How can a selfie become a good picture of the online store?
Investigation on the proliferation of stolen images on online shopping platforms
● There is a phenomenon of stealing pictures to get good reviews on many online shopping platforms. This kind of picture stealing does not only exist in comments, but even more, some merchants directly steal online pictures and other store's product promotion pictures to package their own products
● Some online shopping platforms have relatively narrow rights protection channels, and rights protection channels are only open to merchants, so it is difficult for individuals or end users to obtain rights relief; litigation channels have high rights protection costs, and individuals often do not have enough time, money and professional ability to litigate
● Establish a blacklist notification system for illegal merchants in the industry, and severely punish merchants with serious circumstances, such as repeatedly stealing pictures and copying stores, etc. through judicial channels; the regulatory department has established a cross-platform collaborative notification mechanism to achieve “clearing out one place and closing the door everywhere” shop"
□ Sun Tianjiao, a trainee reporter of this newspaper
□ Our reporter Zhao Li
Luo Haixing (pseudonym), a freshman from Chongqing, recently encountered a strange thing. An account she was completely unfamiliar with posted a selfie she had previously posted on a social platform in a comment on a whitening essence on an online shopping platform. The photo is accompanied by a text saying "the essence is delicate and easy to absorb, the skin has a good absorption effect, and the whitening effect is very good."
Luo Haixing told the "Rules of Law Daily" reporter that the comment was first discovered by a senior sister who came to ask her if the whitening essence was really easy to use. Only then did she realize that someone was posing as herself.
After that, she communicated with the merchant, complained to the human customer service, and even made a lot of calls to protect her rights. After a lot of tossing, the merchant deleted the comment.
But when she asked the merchant to provide the reviewer's identity information for further rights protection, she never got a response from the merchant.
After complaining about his above experience on social media, Luo Haixing received a large number of replies from netizens, saying that he had also encountered the same incident of stealing pictures from shopping platforms.
Everyone suspects that this kind of behavior of stealing pictures and giving praise to the products is most likely done by the navy hired by the merchants.
The reporter's recent investigation and interview found that many online shopping platforms have stolen pictures and praised them. This kind of picture theft does not only exist in comments, but even worse, some merchants directly steal online pictures, and other stores' product promotion pictures are their own. Goods are packaged.
However, due to the frequent occurrence and concealment of image theft on online shopping platforms, it is often difficult for the original author of the image to protect the rights.
A number of industry experts interviewed said that stolen image comments and stolen image stores are common illegal acts by e-commerce platform operators. Multi-party measures such as platform action, market supervision, and reasonable rights protection are used to deal with this chaos in a timely and effective manner.
Online shopping platforms are flooded with stolen images
may result in multiple infringements
Xiao Qin in Xicheng District, Beijing runs an online store for purchasing cosmetics and skin care products. All the products he sells will be watermarked with the store name on the product details photos.
"The goods are all shot by me, which is a proof of the authenticity and credibility of the store's supply. But no matter how thick the watermark is, it can be erased by the other party, and even the other party's watermark can be printed twice to add originality."
At the prompt of Xiao Qin, the reporter used a picture of a product in his store to conduct a "image recognition" search, and found a number of products with pictures and photos from different stores, and the angles and details of the pictures were exactly the same.
"In this case, we usually go to the platform's official customer service to report theft of pictures, but the same kind of picture theft still occurs from time to time, and it is hard to prevent. These stores that steal pictures are usually new stores, even if they are reported and taken off the shelves, There is no loss to them, but we have to put in a lot of energy." Xiao Qin said.
Mr. Bai from Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province has been engaged in online intellectual property rights protection since 2018. He told reporters that there are many cases of such online shopping platforms stealing pictures.
"Businesses with strength and resources will create their own creations and apply for the corresponding intellectual property rights to protect the originals, but there are also many businesses who continue to steal pictures from other stores, and even use certain technologies and software to copy other people's pictures and products in batches to themselves. store." He said that the current online shopping platform "piracy and copy shop" behavior is rampant.
In recent years, with the rapid development of e-commerce platforms, online shopping has gradually become a part of people's lives.
In online stores, products are often presented in the form of photos or videos, while some merchants pursue the "bringing doctrine", packaging and marketing their own stores and products by stealing other people's pictures.
This behavior is not only reflected in the misappropriation of other merchants' product pictures, personal original works, and even selfies may become the object of theft.
"The picture I drew before actually appeared on a shoe pushed by an online shopping platform and became a 'special design'." Illustrator Shizi from Guangdong was browsing the homepage of a shopping platform and found a canvas shoe pushed. The pattern is so "familiar" that it is his previous work, and he has no knowledge of it.
Persimmon immediately found the customer service of the online store and asked the other party to remove the product from the shelves.
But no matter what she said, the other party just "read it" without replying.
This is not the first time she has discovered stolen pictures.
At the beginning of 2019, she discovered that there was an official flagship store on a certain shopping platform, and the pictures she drew were printed on towel pillows for sale without consent, and the sales were quite large.
"We worked hard to draw a set of pictures for more than ten days. People stole the pictures and directly watermarked them and put them on the shelves easily." What made her even more helpless was that she found out that there were also four or five stores on another online shopping platform. The merchant who misappropriated her paintings, and the platform’s customer service ignored her rights protection appeal.
Under Luo Haixing's article on commenting on stolen pictures on social media, many netizens said that they had the same experience. .
Zhang Tao, director of the Network and Data Research Center of Beijing Deheng Law Firm, said that by stealing other people's pictures to promote their own products, they exchanged low costs for high-profit income. False propaganda has become commonplace, causing serious harm to the Internet business environment and illegal infringement of the production factors of the digital economy.
These violations involve legal issues such as tort.
According to his analysis, online shopping platform piracy may infringe the copyright of the author of the original image or the trademark of the original merchant.
At the same time, if the stolen pictures contain the portraits of buyers, models or others, it is also suspected of infringing portrait rights.
In addition, stealing pictures and copying shops or copying qualifications may involve violations of consumers' right to know and constitute fraud to consumers.
"According to the provisions of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, operators shall not arbitrarily use the same or similar logos as the names, packaging, decoration, etc. of commodities that have certain influence on others, and shall not implement signs that are sufficient to make people mistakenly believe that they are commodities of others or have specific connections with others. Confusion. Stealing pictures to promote commodities and improve commodity trading opportunities is essentially to obtain opportunities for unfair competition.” Zhang Tao said.
High cost makes it difficult to protect rights
Punishment for thieves is too light
After discovering a stolen image, the first thought of most people is to defend their rights.
However, the reality is that the road to rights protection is full of difficulties.
Luo Haixing said that she also tried to take legal proceedings to sue the evaluator for stealing pictures after discovering that the photos had been stolen.
However, the merchant refused to provide the reviewer's personal information, and she made numerous calls to defend her rights and nothing happened.
In the end, considering the high cost of rights protection, Luo Haixing could only give up, which also made her feel very frustrated.
After discovering that the painted image had been stolen on the product, Persimmon immediately found the store customer service and the official customer service of the online shopping platform to claim rights protection, but only received a rights protection link from the official customer service, and the link made it clear that only the merchant can report theft graph behavior.
Later, she found out that the company to which the online shopping platform belongs has an intellectual property protection platform that can cover the infringement of the online shopping platform.
According to her, rights protection on this platform generally requires applying for intellectual property protection, but for someone like her who usually entertains herself and paints on the online platform, it is impossible to apply for intellectual property protection for every painting.
Later, she found that there is a timestamp in the option (digital signature of the signature object generates a timestamp to prove that the original file existed before the signature time), and finally chose to use this to defend her rights, and the rights protection was successful.
But the rights protection process is not easy. Shizi said that she was rejected by the shopping platform 4 times during the review process, and has been adding various evidence to prove that "this set of pictures was drawn by me", which finally forced the online store to remove her from the store. "But the online store also stole a lot of other pictures, and the removal was just a change of pictures. The content of the product descriptions did not change significantly, and they continued to be rampant."
As a platform merchant, Xiao Qin can directly report stolen pictures.
If the evidence is not enough to prove that "it is original and others have stolen it", the report will be unsuccessful; and even if the report is successful, the other store will be found to have stolen pictures, and the punishment will be very light.
As far as his personal experience is concerned, if the complaint is successful, the platform will usually delete the link of the product, and the relevant store may be deducted 2 points, "but this will have little impact on the merchant's follow-up operation."
Mr. Bai told reporters that at present, only a few online shopping platforms have set up reporting channels for stolen pictures, and other online shopping platforms are still in a situation where "there is no way to ask for help and can only admit to planting" after stolen pictures.
"Some online shopping platforms have set up an entrance to protect the rights of stolen pictures, but after submitting the original pictures and tidbits according to the requirements of qualifications, they will never pass the review."
According to Ren Chao, a professor at the School of Economics and Law of East China University of Political Science and Law, the problem of rights protection for online shopping platforms for stealing images does exist, which is embodied in the private relief of stolen image merchants and the difficulty of public enforcement.
He explained that private remedies include two aspects, platform rights protection channels and court litigation channels.
However, the platform for rights protection is relatively narrow, and most of the rights protection channels are only open to merchants. If the stolen images belong to non-merchant images, it is difficult for individuals or end users to obtain rights relief.
In addition, the cost of rights protection in court litigation channels is high. Not all businesses or individuals with stolen pictures have the financial resources and professional lawyer teams. Most of the stolen pictures are ordinary netizens or businesses with a small reputation in a certain field, and there is not enough time. Litigation with money and professional competence.
In terms of public enforcement, according to Ren Chao, although some local market supervision departments have investigated and punished online shopping platforms for stealing images, the number of public enforcement cases closed is only a drop in the bucket compared to the number of infringements.
Ren Chao said that reputation penalties such as deducting points from stores cannot exert their deterrent effect in the huge Internet market. The punishment is too small and it is difficult to protect rights. In reality, many people who have stolen pictures often choose to give up to protect themselves. legitimate interests.
Establish a smooth rights protection mechanism
Increase original protection
Why is online shopping platform piracy so rampant?
How to solve the problem of rights protection?
Wang Zhengzhi, a partner of Gao Wen Law Firm and director of the Intellectual Property Committee of the All-China Lawyers Association, said that the cost of stealing pictures is low, and some online shopping platforms even provide tools such as "one-click shop moving" and other tools for stealing pictures and brushing orders to condone the theft of pictures and images by merchants. The number of pictures of goods sold online is huge, and it is difficult for the regulatory authorities to identify which are infringing and stolen pictures, and the exercise of power is relatively passive.
At the same time, the major online shopping platforms have few powerful and precise ways to deal with the pirates. It is difficult for the pirates to find the pirates in the sea of information. At the same time, due to cost issues, they often swallow up the phenomenon of theft.
Zhang Tao believes that online shopping platforms have the characteristics of cross-regional, cross-platform and concealment. With the continuous development of technology, many businesses, organizations or individuals have changed the pictures and moved them through technical means. From a platform perspective , it is difficult to carry out active supervision, and it is often necessary to investigate and dispose of by means of business reports.
From the point of view of merchants, they often cannot invest enough costs to deal with online shopping theft of images, and due to the concealment of this behavior, merchants are often unable to detect the occurrence of infringements in time. The strength is also relatively limited, and these current situations have led to the proliferation of online image theft.
In order to control the behavior of online shopping stealing, the interviewed experts bluntly said that online shopping platforms must do more.
In Ren Chao's view, first of all, the platform should establish a relatively smooth and complete infringement complaint mechanism.
Infringement complaint channels should be extended from only merchants to all individuals.
At the same time, in order to avoid malicious reporting, the platform can establish a grading review mechanism for complaint information, conduct preliminary screening through algorithmic procedures, and monitor abnormal reporting behaviors.
In addition, the platform and law enforcement agencies can establish an interoperability mechanism to form good cooperation in evidence collection, monitoring, regulation, etc., and realize the whole process of regulation before, during and after the event.
Secondly, increase the punishment for merchants who frequently steal pictures.
The online shopping platform can “label” the merchants with stolen pictures based on self-inspection and clues and reports from merchants, consumers, and law enforcement agencies, and after grasping solid evidence and making judgments, that is, using special eye-catching signs to remind consumers to pay attention to the current browsing. Risk warning for merchants.
In addition, online shopping platforms can publicize the negative list of merchants with serious circumstances such as malicious theft of pictures.
"As a result, the online platform can establish a more complete and effective reputational penalty measure within the virtual and wider-ranging unfamiliar community of this platform."
Thirdly, online shopping platforms should increase the protection of originality, and praise merchants with good reputation and high-quality original design, aiming to indirectly curb image theft through positive incentives; it is possible to launch "Platform Originality Protection Plan" and "Platform Originality Promotion Plan". and other projects, the identification of merchants with good reputation makes the online shopping platform form a positive cycle.
At the same time, the online shopping platform should assist the infringed merchants and consumers in safeguarding their rights, and help in collecting and solidifying evidence.
Wang Zhengzhi suggested that the market supervision department should strengthen law enforcement against online shopping platforms for stealing images, strengthen research on technical means of forensics, and establish an interoperability mechanism with major e-commerce platforms.
"You can try to use the python web crawler to crawl the image data, filter the information in combination with the text data and the text in the image, and store it in dimension reduction, and then compare the identified original image information with copyright with other image information. Analysis, and further find the pirates of copyright, so as to provide copyright litigation basis for the pirated and warn the pirates."
He suggested that a blacklist notification system for illegal merchants in the industry should be established, and merchants with serious circumstances such as repeated photo-piracy and photo-copying should be severely punished through judicial channels. even pampering.
At the same time, the regulatory department has established a cross-platform collaborative notification mechanism, especially increasing the supervision of e-commerce platforms that are more prone to “one-click photo theft” and “one-click store relocation”, so as to achieve “clearing one place, closing stores everywhere”, and maintaining the entire A good business environment and a fair competitive business order in the e-commerce industry jointly promote and promote the healthy development of the digital economy.