Call to Action: help me to fight the evil – STOP PLAGIARISM ON STEEMIT!
Hi everyone,
Honestly, I hate to write posts like this one but the incidents that recently occurred in my photo contests simply made me take an action.
Despite all the warnings pinned to my contest posts, there has been a significant increase in plagiarism in both photo competitions I run here on Steemit. In fact, there were at least 3 users who submitted stolen images in my contests in the past few days.
These users are @bibkchhetri, @leoumesh and @justdothat.
@bibkchhetri used this stolen image in my Sunday Asian Photo Challenge.
@leoumesh submitted this image stolen from Shutterstock (https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-himalayas-summer-view-travel-nepal-703214101?irgwc=1&utm_medium=Affiliate&utm_campaign=TinEye&utm_source=77643&utm_term) in my Sunday Asian Photo Challenge.
@justdothat submitted several stolen images of Prague including this one as his own in the Prague Photo Challenge. 
I investigated these users ´blogs and found more stolen images in some of their posts such as these:
@bibkchhetri - https://steemit.com/photography/@bibkchhetri/typical-nepali-house-in-ghandruk-might-himalayas-at-the-back
@leoumesh - https://steemit.com/photography/@leoumesh/heaven-is-a-myth-nepal-is-real
@justdothat - https://steemit.com/photography/@justdothat/trip-czech-republic
I think plagiarism is one of the worst offences here on Steemit so I am going to downvote all of the above mentioned posts.
I would also like to ask you, my fellow Steemians, to be more vigilant before upvoting any images that might look suspicious. This goes especially for my regular users who support my challenges on daily basis. I am happy to see great working relationships being built through my blog with many amazing photographers supporting each other. However, if you see a new user submitting suspiciously great photos, feel free to check them out.You can use google image search or tineye.com to verify the authorship of their entries but a simple check of their blogs might reveal a lot about them too.
I am really glad to have so many talented photographers competing fair-play in my photo contests but with the numbers of entries growing consistently, plagiarists might be hiding among them, being unnoticed for an extended period of time. If you find them, don’t hesitate to inform me.
From now on, I am going to make this type of post when necessary. I think it is important to highlight not only the ones that deserve recognition for their great work but also those who need to be pointed out for a behavior that is not acceptable and gives a bad reputation to the whole platform.
It would be great if this post got little more visibility so your upvotes and re-steems would be highly appreciated.
Thank you so much for your cooperation.
Please feel free to check out some of my other recent posts.
ColorChallenge - Orange Tuesday - @intrepidphotos in 7 World's Continents Photo Challenge!
Price of 20 SBD/100 USD: 7 World's Continents photo challenge WEEKLY WINNER announcement #20!
Tomas
CEO & Founder of CGH
I am sorry to announce another user that I caught today. What is even worse it is somebody that was participating in my challenges for a while now, getting some good rewards from me. That user is @finance2nomad. It seems like from the beginning he was using his own images but started stealing from the internet recently to gain the rewards. I only found out by checking the below image that let me to a web page of one excellent photographer with whom I am having a conversation over the messenger right now confirming he is not on Steemit. Feel free to check his website: http://steinvangrunsvenphotography.nl/ I hope that he will actually join us. That is the real author of the image below.
Guys I really need your help to fight this so we can all work in peace. I am upvoting this comment so it stays on the top of this thread. Tomas
PS: I am flagging his post right now!!!
Is there a way to identify who the author of the photo is? Because even when we do Google Image Search and Tineye search, most of the times it shows multiple images from different sources.
I think it's an uphill task to find the original owner. Is there a method to find out the real author or photographer?
Willing to help.
Not always. Sometime it requires digging in to find the original author. However, to identify the stolen image is not that difficult. Checking the blog of the person say a lot in the first place. Then google search giving plenty links to the image already rings the bell. Then I do question the person that submitted the image if that is original photo. If it is original then they easily prove it. If not, they either admit or start making excuses which have no solid background. If we all participate we can minimize this kind of behavior. Thank you so much for your help. Tomas
I knew i recognized the name he just won a different contest about 20 minutes ago.
You may want to chat with contest organizer @jamtaylor
Hope you have really verified this offense because i would hate to see someone punished on accident. But assuming you have... and thats to bad because appears he has been playing lots of contests. I wonder if he has done any of our #photogames. In any case only one game you can plagarize so far.
Sometime the verification might take a little time but there is no doubt about this one! Definitely a stolen image without any shame. We all need to be more vigilent and pay more attention. Have a good one. Tomas
This user has placed Third in my contest as well, and I have left notes in several places asking them to address these allegations before I release any winnings.
I see you have the same problem! I guess this type of people will do the same in many different challenges so if we all become little more vigilant then we can at least minimize this. I am going to do those posts little more frequently or even highlight this kind of users at the top of my comment section which should work too. Have a good one and wish you the best of luck! Tomas
I hope you're able to get to the bottom of this one, Tomas, I see this user has been entering (and winning) a few contests.
I couldn't be more supportive of the drive to reduce plagiarism, but as someone who was accused of plagiarism by a well-intentioned user shortly after joining Steem, and flagged before having a chance to prove myself, I just want to urge anyone who suspects plagiarism to do what Tomas is doing here and practice due diligence to confirm, from outside sources if necessary, the truth of the matter before flagging a user, because it is and should be a devastating allegation.
Hello, Bro. I think we can easily stop the plagiarists who steal the work of others and include it in the race. We should be able to suggest accounts that they as spam account to no longer occur the same thing. I myself regret that not too many are aware of how to make a masterpiece until finally released to the community is the achievement that behind it could be we risked our lives. Therefore it is necessary to have a special team in steemit consisting of every country playing in it to create a kind of security council whose work of course curates the content even further, in this case the content of the photo on the race. Thank you for reading this comment.
Thank you for submitting this. As a photographer publishing on the internet, I have been victim of plagiarism for ages.
I will help
What if he shares the image he took , but does so not only on steemit, but also somewhere else on the internet? It's hard to prove content rights once something hits the web...
Not always. Sometime it requires digging in to find the original author. However, to identify the stolen image is not that difficult. Checking the blog of the person say a lot in the first place. Then google search giving plenty links to the image already rings the bell. Then I do question the person that submitted the image if that is original photo. If it is original then they easily prove it. If not, they either admit or start making excuses which have no solid background. If we all participate we can minimize this kind of behavior. Thank you so much for your help. Tomas
Then he would prove the ownership when asked to do so which none of the users above were able to do so.
Gosh I remember this one! I never thought of verifying the images of some regular contributors in this contest - since every single image in all my posts are from myself, so I tend to trust other fellow participants. Thank you Tomas for pointing this out. You are right it's high time that we get more alert to the plagiarists and check for plagiarism. It's terrible to steal others' images without any effort. It hurts me even when I'm not a professional photographer, as I know how much work has been behind each travel photo, especially the good entries for this contest, lots of them require long flights and arduous hikes, it's not just a selfie at home.
@czechglobalhosts you are doing good work. Stealing others' work is unacceptable. Original owner should get all the credits.
Tomas is completely right here - And I hope nobody with fake pictures will earn money here or anywhere else on the STEEM Blockchain!
If you discover fraud however - YOU can even earn from it by reporting to @steemcleaners! That way you can earn while helping Tomas to get his challenge fraud-free!
There is an older clip of mine explaining this, watch it, it's only two minutes! And it will be worth it for you guys!
Steemcleaners - Earn STEEM by fighting spam, etc.
Take care and stay fair,
Martin!
Thanks Martin. I should start using them for sure.... This might be about the time!
Of course you could use them yourself too - But it's probably more effective for minnows and other participants of your challenge. Removing an abuser/plagiarist will earn them a little SP + they will have one "opponent" less!
Great - I might pin that to the top of my posts!
That would probably draw a lot of attention to it and lower the spam a lot ;)
Steemcleaners looks like an awesome project. I just hope that there are people that are using it to try and get some of these accounts under control that are spamming and using other people's content. This can be a great tool for everyone here on the platform that is trying to do everything right.
The problem is that sometimes whales and dolphins plagiarize too and there is a different set of rules for them.
I have actually seen a whale post an entire book once and I am still paying the price for just mentioning it. There is also a dolphin that 99% of his posts are just copy and paste articles and he is making a fortune doing so.
When new users see that their peers are making thousands by plagiarizing they assume that this is one avenue for becoming successful and I don't think it is fair to go after the minnows while ignoring the worst offenders.
To end plagiarism we really need to take a top down approach, so minnows can't continue to point at the veterans, while saying that they were only doing what the veterans were doing.
Also the consequences, of letting people make thousands off of other author's content, could potentially be disastrous for our investment, but I am no lawyer.
Reproducing someone else's work without permission is illegal, even if you credit the author. It's just as bad as plagiarism and some people on Steemit are earning a fortune from it.
Thanks for taking action, protect your contest as well as to let those users know that they can't cheat here! Too bad that people steal other people's work and earn money with it.
Let´s all be little more vigilant my friend!
@czechglobalhosts
“JUST. A SUGEGSTION “
Why no one can develop a bot/ bots to check the plagiarism in photos , videos and written content.
Then we ( steem anti-plagiarism community) open the donation or steempower delegation to these bots to automatically flag these posts .
@josteem
Yeah, it's a plague lately, that plagiarism, and it goes hand in hand with fake accounts. Just go to "introduceyourself" and you'll find tons of fake accounts... :-/ It's not hard to make the difference between one true account and one fake... But it's just that they are so many now that no one can really counter them ...
That´s why it is so important to take an action and point those people out. If we all do nothing it will only get worse and from there we all go down the drain. Little by little, all together we can make a huge difference as long as the community stand as one. Have a great night.
Dobrou noc @czechglobalhosts! Was there any change to the sign up process? I remembered it was very long and constraining at the beginning, and people were vetted... I guess that now, it's open door and spammers are flooding in :-(
Well, could be the reason too.... also the rise in the price of Steem and SBD plays a big factor... Dobrou noc:)...
I am resteeming now because for curation and contests it is very challenging when working through copying and pasting. More discussion about plagiarism and especially alternatives may help. On my supernatural writing contest we need to use copyscape and require many words to minimize this and with photography it must be a nightmare! We also do not benefit from giving those of us that copy images elsewhere rewards.
I also hope resteeming this because I hope sharing this post leads to some more genuine entries because we do want to reward those of us that are creating original artwork on STeem!
Thanks for your support on this issue, @jerrybanfield! I have an idea, though I'm not a programmer to implement it: it would be extremely useful for those running contests to have a quicker method of initiating a reverse image search - perhaps a page that can grab the image URLs from post comments or tagged blog posts and input them into a clickable link to an RIS page like TinEye, to make it easier to reverse search a bunch of photos all at once. Or a browser extension that adds an RIS link to the right-click menu.
The RIS is not a perfect way to catch plagiarists, since many photos are legitimately scattered all over the internet already, even though they ARE our photos, but it's the best first step to catching people out, and it's clunky right now to have to copy-paste every image URL into a separate webpage.
Oh great post..And yes i have saw many fake picture in your challenge and at first you give them a warning and i know you don't like flagging people as it makes their reputation very low..And i will be more aware about this and that was an great information for all..Thanks for sharing your information and about this plagiarism..@czechglobalhosts
We all just need to be little more vigilant and take an action to minimize this kind of behaviour. I am afraid with the rising price of Steem more crooks will be trying to take an advantage that´s why it is crucial for all of us who care about the platform to give a helping hand. Have a good one.
I'm very torn about Steemit lately. There's a lot of amazing things going on with eSteem, DTube, DLive, Steepshot. Were bringing on a lot of bigger name Youtube creators, etc, etc, etc.
That said spam is worse than ever, I see bot accounts posting other peoples articles with a link at the bottom offering none of their own commentary and no value.
I see bots posting other peoples memes, etc, etc, etc. These accounts often tend to do better and make more money than real people. They clog up Steemit, they offer no value and no effort is put in.
It almost makes you feel as if whats the point of trying, should I just join everyone shitting on Steemit and making a bunch of money with no effort?
I think upvote bots are fine but I think comment bots and bots that create content should be banned or if they can't be outright stopped should be flagged 100% by everyone
I can feel your frustration.... But if we all start refusing those things and fight back we can minimize it. The platform is still very young and we are to create something extraordinary and add the value than those practices will have to disappear.... I am sure the community effort and the time will sort this out. Let´s do our part in the meantime and share the awareness. Have a great night. Tomas
Hey @czechglobalhosts I'm with you, I'm not ready to throw in the towel but it is frustrating. Posts like this...
https://steemit.com/link/@missrdx/3snsjp-link
Are from now on going to start getting a 100% downvote from me. Also anyone who's using the "introduceyourself" or "introduction" tags for the 35th time, again I'm gonna 100% downvote them. I saw a girl earlier who like every 3 posts re-introduces herself again with a different photo and different name.
This community needs to clean things up so I'm going to start taking a more active role in that
I have not checked that section in a while..... I might have to pay it a visit... There are many scams and things going around and I am sure we can all do better to fight it back.
There's the flagging option in place for these reasons.
As a photographer this really pisses me off. They were not my images that were stolen but I am so mad for the photographers who likely don't even know their images were stolen, and wth did the one who submitted the shutterstock photo think they could get away with it, did they not see the huge watermark across the photo???
Actually, it was submitted without the watermark as it was off an Instagram site or somewhere else.... If we all do our part we can at least minimize this kind of behaviour. Tomas