CCC Forum

About a year ago I signed up to a beta version of an image resolution website called Pixsy - http://www.pixsy.com - The idea is that you link your flickr, 500px etc accounts into Pixsy and it trawls the internet looking for possible matches of your photos that have been used elsewhere. You then flag these images with Pixsy and they attempt to get a fee from the website owners for its use or at the very least ask for its removal. If a fee is paid Pixsy take 50%.

When I first linked my Flickr I was amazed at how many matches came up, I think it was over 200! Alot of these would be people using blogs or just collections of images they liked, often directly linking to the flickr page. In this instance these are harmless and as there is no commercial gain you cannot chase for payment. However, I did find some of my older images of my travels when I was younger ( ) that were being used on travel websites around the world. I submitted these cases and waited....and waited. These things take time. Some countries were outside the jurisdiction of Pixsy and were very unlikely to gain a resolution from the companies concerned.

However, Im pleased to say that a recent case has been resolved and I have received payment (via Paypal). It was for an image of my travels in Jordan that was being used on a German travel company website. Whilst not enough to buy a new DSLR its a welcome sum and shows that their business model works.

I would encourage other members to join (its free) and see if their beloved images are being mis-used "out" there.

Thanks for the tip, Paul, and congratulations for getting compensation for the unauthorised use of your photo. Pixsy is a smart idea on someone's part by seeking to capitalise on the widespread theft of images on the Internet. I have just entered my e-mail on their site and got the following response:

"Thanks for signing up! Pixsy is currently invitation-only due to high demand, and we will invite you to create an account as soon as we can. We're sending out invitations in small batches every week."

This looks as though it is a popular service and I hope that the interest it is generating will ensure its success.

I've signed up too. I'll be interested to see how it works - for example, what's to stop them showing me the results and I chase offenders down myself? Or how are prices set?
Maybe that will be explained later

davidc wrote:I've signed up too. I'll be interested to see how it works - for example, what's to stop them showing me the results and I chase offenders down myself? Or how are prices set?
Maybe that will be explained later

I agree that the pricing model is unclear in the FAQs. The assumption I have made is that Pixsy takes a cut of anything it receives as commission, but is more likely to get offenders to pay up. They are less likely to ignore an organisation which has been set up to extract payments than an individual who does not necessarily have the same resources. One consideration is that Pixsy has to decide early on whether it is worthwhile going after a company* which has breached copyright, as there is no point in wasting time and resources where there is no realistic prospect of payment.

* Presumably most individuals, such as those which Paul mentions, are not worth the bother of pursuing.

I'm signing up too.

davidc wrote:I've signed up too. I'll be interested to see how it works - for example, what's to stop them showing me the results and I chase offenders down myself? Or how are prices set?
Maybe that will be explained later

Weird, the FAQs once logged on differ from those publicly available which do not make it clear how the pricing works. Payments received are divided equally between Pixsy and the photographer net of any costs incurred by the site, court fees for example. Apart from the 50% commission, there are no other charges. There are also three levels of service. The basic one, which is free, protects up to 5,0000 images. There are two monthly subscription options which include DMCA take downs and more advanced matching for 20,000 or 50,000 photos priced at $9.99 and $29.99 respectively.

My invitation came through within a day of applying and sign-up was straightforward once I had worked out fow to supply my flickr id. Most of my more recent work is posted on 365Project, but Pixsy was unable to locate any images there. There were no matches for anything held on flickr, but I was not that surprised. There are two main reasons, of course. Hopefully it is a reflection of my low profile presence on social media rather than my abilities as a photographer.

My invitation came through a day later too There were loads of matches, many weren't my photos at all, just very close lookalikes, most of the others were photos I'd linked to other websites. One does look suspiciously like it's being used on a commercial website though and I've opened a case for it. I will certainly continue to check back from time to time.

I have tons of matches to check through, although most are fakes/errors. So far it has missed genuine examples where I know sites are using my photos too. I'll give it more time before I raise a bug report though.

I have several thousand matches to go through

This is an interesting one...

http://digital-photography-school.com/u ... otography/

I certainly didn't consent for my image to be used and DPS make money off their guides. Maybe this is worthy of trying out the Pixsy service.