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
plagilarism is too bad to and shouldnt be happening right here on steemit. The worse part is copying people's content with giving due respect of ownership to them. its really bad and I move against it too. Maybe more orientation should be put in place for that
We all need to take care of it as a whole community and not over-look this kind of behaviour. There are many amazing and talented people here and joining on daily basis and we all stand as one we can and we will make this a better place for all of us to use and benefit. Have a great night. Tomas
I strongly agree with you Tomas, resteem your blog, and I hope the action of plagiarism we can prevent together.
Yes, we can and we will as long as we all stand as a one! Have a good one my friend!
OMG! I mean what are they doing ?? this is so unethical to steal the photographs or content really shameful !
I appreciate you pointed out those who are not ensuring the quality at all and promoting the plagiarism, well step taken by you Tomas #supported you!
Thanks mana, truly appreciated. Tomas
That's a very important topic and thanks for highlighting it! I have had my photos stolen so much, they even ended up in some print shops uploaded by other users... It is so annoying to say the least.
We just all have to be little more vigilant and keep on checking from time to time. If we take action on regular basis then we can make a difference and minimize this kind of behaviou. Have a great night and thank you for all your beautiful images that you are submitting on daily basis.
I'm still hoping someone like Apple steals my photo though. ;)
I am very surprised by this publication because you always emphasize being very careful with plagiarism and it is not fair for one person to take his photographs and another to gain merits that do not correspond to him. I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your publications, they are beautiful. I love photography. Regards..!
Thank you so much for your support. The compliment to all the talented photographers joining my challenges on daily basis. Have a great night. Tomas
What the hell! Why are these people doing this?
It Should be stopped.
I'm with you on this initiative.
Upvoting and resteeming it to my followers.
It is just a human nature that normal people do not understand. We can not completely stop this kind of behaviour but if we all do our part we can at least minimize it. Thank you and have a great day.
your welcome brother :) you to have a great day.
Thanks for doing this. As a hobbiest photog it's tough enough getting out and taking photos, let alone editing and putting together a post that someone might want to read. Plagiarists....uggggggg
I know and I do appreciate your daily support and your wonderful images. Thank you so much! Let´s just all pay little more attention to those who benefit from work of others. Have a great night. Tomas
Great job im so glad you found out they are cheaters and thieves. We need more people like you to go around and check these types of things. Once a cheat always a cheat. Like its just sad how can people be this ignorant and steal images from someone else and try to win a contest with them. I hope Steemians start to wake up and see this, because your vote can make a difference so don't waste it on fake people, use it on those who really deserve it. Keep up the awesome job your doing @czechglobalhosts and never let them win.
Good point! That is even the worse part of it... people in a good faith vote for those thieves... We all need to stick together as one and fight back.... Involvement of all that care is necessary....
It is very necessary we stick together and keep a eye out for these things. Also its important that these thieves realize Steemit is not the place for that type of shady work, and they need to go somewhere else with that and not on Steemit. Keep letting the community know about these types of people and the community well take action I believe that.
Hi Tomas! You know I think that plagiarism in this case is like unsportsmanlike behavior during competitions, like doping.
Downwoting maybe one of the ways to punish for plagiarism. Also one way which I see it is to disallow to participate in your contests to people who were seen in plagiarism.
As you know there is chetah bot which controls or makes the appearance of plagiarism, but is is works with post, not comments if I'm not wrong. And as I know there are many questions to it's work. Maybe if you work with Python or Java you can create such unplagiarism bot or library to control plagiarism in your contests. I think all steemians will be thankful to you. Good luck!
I wish I could but my computer skill are very limited..... Anyone that I caught cheating is never allowed back to my challenges... once in a while they try again but I make sure to stop them. Thank you for your support. Tomas
I belive you will find right solution how to stop plagiarism in your contests!
@czechglobalhosts This is a very important topic.
Stealing photos is a huge problem. It's bad when a user of any network publishes other people's photos as their own or simply does not write the author.
Even worse when using other people's photos try to make money. This is not only bad. This harms the reputation of the photographer.
@theaustrianguy Thanks, I'll keep it in mind.
I have a good memory about photo.
Let´s just all be little more vigilant and keep those people out our house. Involvement of all users that care about this place is necessary. Have a good one! See you around. Tomas
Hey Tomas
You are completely right in making a post and pointing out the names and actions of those copycats. I hope this will help to stop them
But it somehow has some negative connotations when I see you upvoted this post with 100 percent.
You might want to argue you want to increase visibility but why don’t you leave this this to us Steemians who you have already asked to do so?
Or at least refuse the payout, you are already making and cashing in several posts every day!
I think you had some good ideas to create those kind of challenges and I will continue joining and supporting you, but as I said before, it just seems too much
BTW. I am upvoting my comment too to pin it higher to increase the chance you will see it
That is my right to do so not only as an investor but also a daily contributor to Steemit! Without investors that would not be possible - no payouts, no Steem, no Steemit. I would be more worried about people upvoting their own comments day in/day out. Not pointing your own upvote right now which I do understand. I am helping many talented people to build their own successful blogs on daily basis through my contribution which I don't think that many people do. Have a great night. Tomas
Let's be honest while we all love Steemit money is a motivating factor for everyone. I personally see nothing wrong with upvoting your own stuff, especially content moreso than comments but I see nothing wrong with that as long as people aren't using all 10 votes per day on themselves and are spreading some love around to the community.
If someone puts either money or time and effort into Steemit I see nothing wrong with rewarding themselves a bit. I tend to be more generous IMHO than most people on here and I feel I give a lot more than I get so for me I've been consiering upvoting myself more.
Glad to see some positive feedback on that.... The actual concept of that is very smart... Once we start having real big investors and corporations coming in and investing millions of dollars to buy SP either for marketing purposes or to pay their employees or service providers then we can say there is a real value that can make a difference... If the community or the company does not wish to go that way then they can simply remove the self-upvote button. However, I do not see that happening. If Steemit succeeds then we will be all surpised of the unrealized potential it holds. Have a good one! Tomas
Agreed, the community needs tools to flag potential plagiarism
Thanks man you're doing a great job
All the best and very important post sir.I like it.Thank you so much sir.
People stealing content sucks. I know the work that goes in to photography first hand and having someone trying to pass of my work as their own. If you ever need some help checking submissions let me know.
It’s unfortunate that in the pursuit of upvotes and a few bucks, some have become desperate enough to plagiarise. It’s definitely not just images but also whole posts. Using these is one thing but claiming them to be their own work is despicable. When they are exposed, like here, the weeks spent on slowly building their profile will go down the drain. Reputation counts for a lot.
I have resteemed as well. Don't join a contest if you want to cheat
i agree this need to stop it aint right they need to be flagged
You're right. Sometimes a call to action is needed, nobody enjoys calling people out, but sometimes it is necessary in order to get the point across. Plagiarism is not a joke and a serious matter. I think this post is worry of a resteem to help spread the word against using other people's work as your own
Regards,
Conrad
Great Post! I think that's how we should improve the steemit community with the help of not only people vetting others but also writing about the negatives affects of plagiarism! I think that most people forget that the internet has too many things out there and they can do it without giving credit. Lets fight the good fight!
yes those post with stolen contents should be down voted
Upvoted,follow and reestem
great photocontest...
nice photography..
love it..
keep it
Bad spam..
hate it...
you should probably not keep it up
o steemians do not freeze plagiarism to follow this contest. be a professional steemit in getting a contest
Good idea, I also hope no more PLAGIARISM
hahaha some funny to be hear that some guys still want to scam in your contests and its really bad to listen about it that how someone keep it with palagrisim i also hate this....i know specially you warn in your every post about it
so i only say all them if any one have not thier on shots and photgraphs so live far away from these contestes till you have your own and not try to scam only for some rewards
@czechglobalhosts i hope after this post no one try to post palagrai photos
Unfortunately it's happened on Steemit, upvoted and reestem.
your contain is really very good,
i love it.
keep it up.
Really nice post.......
That's really pathetic to steal someone's hard earned property and then submit to the contests where reward is done. This is totally shameful and unethical act being stealing images. Ridiculous!
There are many steemian who are doing the same for the sake of money where they don't even want to put efforts to become UNIQUE. Dunno when they get sense. :/
It's really good step that you checked them out and pointed out. Plagiarism Banned for ALL.
Stoled, ... participated for photocontest,.. Shameful..
I agree, I often tell my steemians in my area, to be true steemians, avoid stealing other people's work, because it can ruin a good name.
your writing becomes an input to me, that how valuable a creativity is, and with your permission, I will re-stamp this article.
thank you
warm regards
@najmifajar
I hope that soon we will be able to solve it.
I not like it if some one take my photo. :(
Well just block them. Can't you block them?
4 views and 59$? do people even click your posts, or just tap your upvote?
I upvoted btw
I think you’re addressing something very important and I’m glad that you’re rising awareness. It is so sad that it’s actually necessary to tell people not to steal others images. I have seen many examples myself. I love photography and design, and I let myself being impressed by talented artist. I don’t want to be fooled, I want to see original work!
How do you find whether a photo is plagiarised or not ?