I had an idea this morning I would like to discuss...
There is this (huge) problem on the www concerning use of other people's images. Artist A has his artwork on site A, blogger B would be interested in using it on his blog. But Artist A is a bit afraid of people stealing his art; and blogger B is a bit afraid of using images he loves, unsure about copyrights and not having the time and/or energy to contact artists and so on. So many times it doesn't work out, and most of the times the artist has no benefit whatsoever anyway (not even being properly linked, etc).

So I thought of a kind of "art server" that would serve as intermediary between the two. Create an automated intermediary between the two, making this interaction between artist and blogger automated, easy and straightforward. Smooth things up and make things possible.

Superficially it would look like a button under artist A's images, that says "Use my image on your site". Clicking on it would make a pop-up appear with a bit of HTML/javascript code that blogger B can incorporate in his blog, and that's it. (So far, it can be done, no "image server" needed. Something like the "You can attribute the author" window that appears when you click on the download icon of images on wikimedia. See for instance this random image, click on the download icon under right, then click on "HTML" under "attribute author").

Where the "image server" comes in, is in a kind of automated attribution of "merit" to the artist (in the form of i.e. bitcoins or money) per click. Each time someone reads the blog post in which the image is used (and which benefits thus from the image, like magazines do), the artist should automatically receive some kind of royalty. I was thinking of bitcoins, but it could also be money (various options could be provided to blogger B when he clicks the "Use my image" button: "don't pay, just link" (maybe restrain image size for free use), "pay in Bitcoins", "pay in real money", ...).

So under the hood, there needs to be "something" (what I called the "image server") that keeps track of which images are used where, and how many times the page in which they appear has been consulted. Then invoice the user of the image every so often. As soon as the image is taken away from the page, counting should stop automatically.

Especially for digital art, there's an enormous potential of interactivity between creators and users (bloggers, pages, ...) that's not exploited, partly because of the lack of this kind of service, I think...

Can this be done?
Anyone has any thoughts on this? (Practical, code, conceptual, ...)? I have some vague notions of HTML and javascript and what is possible on the www, but no real knowledge... What do you think?

I think such a system would be fraught with problems! I can't think of any good benefit to using such a system. And it's potential to be exploited or exploitive, is huge! It would have to be contracted to no end.....actually sounds like a lawyer's dream!

How exactly would this system protect the artist from having their work stolen? And for the website owner, how long can it take to contact an artist? Or buy the artwork outright from the artist, and be done with it?i

It sounds like the heart of this whole system is a way to handle copyright, for both parties. I think both parties could just spend a few hours to learn about copyright as it applies to them individually. Then both know exactly what they need to do to solve their problem (whether buying or selling artwork).

Somewhere I have links to info on copyright, although at the moment, I'm not sure where I put it....

Edit
Actually, there is a recent topic in this forum about someone looking to get some fonts to use on their website. It sounds like there's a group of people doing something quite similar to this with fonts. First you buy the font, and then you have to pay them for your pageviews every month. What a nightmare, and to me it sounds illegal.

Brynn, it's not exactly a question of copyright management (although my idea included to make that a bit easier, "automatic", also, just copy/paste some code you find next to an image and you know you're good).

And I certainly didn't think of DRM's and scams and big money. More a kind of "buy me a coffee" thing. (Also giving the possibility to just use for free, and in that case make it easy to correctly attribute the image.)

I imagined rather a "poor" artist and a "poor" blogger, no big business thing, both with good ideas but little money. Instead of buying artwork, the blogger/webmaster could just share the income, if any, of his blog/site with the artist of his choice without prior investment. Like working together instead of buying/selling. No initial investment for the blogger/webmaster, and some royalties for the artist (nothing huge necessarily).

Imagine you make a beautiful drawing I would like to use on my website. I could "mirror" your image on my site (copy a piece of code that essentially would be a <img> tag pointing to your site, together with some copyright info and a kind of page view counter), and each time someone visits my page with your drawing, I'ld pay you automatically a few bitcoins or cents. It's not about corporate scams, just people working together and sharing whatever income they get from it, or just being friendly and generous really. And about making that interaction easy.

Maybe a simpler idea would be to put under the image, on the blog/site, a link or button "pay the artist a coffee", linking to paypal and/or bitcoin. So visitors who want to give a bit of support to the artist, are invited to in an easy way.

Actually, the system (linking + tracker) seems quite simple to me (but probably isn't, I know, nothing is except complicating things ). All that is needed is:
- linking the image
- keeping track of the page views (a simple page view counter being kept somewhere)
- for every x page views, or every x time, send a message ("invoice") to the person who uses the image.
Would it be hard/difficult to setup such a counter? No DRM and other complicate stuff, just mutual goodwill...

Well, I guess I'm not quite understanding your idea. In an ideal world, it sounds like a great idea. But how to prevent it from diverted and abused? That's the place where it gets so complicated.

What about a system like Flattr (that you mentioned in another topic) except it's for artists? The artist has an account, and makes buttons. And fans of that artist can put the image and/or buttons on their site, or their social media accounts? Then people who like the art can click the button which automatically debits their Flattr-like account, and pays the artist?

It seems like it might be do-able. But I'm not sure how many people would be interested in joining such a Flattr-like system. I'm having a hard time understanding the whole Flattr concept, although I think I understand the basic setup. It's just the motivation for setting up the user side account, and paying developers or artists for their work. I guess it seems like a philanthropic motivation, to me. Certainly the idea would go over much better, if the donations were tax-deductible.

But most of this is just over my head, at the moment.

Well, the idea is to make the world a bit more ideal Use internet power at it's fullest.

I started to understand Flattr the moment I got up my account, not before. You should try it, maybe. It's free. I put €10 in, no more, and set my monthly limit to €2. (If your Flattr funds get to 0, you won't be charged or anything, there's really no risk at all. Otherwise I wouldn't do it either ).

You know, my problem was that I really wanted to give something back to open source, and also give some more support to other artists (apart from a cheap "Like" and then what?), but I didn't. Because one-time payments are a hassle, and I can't get into subscription things or recurrent payments to various projects, because I'm afraid I'll have no money next month, and also hate to loose the overview. I like centralised things (well, for finances etc at least ).

So right now I have a meager €2 a month distributing itself evenly between anything I "Flattr". I have a few things I set up for "auto-flattr" (you just click twice on their button, in fact, then Flattr "auto-clicks" it for you once a month), like LibreOffice and Gimp. Inkscape would be amongst my Flattr subscriptions, if it were on Flattr. Ubuntu too. Etc. And whenever I read a blog I like, or see an artwork I like and there's a Flattr button, I click it. It's at the same time a signal to the person who made it "hey I like what you're doing", and a (tiny) bit of support. I'll be cranking up my monthly donations once I get my recurrent Flattr donations as I want them, and am comfortable with the system. Still testing a bit.

I received one flattr and I loved it Actually it was for a page on my site I as about to take down, thinking it had no interest for anyone. And just then someone flattrd it. I think Flattr is great. And if it isn't fabulous, that's because not everyone who should be on it, is on it. Well, that's what I think now, but I'm new to it of course...