

Ask HN: Is there an audit tool to check for Copyrighted images on my sites? - Killah911

I received an e-mail today form PicScout that an image on one of my client&#x27;s site was copyrighted.  Which is odd since I have subscriptions to quite a few stock photography sites for my designers to use.  Needless to say my client was freaking out a bit and so was I.<p>My company manages tons of content for many small businesses.  Besides implementing draconian rules for all designers and content publishers on the site, I can only think of one thing to do, i.e. to scan all of my sites for images which may be copyrighted.<p>I googled around a bit, found tineye.com and of course pic scout.  My instinct is to write a little bit of python code to grab all the images from the website directories from my server and upload them one by one to something like picscout.  Maybe someone&#x27;s done that already.<p>Anyone here know of such a tool?
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ggchappell
A clarification: all the images on your sites are copyrighted, with the
exceptions -- in the U.S. -- of images created by the U.S. federal government,
and digitizations of very old images -- e.g., a photograph of the Mona Lisa.

Your problem does not stem from the fact that images are covered by copyright,
but from violations of license terms.

(A bit nitpicky, perhaps, but I figure if we're going to solve a problem, then
we first ought to know what the problem is.)

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MichaelCrawford
I'm not dead certain, but while an old image is out of copyright, a
digitization won't be.

The image in the digital photo will be out of copyright, but the digital file
is a newly created work.

My reasoning has to do with how commonly I find copyrighted scores to
traditional folk songs. The notes and words are exactly the same, however the
actual document is new.

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MichaelCrawford
I don't know of an existing tool, but I have lots of experience with 2-D image
processing. I have some ideas as to how it could be done somewhat more
efficiently than brute-force.

If you're really freaking, perhaps I could flog my consulting service, and
write the program for you under contract?

