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The Case Against the "Bellazon Forum" Tag


Memento Mori

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Introduction: I've been seeing the Bellazon Forum Tag (example) appearing on many an image supposedly originating from this site. And, like tags from celebrity fansites, they are unwarranted and meaningless, therefore their continued use is stupid.

I. Tags imply ownership

-As far as I am aware, none of the images I have seen with the Bellazon Forum Tag are owned by members of Bellazon. Ownership lies with the photographer, the subject, or someone who pays them for distribution rights (eg. MediaVast). The Bellazon Forum Tag implies ownership, and in doing so is incorrect.

II. Tags are untargeted advertisement

-If the intended use of the Bellazon Forum Tags is advertisement, then those applying them to the images are asking for trouble. As mentioned in Section I, Bellazon does not own any of these images, but those who do own them may be trying to track them down. Posting your address on images that do not belong to you and distributing them is comparable to stealing TV's from the neighborhood Best Buy, stamping your name on it, then giving them away to the locals. The fact that the nature of the tag implies Bellazon's ownership may also simply make them angry and more inclined to do something about it.

III. Tags are annoying

-This is why I stopped tagging my material, it's a distraction and in my opinion inappropriate. We as scanners, cappers, etc do not own the images or media we are transfering, we are simply changing the medium in which they are presented (in violation of the law, once we distribute them - there are exceptions, none of which are observed on this site or others like it). If you truly wish to identify images for reference, there are other ways, such as tagging the image file itself, and not the image that appears on the screen (Right Click on the Image, Properties). It should also be noted if I was to take images from Bellazon and post them on one of my websites, I would most assuredly remove the tag, and it would take about a second per image with Photoshop's Batch feature.

IV. Given I-III, actually bothering to place the tag is a waste of time

-If, as stated above, you stand to gain little and risk much by the placing of the Bellazon Forum Tags, why waste a few seconds of your life placing them. The only reasonable explanation is vanity. Being proud of a website and forum is fine, but butchering images that aren't yours with something that implies the opposite is crossing the annoyance line.

Conclusion: The "Bellazon Forum" Tags on Images are unwarranted and meaningless, therefore their continued use is stupid. The only logical motivation behind their existence is vanity, and at best they are an annoyance, at worst they are a trail of breadcrumbs that will lead the images' true owners to this site - trailing their lawyers and C&D's close behind.

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i made a similar argument to one of the admins just the other day. i dont have a major issue with the tagging themselves, as a lot of work does in fact go into the scans (nine explains this VERY well on her site and in a post in the abb editorials thread...its actually worth the read). however, i do take issue with the ppl who balk at people stealing their scans but then dont bother themselves to give credit to the photographers. not everyone is like this...for example, wes from www.nataliavodianova.net doesnt tag BUT in the very title of his scans is the name of the magazine and the photographer. i'm not knocking tags (altho tdpatriots has a serious point about the tag having bellazon's name on it) in the least coz i understand the work that goes into the scans themselves but it'd be nice to see the photographer credited as well...

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Who feels fingered and singled out..raise your hand... :blush:

I didnt' realize I was butchering the pics when tagging the photos, I thought by putting it at the bottom away from the face and everthing it was out of harms way. I know people can remove the tag at the bottom, it's actually quite simple, it's just as simple to put them on too. I never tag in the middle and on the face.

you're right. I often debated about putting tags on pics, specically something that has the bellazon forum, cause I was afraid it would welcome the wrong people. I never use to do it until recently and frankly I followed the whole if they jumped off the building, would you and I did. I never liked the idea, mainly for Section II of your agrument.(which i have to say your agruments and how they are sectioned out is great) but trust me i have thought of that. it can get the wrong attention, which is another reason why i contain the types, size, shape, quanity and quality of the pics I post.

I have in the past given pics to fansites and i've always put a tag on who took the pic, year, particularly when it was photoshoots like that josie one. i for some odd reason didn't do it when it came to this forum. Most forum and fansites do tag though, so i guess I followed the fashion even though i really didn't really want to do it, I've only been doing it recently though, but the act has now stopped.

I had this convo with a friend of mine not too long ago that has stopped tagging. I thought since I hadn't read anything till now that the forum admins were o.k. with that, but i never really asked, so that's my fault. I take full responsibility for that.

Your agrument is warranted, i wish I wouldn't have been singled out, but whatever it's all good :evil: :fun: , someone has to be the scapegoat or the fall guy, i guess i'm not the fall guy but the main culprit in this all.I don't mind cause i agree with you for the most part....i guess I deserved it. I just saw other forums and fansites do it so I decided not to follow my gut and do what others were, I usually don't follow others.

Plain and simple, the act of tagging with bellazon has now been stopped. Take the pics put them on other forums don't give credit give credit(it really wasn't about vanity, at least i don't think :p ..regardless...i won't be putting the bellazon forum tag on the pics anymore, that's for sure, I trully never really liked doing it. i'll probably just put the name of the celeb followed by the event or something on some/certain hard to get pics, which is what i've done in the past. I probably won't be posting that much in here anyway.

Thanks for this, it really made me rethink my position on this subject back to what my thoughts have always been, which for the most part is what you have eluded to.

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regarding point 1, i don't think that's really fair. a 'tag' doesn't imply ownership under any law i'm aware of. hell, even if you paid gettyimages the mere $9000 per image for advertising use and plaster it with your brand's logo it still doesn't imply "ownership" of the original photo (with the possible exception of purchasing exclusive rights).

point 2, i'm sure site advertisement is the purpose of the tags. as for legal trouble, well, of that i'm not so certain. in australia and probably the united states there is a doctrine in copyright law called "fair abridgement" or "fair use". fair use applies to strictly non-commercial reproductions of copyrighted work for certain purposes (from memory i think research, reporting, education, and criticism), and is dependent on the effect that the use in question has upon the market. fair use is the reason people can cite copyrighted material in reports and so forth. bellazon (and about a bazillion other sites) probably walk a fine line. but it's non-commercial and doesn't impact the market in the slightest (insofar as i am aware). however i'm not a lawyer, so i can't say this with certainty. the fact people do still tag is probably evidence of the fact that the Big Companies don't really care.

i don't think you could be more wrong about point 3. if a scan is tagged well (like, say, nine's scans) it's not in the least distracting, and it's almost like an assurance of quality. :) however, some tags can be terribly annoying. but the bellazon tag is not an example of one.

all that said, at the moment i don't tag anything i scan or purchase or import. i "sign" everything i scan though, so i know that it's mine when it has completed its circle of the internet and has come back to me. and so i can prove to people that it was my scan when they try to credit it to themselves. really bad example - one of my first (bottom of adriana's left leg).

i think it nicely solves the problem of people stripping the tags off images. some people work hard to obtain images (regardless of the legal fine line) while others remove tags then post those images without attributing source, or even worse, attributing themselves.

i'm arguing for the sake of arguing, though (you wouldn't believe how boring my day was). because i really don't care whether people tag or not. i don't, i probably never will.

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Hi all!

I have to aggree with you tdpatriots12! If you publish copyrighted material you don't have the right to mark it as your own and I guess it don't make really sense, because everybody can remove it that easily you've touched it.

And b.t.w. Taha - don't blame others for your own faults, If you remember: ;) :laugh:

I've posted this pic and made a mark because of the lot of work of me and I was just curious how fast it would cycle through the forums (very fast...)

petra11as.th.jpg

lox made a wallpaper

127petra11as7en8ua.th.jpg

and Taha, you've "improved" it and retouched all marks...

gochorequesttagged5qf.th.jpg

I think if you don't want that other ones publish your work, you shouldn't publish it at any forum. There is a picture ring of a few forums where these pictures circulate. And a lot of pictures of WFT are posted here - I don't see any problem. :)

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regarding point 1, i don't think that's really fair. a 'tag' doesn't imply ownership under any law i'm aware of. hell, even if you paid gettyimages the mere $9000 per image for advertising use and plaster it with your brand's logo it still doesn't imply "ownership" of the original photo (with the possible exception of purchasing exclusive rights).

Re; Point I - I wasn't stating that a tag legally implies ownership, but it does imply (in the truest meaning of the word) ownership to the viewer.

point 2, i'm sure site advertisement is the purpose of the tags. as for legal trouble, well, of that i'm not so certain. in australia and probably the united states there is a doctrine in copyright law called "fair abridgement" or "fair use". fair use applies to strictly non-commercial reproductions of copyrighted work for certain purposes (from memory i think research, reporting, education, and criticism), and is dependent on the effect that the use in question has upon the market. fair use is the reason people can cite copyrighted material in reports and so forth. bellazon (and about a bazillion other sites) probably walk a fine line. but it's non-commercial and doesn't impact the market in the slightest (insofar as i am aware). however i'm not a lawyer, so i can't say this with certainty. the fact people do still tag is probably evidence of the fact that the Big Companies don't really care.

Re; Point II - They absolutely care, and they don't believe that such use falls under fair use. Many sites more prolific and historic than this have had their run ins with MediaVast's lawyers, as well as TheBabeIndex, a site which many of you are familiar with. "Fair Use" does not apply to these images, the DMCA says so.

i don't think you could be more wrong about point 3. if a scan is tagged well (like, say, nine's scans) it's not in the least distracting, and it's almost like an assurance of quality. :) however, some tags can be terribly annoying. but the bellazon tag is not an example of one.

Re; Point III - It is of course a matter of opinion, the best scanners still tag (PicCap, IMF-Arel, etc) but most of them can be found elsewhere (not to disparage my own scans, or nine's etc - but those guys I listed are the best). I personally find tags annoying, which is why I stopped adding 'em. Their presence just served to annoy me when I found my scans elsewhere on the net with the tag removed. Basically I think they're a hassle more than anything else. Plus, you shouldn't need a tag to tell you whether or not it's a good scan - you can tell because it's a good scan.

With regards to your method of signing an image, I think that's much better - more artistic, and less prone to bring the problems I outlined in I-III.

With regards to "singling someone out" I didn't do it on purpose, I just linked to one pic - if you tagged it, I'm not specifically indicting you, but the idea of tags.

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Hi all!

I have to aggree with you tdpatriots12! If you publish copyrighted material you don't have the right to mark it as your own and I guess it don't make really sense, because everybody can remove it that easily you've touched it.

And b.t.w. Taha - don't blame others for your own faults, If you remember:  ;)  :laugh:

I've posted this pic and made a mark because of the lot of work of me and I was just curious how fast it would cycle through the forums (very fast...)

petra11as.th.jpg

lox made a wallpaper

post-311-0-1446071504-79357_thumb.jpg

and Taha, you've "improved" it and retouched all marks...

post-311-0-1446071505-44286_thumb.jpg

I think if you don't want that other ones publish your work, you shouldn't publish it at any forum. There is a picture ring of a few forums where these pictures circulate. And a lot of pictures of WFT are posted here - I don't see any problem.  :)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

haha my bad

forgot about that

buttt i think that was the only time i did that

becuz usually i dont do pic work...that was like the first one and i felt acomplished....but then like every single petra pic on wft started to be tagged and i realized that it was really dumb....so now i only tag the sigs...well cuz they can be haha

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No problem Taha! We should stop these daffy fists. All the pics that posted here will go around through the forums, all new pics of WFT go through this circle. At the end the fans get their pictures. But we should try to credit the photographer and if posible the first poster/scanner! :yes:

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I know how much work scanning is, but it's still not our image.  I did about 20 different levels and spent more than a day on a recent scan of Playboy cover Diora Baird, but this time I didn't put my logo on it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The way I see it that's your choice. But if I paint a picture of Mt. Rushmore and sign it that doesn't mean I own Mt. Rushmore. Scanning is art and I sign my art. If somone else chooses not to that's their business.

Of course that just my point of view and applys to scans. :)

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pip

The only reason I tag stuff, is so

a) Some shlub doesnt just take it and claim it theirs, and reap any benefit of my work

b) Its cool to have your name on the internet, be it a pen name or whatever.

If ChilaX.com had not tagged their wallpapers, I never would have found it, and therefore, not have wound up on Bellazon/LimaX

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Re; Point I - I wasn't stating that a tag legally implies ownership, but it does imply (in the truest meaning of the word) ownership to the viewer.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

and there's nothing wrong with that. "pseudo-ownership" is the closest the scanner or capper will ever get to owning the content, and in my opinion they deserve that level of recognition (low though it may be) for the work they've done.

Re; Point II - They absolutely care, and they don't believe that such use falls under fair use.  Many sites more prolific and historic than this have had their run ins with MediaVast's lawyers, as well as TheBabeIndex, a site which many of you are familiar with.  "Fair Use" does not apply to these images, the DMCA says so.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

i'm not a lawyer and as such my legal advice isn't to be trusted. further, i'm not an american so take the following with a grain of salt - but i was under the impression that the point of the DMCA was preventing copyright protection method circumvention (outlawing processes like DeCSS).

sites like lime-light.org and i'm willing to bet thebabeindex are / were at much higher risk than bellazon purely because they have advertising on their site, which means they generate revenue. they wouldn't even be able to argue fair use under non-profit.

at the end of the day anyone can tag anything on to a photo though, i could sign your name onto every photograph i import. it certainly wouldn't be grounds to get you into any trouble, so i think the legal argument is a moot point.

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