This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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What's up, what's up? Side hustle school listeners, friends, community. So glad you're out there. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I had the privilege of bringing you these daily stories, questions and answers, topics, discussions, tips, ideas, all with the goal of supporting people out there who are trying to create something for themselves, trying to build a little bit of security for themselves in an uncertain world, building security in an uncertain time, achieving more self-reliance so you are less dependent on any outside company.
That's what it's all about. Now, today's caller is a photographer who is concerned about people reposting their images without permission. What is the best response in these situations? I hear a lot of variations of this question, whether it's sometimes about my own work, like people asking me, am I concerned about piracy? Am I worried about getting ripped off or from people who are just starting out and want to protect their hard-earned intellectual property?
We'll talk about that in this episode. Also, I wanted to mention that we have a reader's guide available for the Money Tree. If you have read my book, "The Money Tree," there are some different reading groups around the country, around the world that are, well, I guess they are reading the book together. We now have a reader's guide with lots of discussion questions. It is, of course, completely free.
You are welcome to steal it and post it online. You can get that at moneytreebook.com. At the top, there's a link that says "Resources," and you will find the link to that reader's guide there. All right, people keep stealing my photos and reposting them without credit. That's what we're gonna talk about.
Let's jump right in after this message from our sponsor. Hi, this is Greg from Sydney, and I recently discovered this show and really enjoying the helpful content and parts. I wanted to ask you about a problem I'm having with people who keep stealing my images and reposting them without credit. I'm a photographer and put in a lot of work on the images I share online. People like them, but it seems like they like them too much because they keep posting them without giving me any credit.
How can I get sites like Instagram to take them down? And is there anything I can do to reduce the photo thieves in the first place? Or should I just not worry about it? Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks, Chris.
Hey, Greg, thank you so much for listening in Sydney, my favorite city in the world. I miss you guys. I hope you're all doing okay over there. I hope they'll get a chance to visit, well, I don't know, at some point soon, at some point when it's safe. Okay, so let's talk about this.
So in the long run, I'll give you some specific tips on how to actually track this down. But I also wanna say that in the long run, it's a tough battle when people are reposting your stuff online without permission. And in some ways, at least, just in terms of the bigger picture, as I said, worrying about it will kind of be futile, basically. And I often go back to think about something that I believe I first heard this from Seth Godin. It seems like a very Seth Godin-like thing he would say.
Wherever I heard it, it's really stuck with me. He said, "Your greatest problem as an author is not piracy. "It's obscurity." And I was like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Like, my greatest problem is not that people are going to, that my work is gonna be so popular that people wanna steal it. The greatest challenge is that nobody's gonna care.
So I try to worry about things that are within my control also. But that said, I know especially for photographers and artists, this can be really annoying if you are doing some really great work, you're putting a lot of time in it, and people are just kind of reposting it without credit, either claiming it as their own or just not passing the credit along to you. So there are a few things you can do in this situation. For your popular images, you might want to do a reverse image search, which you can do using Google or other search engines, just to kind of see like, are there any instances of this out there? You can set alerts using a platform such as pixie.com, and they will do those reverse image searches and other searches on a regular basis, and actually monitor the whole thing for you.
You might want to consider watermarking or otherwise identifying your work in the image itself. Some people do that, and that way if it's reposted, then there is a credit one way or another. It's not possible to post the work without the credit unless somebody really gets complicated and starts photoshopping, but that's a different thing. Speaking of Instagram, something I've seen people do who frequently have a lot of popular images that are shared, they often have a note right on their profile page that explains, hey, if you want to repost my images, here's how you do it, basically, like here's the right way and the wrong way to do it. I think that helps, at least with the cases that are somewhat accidental or somebody just doesn't quite know what's best.
But if you do find it, you might want to send a polite note to the person, hey, can you take this down? Or at least give me credit, whatever you'd prefer. And then if that doesn't go well, then you should report them to Instagram or wherever you find your stolen images. There's usually a process where you can go and include a link and say like, here's the original and here's where this has been reproduced without my permission. And those platforms will usually remove them.
So there are things you can do. Just remember, in the long term, it's more important to focus on doing the work that you enjoy, not just chasing down people who are improperly reposting it. I'm not saying at all that it's okay, but that's happening. I'm just saying like, just for your own happiness, your own wellbeing, and for your creative energy, it's more important to focus on that important work that you enjoy. So Greg, thank you again for the great question.
I know a lot of people are wondering variations of that. So it's very helpful to hear that. And listeners, if you have a question, come to www.sidehustleschool.com/questions. We will be featuring them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects. Thank you again.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from the Onward Project.
