Someone Stole my Photo!

[Manav (Yugant)]

Originally Posted by Davros

The real Aicha S

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...akedfatguy.jpg

I was having dinner

[Chillie (Henry)]

Originally Posted by Davros

The real Aicha S

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...akedfatguy.jpg

And I thought I was fat.

[Visionoz (Bill)]

Mike

What a nerve! Just plain theft! Simple as that!
Where your photos are concerned you DO HAVE full copyright to them as you are the author of those "artistic works" so to speak - in most countries I believe copyright protection would require the services of a lawyer rather than the police

In fact for those who have discovered other photographers' works pinched by Aicha S (personally I don't even want to hazard a guess whether it is a he or she or it!) it is best to inform the other photographers that his/her work had been lifted and stolen for use as someone else's work - that way you can move quite a lot of irate authors against this person

I had personal experience when a clients' photo (it was a spec home designed by the client and used in a brochure) was "borrowed" for use in another publication without permission - and I was reading the publication and notified the client about it and after litigation in Perth the client was awarded $x for every copy of the publication that was printed (not just sold ones!) - on another case a website used an image that was picked off from the web; supposedly a "royalty-free" image and unfortunately the American photographer discovered his image being used and spat the dummy and he actually puts his images out on the web under the wing of the ImageBank and I can assure you that the website owner had to pay aro $11,500 for the 5 years they had used the image on the web!!

Someone else mentioned earlier about preventing downloads of the images - I think that can be arranged, you have to check with your website hoster otherwise you have to watermark it digitally which makes any image posted look ugly - ah well, that's now how the world has come to!

Cheers
Bill

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Very frustrating. I've had it happen to me, I discovered it by accident.

Tip - make sure there's a unique string in the filename of any jpg you post on the internet. These image thieves are often too lazy/stupid to change the actual filenames, so you can just do a search on google images for your unique string to find them.

eg most of mine are like "troypiggo_3729.jpg". If i go to google images and search "troypiggo" I can see most of my images, and if I see a hit from a site that I didn't post it on, I go there, have a look, and write to them. Sometimes they remove it, sometimes not.

I remember seeing this guy on DeviantArt.com. He was posting some awesome images, so I added him as a "friend", even chatted with him a couple of times. He's post a pic of a killer whale taking a seal off the beach, add a bit of a story about how and when he'd taken it. Pretty soon I recognised that one day he'd post the killer whale shot, next day he'd say he took this awesome lion shot on safari in Africa, next it was something else. He couldn't possibly be covering that much ground, and the styles of all the photos was becoming noticeably different. Even if you're shooting different subject, people do have recognisable styles. All turned out to be bullcrap. He was subsequently banned, but not before he posted a "hahahaha, I won't stop, this is fun" type rant. Honestly don't know what goes through their head, or why the do it.

[Ric]

That's a pretty low act Mike.

Glad to see that some action has been taken and the image removed.

"Those who can, do."

"Those who can't, copy other peoples work."

[lacad01 (Adam)]

That really stinks and the hide to call it their own. Thankfully the image has been removed.

[rogerg (Roger)]

That sucks Mike, glad you were told about it though, I think you were lucky to learn of it. I suspect it happens now and then with our images and we never know.

Great that it's been taken down, shame it seems there's nothing stopping her putting another back up in 5 seconds time

[Marko of Oz (Mark)]

chick chick click(boom)

Mitchell, I did try to take legal action. This was a waste of time as No money or reward would be forth coming from a court. Their only legal requirement was to stop using it, IF ORDERED TO DO SO. Costs me money & they get off scott free.

This is what I meant by the laws are toothless. The pricks know this.

I should also ad........The internet did not exsit then. I'm talking 20 plus years ago.

[Paul Haese]

Just a couple of observations. Yes this is wrong and I don't think this is much to worry about.

I don't offer my images for sale so the only person who is fooling anyone is the thief. The truth is that the author has made the images.

I just find this symptomatic of the me now generation. No patience and they want everything now.

It is good to see that the image has been removed.

[CoombellKid]

Sorry to hear that Mike, quiet pathetic really. Hopefully kama will get her

Cheers,CS

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Well, OK it sucks, but she didnt say specifically say she took it, there seems to be a collection of random pics there, just for the hell of it.

Dont know if its worth the grief worrying about it Mike. I deliberately leave out a copyright message on my site, cause basically I dont care much, if someone wants to nick an image, good luck to them, Im chuffed they find it worthy .

I have seen a few of my images around without permission (even in some image data bases !), and to my supprise they almost always credit me . Its a hobby and all in good fun. Either you worry about it all the time, or dont, not much diff in the end .

[Octane (Humayun)]

Fred,

I think the core issue here is that the image in question was a) an APOD, and, b) I think Mike may actually be selling prints of this image through RedBubble.

I also see where you're coming from, though.

H

[Bassnut (Fred)]

H, OK, a and b changes things a bit.

[DavidU (Dave)]

I just had a look and many images and video's I own and have copy-write of are all over the net.These are not of an artistic nature.

[Jen]

woah that naughty photo stealer

Well im guessing she liked the pic Mike

What if you put a pic on your desk top is that bad too? cause if it is i have stolen a lot of pics from you guys in here oops hehehehe

[iceman (Mike)]

Originally Posted by Jen

Well im guessing she liked the pic Mike

What if you put a pic on your desk top is that bad too? cause if it is i have stolen a lot of pics from you guys in here oops hehehehe

No of course that's fine - you're not claiming it to be something you took

It's interesting reading everyone's takes on it and their previous experiences.

To be honest, I'm really NOT that concerned or angered by it. At the time I thought "how dare they!" but I knew full well it had probably happened in the past and I'd never known about it.

The fact that someone alerted me to this one, meant it was worth sending a few emails to try and get it taken down. To their credit, Yahoo Copyright Infringement did get back to me via email, but by that time the photo had already been taken down so there was nothing they can do, and even though I pointed out that the rest of the stream was likely stolen too, that wasn't really their concern. They had to wait for the legitimate authors to complain - how would Yahoo know that permission wasn't given? They certainly couldn't know.

I've given permission plenty of times for photos of mine to be used by people on the web, without payment etc. But they asked for permission, which is great!

If people want to steal my work, there's really not a lot I can do about it. I just don't have the time or energy to put into protecting it with massive watermarks that look horrible, tiny thumbnail versions etc.

I can understand that people in the BUSINESS of photography, who make a living from selling photos, have to do everything they can to protect their work. I'm certain I'd probably do the same in that case.