My amusement quickly faded as I realized that the link in the pin DIDN'T come from my Hartwood Roses web site ... and that it had hundreds of repins ... who knows how far this has spread?
The link on the Pin led to a reputable web site that publishes independent articles ... in this case, an article on rooting roses that contained the stolen content. I submitted a report to the site, telling them that the article used my photos without permission or attribution. Yesterday, I received a response ... the article has been taken down.
The damage is done, though. I wrote that rose rooting tutorial a long time ago, when I was a more trusting soul and before I knew the importance of watermarking all of my online photos. The hundreds of people who pinned and repinned this now have a dead link ... it never led them to my tutorial anyway, which is a shame. (I have rooted a LOT of roses using this method, and so have many other people.)
For now, I have asked The Husband (my genius computer guy) to temporarily remove the tutorial from my web site. It's not done as well as I would like, so this gives me the incentive to rework it a bit, to add some steps and photos (watermarked this time) to the process, and put up a better product. Until I get this done, anyone who wants to learn to root roses using my method will be disappointed. It's a shame ... but I don't think I have a choice.
Do you watermark the photos you publish online? I use Photoshop 6.0 to edit and format photos and add my watermark. I will be happy to work up a quick tutorial, if we have enough interest. If you watermark your photos with a different program, I'd love for you to tell us about it. It's WAY too easy for photos to lose their connection to their original creator, and I have a feeling that there's a need give bloggers the knowledge and tools to protect their intellectual property.
Let me finish by saying this ... I welcome ANYONE to pin my images and ideas ... just make sure that your pins are linked to original source. Let this apply to ANYTHING you pin, and this corner of the Internet of ours will be a much more honest place to hang out.
