It’s been a funny old week
The internet, and in particular social media, never fails to uncover the legions of weird people and all the amateur keyboard lawyers that are out there. Let me give you a few examples of what has happened to me this past week.
Incident No.1:
Last Saturday night I was sitting relaxing watching the footie on the telly and my wife was sitting on the couch going through Facebook on her iPad. She said to me, “ I think someone has posted a load of your pictures of old Glasgow on this Facebook page”. I had a look at the Facebook page post and sure enough there they were. As I don’t usually post my pictures online now, preferring to point people to my website, this individual had ripped about 15 of my photos off of my website and posted them on “Blasts from The Glasgow’s Past” Facebook page under his own name with no photographer credit. Not only that but he had colourised all the black and white shots, and very poorly at that.
I immediately joined the group and PM’d the person that had posted my copyrighted photos, asking why he had done so without my permission, why they were not credited to me and who gave him permission to alter them by poorly colourising them. Of course I never got any response. I also contacted the admins and within a few minutes they responded with an apology and told me they had taken the post down. They also invited me to post a new message stating why the images had been taken down and offering a link to my website where they can all be viewed how I intended them to be seen. Good I thought. Wrong!
Within minutes I was subjected to a torrent of abuse by members of the Facebook page. Many of the comments I would not repeat on here, but to give you a flavour of the gist of what they said:
“Who the f*** do you think you are mate? What makes your pictures so special?”
“How do we know that the pictures are even yours as you claim?”
“Your a joke mate thinking that you own these pictures, they are on the internet so they are free to everybody, get a life”
These are just a few of the printable ones. I tried to explain that when it comes to photography it is common courtesy to credit the original photographer (which would have been easy in this case), and certainly not modify the original work and then put it up on a post under your name. All the time I was trying to explain where this chap had gone wrong I was keeping a civil tone to my response, but I think the more I did that the more it wound the keyboard warriors up and the hate kept coming.
Incident No. 2:
A few days later, on the same Facebook page, a “lady” put a post on saying;
”What does everyone think of all those creepy people that go around Glasgow taking your pictures on the street? How creepy is that?”.
Before I could respond another street photographer tried to explain the methodologies of street photography and how it plays a vital role in recording daily life. She and others had a right go at him so I supported him and stated the law regarding photography in a public place in the UK and how it was all quite harmless. I tried to explain that I am just a guy with a camera going around not necessarily always taking photos of people, more of places with people in them. The guns were then turned on me and again, these are a couple of the responses I got that I can print on here:
“Peter Degnan But you are NOT a photographer! You are not trained and just some random guy creepily going around photographing folk without their consent. You call it fair game, when the true term is ignorant...and creepy!”
“Peter Degnan Well if you feel so strongly, then you shouldn't make such infantile comments such as ' its not illegal' and perhaps read up on the laws of harassment. Or actually just remember manners which are lost on you. Don’t insult us by giving yourself credit as a 'street photographer' because you are not a trained photographer by any stretch of the imagination. THIS is the reason its not on.”
So that was my week. Needless to say I left the group shortly after. Some people may be horrified to be subjected to this level of on-line abuse but my big broad Scottish shoulders have experienced worse. I feel sorry for these people and wish they would just lighten up a bit and enjoy life. It’s not all doom and gloom though. A lot of people liked my comments and responses and that must have wound up the haters even more. Not only that, posting the link to my website resulted in the sale of some zines and a print order! So every cloud….and all that.