Google Redesigns Image Search, Raises Copyright and Hosting Concerns

An anonymous reader writes "Google has recently announced changes to its image search. The search provides larger views of the images with direct links to the full-sized source image. Although this new layout is being praised by users for its intuitiveness, it has raised concerns amongst image copyright holders and webmasters. Large images can now easily be seen and downloaded directly from the Google image search results without sending visitors to the hosting website. Webmasters have expressed concerns about a decrease in traffic and an increase in bandwidth usage since this change was rolled out. Some have set up a petition requesting Google remove the direct links to the images."

Re:does not compute

[rudy_wayne]

If you even read the summary, let alone TFA you'll see:

"The search provides larger views of the images with direct links to the full-sized source image."

Yes, I did read TFA. And nowhere does it explain how you can have decreased traffic but increased bandwidth usage. Because it's not possible. Decreased traffic = decreased bandwidth usage.

Here's the real problem (quote from TFA):

When people get the full resolution image, they have no reason to click to go to the URL.

Dear "Webmaster", nobody cares about your shitty website packed full of annoying ads. Get over it already.

Referer Header!

[TheNinjaroach]

If webmasters don't want people "stealing" photos without viewing directly on their website, they are more than welcome to instruct their web servers to not display images to freeloaders. Look at the referer header, if the request didn't originate from your site, then don't serve it.

Re:does not compute

[Dancindan84]

You used to get traffic actually visiting your site. That meant full page loads, but a lot of that is text which is low bandwidth. You now have less traffic (unique IPs hitting your site), but they're JUST downloading hi-res images which leads to a net increase in bandwidth.

Also, ads don't have to be shitty and annoying. Slashdot uses ads, and even though I can I don't turn them off because they're relatively passive. Hosting and bandwidth cost money, and a lot of sites rely on small ad revenue to help offset those costs.

Re:robots.txt

[fyngyrz]

Google does NOT behave itself. It ignores crawl speed, among other things.

Google does whatever the heck it wants. It's Google.

if someone started a site called 'oogle'

[decora]

and all it did was send requests to google and re-display them without ads or with different ads, then google would be the one complaining.

Re:I'm Sofa King We Tod Did

[msheekhah]

Google is acting on feedback from ITS customers. You are not its customers. If you want to protect your context, then do a little research and take care of it. It's not difficult. The information is freely available on the internet how to block hotlinking. And think of the logistics, google will never ask site owners what they want. There are too many of you and not enough of them. That's why you have the option to keep Google off your site. Use it.

Re:Copyrighted contents ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Retard.. things are copywritten automatically when they are published. What you just suggested is - never publish anything online.

Your post is covered by copyright
Linux - copyright
slashdot's html - copyright

Do you know what copyright is?

Why is slashdot filled with retards these days.

Re:does not compute

[Stiletto]

What's "Bing"?

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd go further than this, honestly, I'm sick of people whining about this sort of thing.

The internet was created for one purpose - information sharing, if you don't want your information shared then get it off the web, otherwise don't cry when it is shared.

Yes that may mean there's a cost to you, in terms of hosting, but that's part of what the web spirit always was - that people share information for free at their time and expense, or as part of their employment (i.e. academics sharing data).

I'm sick of these people who believe they have a god given right to make money from the web and deserve legal protection as such. I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to make money, but making money should be upto you to figure out without expecting the whole of the purpose and intent of the web and it's design to revolve around what you want.

Booohooo, people can link to content on your site. Get over it, that's how it was designed, that's how it was meant to be, don't like it? Then stick your content behind some passworded paywall or whatever, if it's on the public web it should be fair game, that's the whole point of it. It's the same as the newspapers whinging about Google quoting and linking their content - again, Google is doing nothing wrong, it's using the web EXACTLY as it was intended, if they don't like it they should get off the web and see how that suits them.

Re:If this kind of image mining is a problem

[fyngyrz]

Not a problem. No header, no pages, and off you go to somewhere else. You don't trust me -- then I don't trust you.