Nameless images and without copyright
for a dictionary without sense

A dictionary which would contain 'the first Google Image for every word in the dictionary'', such is the claim of the book Google volume 1, developed by Felix Heyes and Benjamin West de King Zog. It is a part of the collection Follow me, Collecting Images Today.

In precision, it is indicated (in an a little bit dark sentence!) that 'each artistic universe is made of pictures either hunted, found, stolen or arranged, revealing an original vision of collecting and exhibiting images today'. (The term stolen is underlined by myself). And farther is added that 'the founding principle' is that 'the words and their definition disappear for the benefit of the first result from Google Images'.

'The singular universe of every author' is thus the fact of somebody who spent his time to type each of 21.110 words of Oxford English Pocket Dictionnary, to copy the first image shown in Google Images, then to place it in strip in this book, without other attribute of layout.

Besides no indication on the origin of the images... It would seem that it shall have there here of theft of copyright, as claimed by the authors! But it is necessary to underline that in back page, 'the authors thank the numerous contributors whose images were chosen to appear in the book'. Would they have contacted the tens of thousand owners of the rights? I doubt it.
As the published images correspond to words in English, they are thus very very mainly the photographers, the graphic designers, the illustrators and the English sites of which the rights would have been despoiled. It is it is aspect which made me acquire this book to know better the drift, no reproduction of which I propose you because the publisher specifies that :
'Any reproduction even fragmentary not expressly authorized constitutes a imitation punished by the statutory penalties on copyright'
You can have an overview of it on the Website of the publisher of this book sold work 95 euros.
If the publisher obtained the authorization to publish each of the illustrations, his legal warning is coherent. Should the opposite occur, the logic would have been that he authorizes any reproduction (and then could open a discussion about the access and the free and free use of all which is published on Web...).

On the content, as says it Le Monde in Frederic Joignot's article, quoting the linguist Alain Rey : 'it is a pure gadget'.
(read Dictionary of icons).

The analysis of the approach shows very fast the limits of the exercise : to claim to summarize the meaning of a word by the first image shown in Google Image has often only hardly not much sense. So for example we find ourselves with 4 or 5 times with the portrait of Obama (for what terms ???) and for bushes is posted(shown), obviously George Bush...
L'analyse de la démarche montre très vite les limites de l’exercice : prétendre résumer le sens d'un mot par la première image affichée dans Google Image n'a souvent que fort peu de sens. Ainsi par exemple on se retrouve avec 4 ou 5 fois avec le portrait d'Obama (pour quels termes ???) et pour bush (broussailles) est affiché, évidemment Georges Bush ...
And on the other hand it is to underestimate voluntarily that most of the words possess several senses according to their context. In their answer in image, we do not know which corresponds. The term pilot is a good example with all the senses which it can have...

To demonstrate better the insignificance of the approach I used Google Images on my own production (it was not necessary question to publish here images not belonging to me). Here are thus below some results drawn from approximately 4500 photos (on so many pages) that I published this day on my various sites, knowing that these results compared of course nothing to do with a search on several one hundred million images.
The searches in Google Images are thus (in French !) under the shape "Norbert Pousseur" abandon ( abandoning ) (quotation marks to select all that I signed of my name, more the term, here abandon. The results correspond to those of January, 2014. Afterward these can change (according to the indexations of Google).

The first image proposed on the wall of images of Google is sometimes relevant, but most of the time much less because it is the result of very complex procedures of indexation by Google which places in the first one the result which has the best rank by a mixture :
- Of popularity - the most consulted,
- Of popularity - that resulting from the page which has most link towards her,
- Of better buyer of keywords (who can have nothing to do with the one who is looked for),
- Or of efficiency of the code of pages...
- ...
Every day the millions of photos are added all over the world and the procedures of indexation of search engines are ceaselessly refined what makes that the results are never the same...
So during a whole year, in 2012, one of my photos of this mini-series 'photography of the week' stayed in first rank for this search (photography of the week). It is relegated at the moment to a very distant page !

You will thus find below some examples of these searches images on Google.
To note that a search for one or several terms does not put in the same rank a page in the Web results and its own illustrations in the results Images.
So, to resume the aforementioned example, the search in Google 'photography of the week' (without quotation marks) show on the Web results my site towards the third rank, while the first image corresponding on the results Images, finds itself towards the hundredth rank.

Beyond the critics, the idea in itself was interesting, but doubtless badly exploited.
It would have needed, it seems to me, at least to see at the foot of every page the terms so illustrated by this search in Google Images. Sociologically and artistically it is not uninteresting to see what goes back up a universal search engine, such as Google, at the moment T. Unfortunately the fact that all the words are put in bulk in the end of the volume (without alphabetical table) prevents almost from knowing what embellishes with images illustrate which term.
As regards copyright, there is an real impossibility to contact more than 50.000 people (by taking into account refusals or non-answers) to receive the authorization to publish labels shown by Google. By respecting the legislation, this book was unpublishable.
Was it necessary to publish it ?