that we don't say people are guilty before the trial. If any media outlet reprints such a caption it could collapse the trial. 

Edited by zxzoomy
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, zxzoomy said:

The two captions on Live News now which I suggest are defamatory include: "Everard, the British woman murdered by a serving UK police officer" and "Everard 
was walking to her home in Brixton when she was kidnaped and murdered by a London Metropolitan Police officer". 

Though no name is mentioned there is only one police officer charged and his name is all over the media. One might have captioned: "XXX was charged with Sarah Everard's kidnapping and murder on 12th March. He appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 13th March and was remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey on 16th March." I appreciate doing captions for live news may not be easy: maybe in the street, in a hurry, hassled. But we are in the news business and this is day one of the reporters' course that we don't say people are guilty before the trial. If any media outlet reprints such a caption it could collapse the trial. 

 

sorry, but my question relate of the temporality of the defamation ruling.  Are they defamatory because inexact the day of the photo taken, the day of upload or the day of you reading it? Do caption have to be changed. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

sorry, but my question relate of the temporality of the defamation ruling.  Are they defamatory because inexact the day of the photo taken, the day of upload or the day of you reading it? Do caption have to be changed. 

In the uk we can't say in the media that someone is guilty of an offence until a court has convicted them. It is defamation. Defamation is the publication to a third party of a statement about someone which has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to their reputation. If we do make such a statement they can sue us. We have to caption the facts as they are on the day of upload. There have been cases when the media did say someone was guilty of an offence before the court has convicted them. Then sometimes the judge has ruled that those media reports have made the guilty verdict unsafe and defendants have gone free. I gave an example of that earlier in the thread. When a court has convicted someone we can say that. Personally I don't go back to old 'news' captions to update them as the facts change. But the captions have to be true on the day of upload. Today nobody has been convicted in court of the murder of Sarah Everard. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, zxzoomy said:

In the uk we can't say in the media that someone is guilty of an offence until a court has convicted them.

 

More or less the same in the US, though I'm not sure whether all jurisdictions make that a matter of law.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, zxzoomy said:

In the uk we can't say in the media that someone is guilty of an offence until a court has convicted them. It is defamation. Defamation is the publication to a third party of a statement about someone which has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to their reputation. If we do make such a statement they can sue us. We have to caption the facts as they are on the day of upload. There have been cases when the media did say someone was guilty of an offence before the court has convicted them. Then sometimes the judge has ruled that those media reports have made the guilty verdict unsafe and defendants have gone free. I gave an example of that earlier in the thread. When a court has convicted someone we can say that. Personally I don't go back to old 'news' captions to update them as the facts change. But the captions have to be true on the day of upload. Today nobody has been convicted in court of the murder of Sarah Everard. 

 

 

Still doesn't addressed the timing.  If he is found guilty tomorrow, can you publish an image dated three weeks ago stating guilty?  If judgement overturned in a year, do you have to change your caption? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

Still doesn't addressed the timing.  If he is found guilty tomorrow, can you publish an image dated three weeks ago stating guilty?  If judgement overturned in a year, do you have to change your caption? 

 

Basically, if convicted, he was convicted until the conviction was overturned.  The press should be as quick to publish the latter as the former.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.