Proko Usage Rights of Photos Uploaded by Users
4yr
TeResA Bolen
I'm sorry if I'm asking too many questions or posting too much. This space to explore is like having a brand new toy as a child where you just can't put it down or stop thinking about it!
How does the Proko usage rights of photos uploaded by users work? I felt the natural inclination to decorate my little profile space here, you've done an excellent job in priming. I don't remember seeing the legal lingo, though. Is it like FB, where basically you've given them permission to use your photos as they see fit? Or like on Insta (IG?) where they strip all the metadata from everything you upload (I've read - don't actually know)?
There was something Marshall said in a podcast I heard recently (listening to S2 as they come out, S1 in between), something about make sure to have your name embedded in the pixels. What does that mean? Sign it before you photograph it? Or add it in digitally for digital works as a sig? There was also what sounded like commiserating about artists using a watermark, but without additional information I couldn't follow this train of thought. Is adding a watermark bad? Please elaborate.
Thank you so much!
4yr
The full Terms of Use is at the bottom of the website, but here's a relevant clip from Section 7 User Contributions:
"You own the intellectual property rights in any User Contribution, including all copyrights, trademarks, patents, moral rights, and other rights protected under intellectual property laws. Nothing in these Terms of Use takes away the rights you have to your User Contributions. But, in order to provide the Services available on the Website and the Applications, any User Contribution you post to the site will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. By providing any User Contribution on the Website or through the Applications, you grant us and our affiliates and service providers, and each of their and our respective licensees, successors and assigns a limited license to use, reproduce, modify, perform, display, distribute and otherwise disclose to third parties any such material for the purpose of providing the Website and the Applications and the Services available on them, including to promote our artists’ artwork and our products and services. You also grant us the right to identify you by name and use your name, likeness, or appearance as attribution in such promotions."
Basically you own your artwork and give us limited permission to use your image to perform the services on this website.
TeResA Bolen
4yr
Thank you, Stan. I wish I had thought to look there before asking 🤦♀️ - the "bottom of the website" is pretty far down on some pages
Hi Teresa :)
I can't speak for Proko or his team nor I have any idea how user's pictures are protected on this site.
About the podcast however, I think I can give you some advice. From what I've heard from other artists, the idea is to always sign your picture so people can find you easily once the picture is released online. Thing is, signatures can be easily cropped out by ill-intentioned people.
Easiest way to deal with that is to add a watermark, but it often makes your art much less appealing... The ideal solution is to find a smart way to blend your signature into your work (so it cannot be removed without some tedious photomanips) so people can still identify the artist AND to keep it discreet at the same time.
I don't have any picture to illustrate unfortunately
4yr
@Anne-Lise Loubière , thank you!!! That is a fantastic explanation. I do put my sigs blended into the art, but I hate gigantic, detracting sigs (which are super popular where I live), so I put them in small, and as unobtrusively as I can. As a result, they aren't always visible in photographs.
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