According to his bio, Jesse Chen is a software engineer at Facebook and recent graduate of UC Berkeley. Jesse has a personal blog which we recently stumbled across that includes a blog post from 2012 that detailed how to go about stealing copyrighted images and removing watermarks.
The post (UPDATE: The blog post has since been removed.) starts off by congratulating recent college grads and expressing frustration about not being able to right click proofs of grad pictures (in order to avoid paying for them). But never fear, Jesse Chen and Jonathan Tien have come to the rescue with a tutorial to show you how to rip off the photographer who took them for you by bypassing the blocked right click and removing that "ugly copyright overlay" in Photoshop.
Jesse links to his own graduation images, here which he uses in the tutorial.
The article continues by detailing the steps involved to get to a high-res copy of the image (still watermarked at this point) in three different browsers. [UPDATE] in respect to Grad Images we have taken down the original screencaps and have replaced them.
Click to view larger.
Click to view larger.
And just like that you're a master Photoshop-wielding image thief. Congrats.
This attitude towards photography is toxic and seems like it's becoming more and more pervasive. What Jesse fails to realize is that the photographer who took those images owns them- there's a copyright notice for a reason. As a software engineer, I'm sure Jesse wouldn't be cool with someone stealing some of his code for use in their own website, even though it can be done just as easily. This tutorial is not about "[taking] back what's yours to begin with," it's stealing what someone would kindly sell you (as low as $10). If you want free pictures have your family take them.
Even if Jesse is posting as himself and not as a representative of Facebook, when you work for a company and explicitly show that in your profile, your words are associated with that brand. Disappointing, to say the least.
If you'd like to see the original post for yourself you can check it out here. UPDATE: The blog post has since been removed.
The problem with people today is they don't want to be accountable. And when called out, they make up some lame excuse. Others want to be "discreet", pamper and mollycoddle the offender when they handle the situation. You may object to mob mentality, but in some situations it's appropriate. With social media being what it is today, one might want to think twice before putting something out there that can affect someone else's livelihood because of the potential negative blowback. If he got tons of praise on his blog about it, how it is different than chastising him in a public forum? The message just isn't supportive. Yeah you might say, we should be better than that and take the high road. If this was a different situation, I would agree. But these "young cats" get way too much babying and the degree of self-entitlement is staggering. I mean this is life and life is tough. Your pictures cost money so quit whining, man up and pay it. This business of "sparing the rod" when it comes to kids today needs to stop.
No, Tyler, you're missing the point. Most people are honest and don't rip off copyrighted images even if they know how. This guy should have known better. Shaming him publicly is a suitable punishment that fits the misdeed.
"stealing the profits" omg, if you, who are into photography and must understand about all this, are completelly wrong and use the wrong terms, how could you possible expect someone who is not into photograpy (even if this may not be the case) to know what is right, what is wrong and to understand what he is doing?
Lets see, since this post went somewhat viral a lot of people that actually don't care about intellectual property gained access to a webpage that was so obscure that it remained hidden to the public general public for 2yrs. Thanks to the nature of the internet and various internet caches this webpage is now being seen by a far larger audience and being used for theft by more people than it did for 2yrs when it was obscure.
If we had to put a dollar value on it do you think Mr. Chen's webpage had a larger financial impact on photographers before this post went viral or after? Perhaps just from the financial point approaching Mr. Chen privately might have been better?
Given his position, which according to LinkedIn is "I currently work on the Photos team at Facebook", and that on his blog he claims "There is very little that I do not know when it comes to technology", I would think the public lashing is as relevant to his position as it is to his humility.
if You think it`s bad to show the tricks about removing the proofs... then... WHY ARE YOU SHOWING IT HERE? why do you make it more popular?
Valid point, I'm sharing it here because this is a community of photo professionals, typically we're not the ones doing the theft.
Well ain't THAT something.
There are crooks in every profession. Ripping off visual concepts, using part of an image for something else, etc etc etc...
I'm pretty sure there ARE less than holy photographers out there, they might not visit here or be as active as the rest of them... but there are..
I don t agree with you Rogers, Michal doesn't have a valid point. Your post is very good and besides what that guy did was wrong by stealing images he didn't took.... IT SHOWED to me what not to do or what to change to avoid somebody steal my pics. I think all you can learn about photography even securing them is important. Not just claiming or complaining to others not to steal your images but knowing how can that be done so you avoid mistakes
very good post from you
Thank you
As if knowing how to save a photo from the web and using content aware is a trade secret. Come on, anyone who wants to steal a photo will have knew this (or a similar technique) already.
The point of this post isn't the technique itself but the author's attitude towards photographers, which is sad considering the guy is more or less also an artist (coder).
404ed !
Gnarly! I took a quicky webarchive before the post went live just to be safe.
The a$$hole understands copyright and permissions well enough to have this on his resume:
"Brand Permissions Request Form: Redesigned the entire brand request
submissions flow that hundreds of companies go through every single day
to use Facebook's trademarks and screenshots."
Gee, you can help Facebook protect their IP, but it's no-holds-barred when it comes to other people's IP? Jerkoff.
He seems to have removed the post. The link is still there in his main site, but it seems to go nowhere. Maybe he learned his lesson?
The irony is that his blog is filled with posts on how to manage your money and manage your retirement. I wonder if not letting people steal your images online is a good way to manage your money?
If you follow the link to Jonathan Tien's site, you will see that he is part of an on campus Christian group and hands out tracts at Berkley. What Would Jesus Do? Not steal photos....
And it gets better. He worked for Bibles for America lol.
Nothing is ever truly deleted from the Internet... http://web.archive.org/web/20130917042937/http://www.jessechen.net/blog/...
Boom!!!
jajajjajaj that was really funny ,,, I am completely against what the guy did (stealing the photos for him) but your answer made me laugh a lot.
I'm glad his post was removed, but I also don't think you should have the full tutorial here. The before and after images will suffice. Just because this is a site meant for photographers doesn't mean that other people won't find your post and try to steal someone's stuff.
I totally agree with the sprit of that. I'd rather not proliferate a technique to steal images but I feel it's important to retain a copy of the post, especially now that it's been removed.
You're contradicting yourself, because proliferating a technique to steal images is EXACTLY what you're doing by duplicating the entire tutorial.
wake the hell up!
If you look at the screen shots above, most of the instructions are blurred out.
This thread is dedicated to exposing the ethics and illegalities.
Thanks for letting me know. But the blurring has just been done (and I'm very glad of it!) When the article was first posted and for several hours afterward the instructions were fully visible - even though the original tutorial had been removed. During that time it was shared over 600 times on facebook, and I hope it's only links to the now blurred article that appear there.
There's no genie being let out of the bottle here. Chen's article is forever web cached and can still be gotten to by anyone who wishes to read up on such techniques. That FStoppers posted his article in it's entirety is not going to keep those who are deadest in violating CI and IP. That come from people with a motivation to try to cheat someone out of something -- a thief.
You can get this all over the place. It isn't a secret technique or anything that I haven't seen detailed at least half a dozen other places. Posting or not posting is inconsequential. It actually serves to prove how completely and mindfully he intended to defeat copyright and for purposes of exposing this guy, I'm not worried about it.
Are you afraid of the knowledge?
I think it's absolutely counter-intuitive to repost this guy's tutorial. It's like saying "we think this thing this guy did was so terrible that we're going to keep doing it just to show everyone how terrible it was." What kind of sense does that make?
Because for one, it's not top secret. Every photographer worth their own salt knows these techniques. For number two, Chen's post illustrates step-by-step how he defeated a commercial photographer's work -- in effect, he showed absolute intent and knowledge of what he was doing.
Now, let's put our common sense hat on for a moment. How many people do you know who are actually going to execute this lengthy 13 step tut? Not many but that's not the point. He's a Facebook employee both on and off the clock, what he's documented is unlawful civil conduct, conduct that does not reflect well on Facebook as a company not to mention the man tells us that he is on the Facebook Photos team.
Oh, the good old "everyone's doing it" excuse. That certainly makes it okay to put the full tutorial up here, because it's easy enough to find everywhere else. I've got news for you buddy, that excuse doesn't work in court. But luckily for you this is the internet where everybody's judge and jury.
But if you'd read my original comment, you'd probably have inferred that I wasn't suggesting that this entire article be scrubbed, but only (as I quite clearly said) that the before and after shots would have sufficed to prove the point that this Facebook engineer was advocating stealing intellectual property.
Well, "buddy", good luck in trying to police it then. All I'm saying is that that cat long has been out of the bag and because it is on the internet everywhere right now, does little to no good to not show the details of "his" actions. And like I said in another post, I much rather prefer the SLR Lounge approach. I'm not advocating spreading the word because the word has already been spread. Those who are all of a sudden alarmed by this post are probably the ones who had no clue it was possible in the first place but working photogs like myself have known of these techniques for years.
Reported to the relevant authorities, theft is theft,
GradImages is based in Clemson, SC. I will make sure they see this.
Take that back. GradPhotos is in Clemson. GradImages is in Tallahassee.
They are well aware of it now. Several of my associates and friends have sent messages to Grad Images as well as Facebook.
They know spoke to them earlier today, as does the HR department at Facebook. Theft is theft,
I sure Facebook is probably in the process of making him employee of the month.
spilt my tea, thanks Steve,
arial is not the same as helvetica, lemme tell ya kid.
Lol that totally bothered me, too.
Having been a pro photographer for the past 30 years, I am really astonished at the amount of people defending this guy's actions and Fstoppers have done us all a favour by publicising copyright theft. Thank you!
I didn't see anybody defending his actions. But the guy has since removed his tutorial, yet this FStoppers post has duplicated it in full. I think they should remove the detailed "how-to" information and I posted a comment to that effect, in the hope that others will agree.
Further to the above, I'm glad to see they've now blurred out the detailed instructions.
what the guy did (stealing the images for him ) is wrong but sharing his knowledge was not and blurring some part of the post is dumb as somebody else proved in this comments. he just put a link to the post which you can not delete form internet.
This post just helped me to know what not to do if I don't want my images to be stolen
They blurred the post for a reason, several actually.... 1. so as not to support his stealing by teaching people who don't know how to do it & finds the articile; 2. not to be liable if Gradimages decides to file suit and include them; 3. To make it clear that you SHOULD NOT do this!!
He's actually taking a pretty long winded way around it. You can use any http traffic analyzer to pull the image without having to do any Photoshop re-work. In fact, why stop at a single image? You can just download HTTrack and rip a photographer's complete web presence (portfolio, blog, videos, everything) in one go, and upload the whole thing as yours with minor changes (I have seen this done on certain sites).
If you load any image in a browser, that image is available freely on your computer if you know where to look, and the originator will never know you have it unless you do something stupid with it. As a photographer (or in fact, any online content producer), you have to assume that everything you upload is available to anyone with a minimum level of web intelligence and who really wants to steal it.
Dude, it's illegal to "copy" another photographer's work no matter what the resolution of that photo is All it takes to generate a decent 4x6" print is a photo that is 600px on the long side. That's not very big at all. This Jesse Chen is promoting theft and he actually engaged in an unlawful act using his own portrait from Grad Images as an example. They should, at the very least, send him an invoice. If he thought the photo was good enough to steal then he demonstrated satisfaction of the service provided by Grad Images and he owes them some money. There's just no getting around the fact that it's illegal no matter how you try to justify it -- theft is theft.
Please upvote this comment if you want the detailed information on how to steal copyrighted images and remove watermarks deleted from this article (now that the original tutorial it was based on has been removed).
It's not just his attitude towards photography/photographers that is the problem, but his attitude towards intellectual property.
And there are tutorials on how to pick locks, how to make weapons, etc, etc. This is the Internet, there is a tutorial for everything!
Only reason this is a post so you could leverage "Facebook Engineer" in the title of the article. As fStoppers grows, you can clearly see the posts that are meant to drive traffic. It's turning into Buzzfeed for photographers.
You're right, but I don't necessarily mind that. Are they supposed to ignore all the best practices and marketing standards all of us are using? Or at least, all of us trying to make a living or build careers.
Is there a tutorial to remove watermarks? Yes.
Is it necessary to make sure you know a "Facebook Software Engineer" made the tutorial? No.
See the difference?
A useful post would be, "Here is a tutorial on how people remove watermarks, here are some best practices to avoid this." That would help you build a career.
This post just wants to rally pitchforks, as a previous commenter noted.