Last year one of the AgencyLogic clients, let’s call her Jane, had two huge problems. The first problem was with her MLS. They were about to fine her for having branding, specifically a watermark with her name, on every photo of every single property Website she had created. With more than seventy AgencyLogic PowerSites, and with each Website having more than fifty images Jane was looking at a huge fine, thousands of dollars. I can’t detail the specific language she used to describe her MLS, I’ll let you imagine. Whatever language you come up with it was worse.
The second problem was with Realtors in Jane’s area. For each listing she paid a professional photographer to take high quality images of not only the home but also the community. The photos were so good that other Realtors decided to take, sorry I mean steal, them and use them on their own Websites. This obviously led to multiple telephone calls, even ceast and desist letters, a huge time waste and problem for Jane.
We contacted the MLS who absolutely refused to budge. They had rules and all members had to abide by them. They seemed more focused on the breach of the ‘no branding on photo’s’ rule than trying to help a member who was the victim of theft but the thing I found particularly offensive was their apparent pride in how much money they ‘profited’ from (my word not theirs) via fines like this each and every year. That’s a blog post for another day.
We ended up creating a non branded version of our single property Website product which not only improved the product but more importantly saved our client from having to fork out several thousand dollars in fines. Obviously that only solves the first problem. Jane continues to see her images on Websites near and far and has no idea just how many times they have been used.
There is a tool that can help: TinEye:
TinEye describes itself as:
“a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions.”
To use the service you upload an image and it will identify every online location where it is being used. The only limit is file size: 1MB (megabyte). Search results are immediate.
The following video is a quick overview. Note: the initial comments about having to register before using TinEye are no longer valid, you can use the service for free without any registration:
