Forum Features & Updates

Yes, I fully support that sentiment, Philip, hence making the comments. I'd hate to have to worry about putting stuff on there in case it gets nicked or misused; and as you say, we don't want to lay ourselves open to other forms of abuse either. I thought my suggestion of a split gallery (public/members only) might be useful - and simple to implement - and one other possibility could be to have a 'key' so that only people with the key could access certain images, if someone should feel uncomfortable in anyone other than a target audience seeing them. I don't know what Rob thinks, and I certainly don't want to load him down with a lot of work; these are only suggestions prompted by a concern that it's wise these days to protect all of our interests.

Talking of making it work, I am bogged down with my second catagory. I have loaded two pics but can't display them in the second catagory. HELPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

Phew, managed to get the hang of it (sort of)!!

It's not so much anyone using my pictures, as people posting pics which are from other sources claiming that they are their's, when in fact the belong to a third party. Anyone is welcome to use my pics if they are so desparate.

So you can make yours public then, can't you? But it's a bit different if you spend a lot of time and effort and money pursuing your hobby or, as in Tony's case, job.

Apologies for the bad timing folks! I've been working on the gallery just now, and it looks like you two chaps were putting your images on there while some of my file uploads were going onto the server, hence the problems. I think it should be OK now, and hopefully better than before. I've now added "public blocking" at three levels.... Your whole gallery Any category within your gallery Any individual image So, for instance, if you have a few snapshots that you wish to share with the world, but you'd prefer just one (or more) of them to be for "forum eyes only", then you can set the "public preference" for those particular photos to "N", while allowing the rest to be seen by anyone. Or, if you have a category that you wish to be private, then go to "Edit images and categories" in your Admin panel, and set that category to non-public in the same way. I hope this makes the whole thing more flexible for you all. Cheers, Rob

Sounds great Rob! Could I make another suggestion please? That you only have to type in 'upload' once during one session? If you have a look at your gallery to see what it looks like, it's a bit of a pain having to type it in again. You can also see my copyright statement in some of the images I uploaded, if that's any help to others.

Hi Keith, Great to see it coming along now. There are bound to be occasional bugs that show up, especially with something as complex as this. Please let me know if you find any. Anything major, please privately contact me to make sure I get your message.... sometimes the forum gets so busy that I just haven't got time to read every single post, and might miss an important request. However, in response to your question above - if you're uploading several images, one after the other, then you do only have to type in the validation code once. After each image has uploaded, simply use the "Add another" link beneath to go straight back to the upload form. Meanwhile, I'll look into holding on to the 'upload' sign-in using a web-session. As we were....

M'mm, something like a time-out, maybe. In a while, I'll probably remove or rename the 'People' sub-category and replace it with something rather different; that category is more for arty reasons, so more for AP - I just put them on to show how I did the copyright statement. I've taken lots of photographs, for instance, of the bunkers and tunnels etc in the Channel Islands, which might be of interest to those who haven't seen them. (I love the automatic mortar launcher!! How does 2 mortar rounds a second grab you? I could find a good use for one of those, sometimes!) They're part of history, some have only recently been opened and they're quite a fascinating insight into WWII. (Wish the 12 inch guns were still there on Guernsey!!) And places like the Radar museum control rooms, and the WWII control room at RAF Digby - which would, I believe, have been used in the defence of Coventry. I've photographs inside WWII and 50s aeroplanes as well as flying shots. I don't plan to put many on at a time, and will remove them and replace from time to time, so as not to overload the website. I promise!!

That one's sorted now - it'll remember your uploading setting until you close your browser.

Brilliant, Rob, many thanks! Having put some more shots on it, it does work very well now. Long may we all enjoy it! Stin iiya sass! as they say in Athens... BTW - copyright. With infringement of copyright, the issue is whether or not the infringer makes a profit from it - or intends to. If it's purely for information, as the stuff we put on the Forum, and we have no profit motive, we wouldn't be pursued - damages wouldn't exceed a penny. Like for TV programmes; if you tape them for personal viewing that's OK, but you may not sell the recordings that you make. Also why shops can't broadcast music to the street; the purpose of doing so would be to attract people in, in order to sell them things, hence a profit motive.

We could go on all night, but I have to strongly disagree. If someone made a copy of one of my images, whether for their own use or not, they are infringing my copyright. They are seeking to use my image without permission, so they had better look out!

Yes Tony - but unless they made a profit from doing so, or deprived you of significant profit, damages would be miniscule. I had quite a bit to do with IPR at work, (before I retired), and though I'm not a lawyer, this point was made about it. This is where it gets problematic, though: it wouldn't be worthwhile pursuing someone for damages (don't forget, it isn't criminal law) unless they were going to be substantial - the court costs would be too much - as damages are measured according to the profit made by the infringement, or possibly denied by the act of infringement. This is why a lot of copyright infringement doesn't result in court action - and why the best protection is avoidance. With IPR, of course, there is an additional factor, the ideas inherent in the IPR, cost of generating the IPR, and the often substantial profit lost caused by infringement of IPR, whereas with a photograph, the main issue is loss of revenue from selling the image. It would be hard to claim for the cost of generating the image, because you would still have the image, and that cost could well have been amortized over hundreds or thousands of sales of it, prior to, or post infringement. You'd need evidence of how many sales were lost due to the infringement, and that's a bit imponderable. OMG - hope I don't sound too much like a lawyer here!!!!!

Hello, Tony. I can fully understand that from you because of your circumstances. Flicr are able to lock their pictures where needed, but that does not stop some-one from taking a picture off the screen. Talking about all night, My Pam is in Surgery at 7am so I will not go on either. Best wishes to you.

Afraid not Philip. Anyone using a half-decent web-browser can undo the lock with just two mouse clicks!