I know that pictures don’t really steal your soul. I know that once I’ve posted stuff to the internet whether on Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, this website, or any others that it’s pretty much out there for the world to see with no expectation of privacy. However, that doesn’t mean that you can take images and other information I’ve posted and repurpose them. This has just happened with a new site called spock.com. Do a search for me there and you see my smiling face. It’s an image they’ve downloaded from (probably) MySpace and stuck on their servers. Now it shows up in response to a search for my name. There’s also some other information there that isn’t accurate. Apparently, their algorithm has semi-conflated me with someone from the Netherlands. Now, I’m well aware that there are other people with my name (and that’s a whole other story), but piecing my info and their’s together seems particularly, well, rude. If you’re going to steal my image at least attribute it correctly.
I sent them a “take-down notice” via their feedback page. They replied that, “My guess is that your search result came from publicly available information from your various social networking sites.” Well, duh. But just because it’s publicly available doesn’t mean it can be used where I haven’t given permission. And I haven’t.