Stealing Photos

[Chappy]

"To the person that said it was ok to download copyright photos to your local machine and use in screen savers and such I would like to let you know that a copyright is a copyright and as such unless you are given explicit rights to use that image for that purpose you are in violation of copyright laws. Images that have copyrights can't be scanned, copied, displayed (outside your home) or manipulated without getting the express consent of the copyright holder to do exactly what you wanted to do to an image."
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That sounds a bit extreme.

 

[Arndog]

Extreme or not that is how the photo copyright laws read. I am not telling you that you will get into trouble if you do it because as I stated it is very hard to get anything done with copyright infringement.

I personally wouldn't ever go after one of my customers for something so petty even if they told me they did it but when they lift or scan my images to make additional copies that is where it affects me professionally. Even though small prints may not cost me or anyone else but a few bucks I have over 75k worth of equipment, computer hardware, rent and utilities on 1000 sq feet not to mention all the advertisement costs. Heh and I am a 1 man shop :eek1:

 

[melev]

Today is Day 30, and I received an email stating they'd not forgotten about me.

The way I see it, I've put up with this long enough. I may have to start a few threads to get some online help to remind the manager that using my images is not appropriate or appreciated. I don't like strong arming anyone, but how hard is it to delete four images from the website? (rhetorical question)

 

[astrogazer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8152372#post8152372 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
Today is Day 30, and I received an email stating they'd not forgotten about me.

The way I see it, I've put up with this long enough. I may have to start a few threads to get some online help to remind the manager that using my images is not appropriate or appreciated. I don't like strong arming anyone, but how hard is it to delete four images from the website? (rhetorical question)

This might get you started ... good luck!

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html


Make sure you check out the fair use link too, personally I don't see how they have a leg to stand on. But ultimately it would require you to bring forth a lawsuit, perhaps you have an attorney friend that could write a cease and desist letter.

 

[melev]

I think tomorrow I'll just post all of my email discussions publicly so that others can read and decide for themselves what is what.

Today, they warned me that if I slandered them, they'd resort to legal action. Nice. Guess the games are about to begin.

 

[astrogazer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8152631#post8152631 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
I think tomorrow I'll just post all of my email discussions publicly so that others can read and decide for themselves what is what.

Today, they warned me that if I slandered them, they'd resort to legal action. Nice. Guess the games are about to begin.

Publicly stating a truth is NOT slander, make sure you download and keep the source html code from the page your images reside on so you have something to back you up.

Their statement would be enough to get me going!

 

[melev]

I wrote my reply, but didn't send it. Well, I didn't send it to them, anyway.

In the meantime, I got another email from them and the situation has been corrected. Talk about waiting until the last minute.

I guess they can cancel that slander suit they were working on.

(I did save the source code from their page, weeks ago.)

 

[astrogazer]

Good for you ... it's about time!

 

[melev]

Agreed.

 

[scothew]

I sorta followed along with this thread. Congrats on them finnaly getting thier act together. 30 days to take them down is insane for any type of website.

I think im going to start researching how to automatically embed my info into my shots either from photoshop or in the camera. Not that my stuff is good, just as a precaution anyway.

 

[astrogazer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8152841#post8152841 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by scothew
I sorta followed along with this thread. Congrats on them finnaly getting thier act together. 30 days to take them down is insane for any type of website.

I think im going to start researching how to automatically embed my info into my shots either from photoshop or in the camera. Not that my stuff is good, just as a precaution anyway.

Even if you do that you still have to police it, that's the hard part, there's a company called digimarc that will do it for you, for a price of course.

 

[downset]

In for action?

 

[scothew]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8152862#post8152862 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by astrogazer
Even if you do that you still have to police it, that's the hard part, there's a company called digimarc that will do it for you, for a price of course.

I have no problems with that (doing it myself that is), i just want to embed something so that I can show proof very easily if it ever came up as a problem.

I didnt know about digimarc though, interesting.

 

[astrogazer]

Photoshop will allow you to create and embed a watermark into your images, as well as editing the exif file with pertinent image information for indexing and retrieval later.

And remember you always have the original file to back you up, usually the person that steals it won't.

 

[concept3]

wow, finally we see some closure on this.

I went through something rather similar, someone had used one of my pictures (without asking so I thought), but rather was presented as their "own picture" taken by "their own" camera. The pic was of their fish, sure, but claiming they took it? Ahhhh....I let that one go, it's their fish anyways.

here's the site anyhoos
http://www.resifbolgesi.com/tangler.htm

the case has been closed, i could care less at this point.

 

[melev]

Today a nice hobbyist emailed me to let me a link to an Ebay auction advertising a bright blue clam. The seller was using images from my site as if it were <b>their</b> sellable item.

Since his phone number was included in the ad, I called him up and asked him if he had any pictures <i>of his own</i> of the clam, since he was using mine. He was taken aback, and when I asked him to remove my images, he said he would. 6 hours later, they were still there. I reported the ad to Ebay's Fraud division, and just now when I checked, the listing was removed.

Score: Melev - 1 | Thief - 0

 

[gregr]

Sweet revenge!

 

[Scythanith]

I'm glad I did a search on "watermarks" before starting a new post. I have many pictures on the net and am quite worried about them being used for someone else's personal gain. I don't want to make money off my pictures, but I do want credit for taking them. Can anyone do a quick walk through on how to add a watermark in photoshop. All I have done for a couple pictures is create a new layer and increased the opacity (is that a real word?). Is there something more I can do?

My ghetto watermark (these were my friend from his store so I didn't want someone else claiming they were theres):

Also, I know with school it was quite easy to catch plagerizations in a google search engine simply by adding a short piece of a sentence and searching it. Can someone do the same with the picture address or some kind of information from the original exif data?


Thanks,

Scott

 

[KurtsReef]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7977008#post7977008 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Arndog
Photo copyrights are a very hard thing to try to prove legally. A lot of factors go into determining if you truly indeed hold the copyright to an image.

By far the largest thing they look at is if you do that professionally and have a body of work to show is yours. This does not mean you have a bunch of pictures on your computer you can show them. It means having imbedded data in your images that detail who owns the image and signed releases by previous customers. Copyrights are not explicit nor implied when one snaps a picture. A non-professional can copyright images as long as information exists that can prove the image is thiers.

Where the image is shot can also determine whether you can even hold copyright to the image. Public places such as zoos, malls are fine... A private fish store would be very questionable unless you were there specifically to take pictures of thier stuff.

Now taken that this picture was posted on a public board and did not have anything visually or digitally to signifiy that it was a copyrighted image the only thing you can hope for is they cave when asked to remove or compensate you for your image.

I am a professional photographer and I belong to a professional organization that helps in copyright cases. Even with that organization backing me and tons of contracts and work for over 3 years I still would have a hard time getting anything from a person or small organization for stealing my work. I can become a nuisance Large companies are the only ones I could get recompense from but they are usually very careful about what they use.

To the person that said it was ok to download copyright photos to your local machine and use in screen savers and such I would like to let you know that a copyright is a copyright and as such unless you are given explicit rights to use that image for that purpose you are in violation of copyright laws. Images that have copyrights can't be scanned, copied, displayed (outside your home) or manipulated without getting the express consent of the copyright holder to do exactly what you wanted to do to an image.

I hope this helps in the least bit

I disagree with pretty much everything you state except for the final paragraph in that it is against copyright laws to use the image even as a screensaver. But then again, I am a photographer and not a lawyer much like yourself.

The only way the website could get by with using his image is if they were using it for some form of educational purpose.

Where the image was taken has no bearing, unless he did not have the legal right to take images there.

Copyrights are not explicit nor implied when one snaps a picture.

Yes, actually they are.

While using DAM software and having your copyright embedded as well as sending in DVD/CD's to be legally copywritten does help your case anyone professional or not has a copyright on images they have taken. Whether or not they are willing to proceed with the legal process to uphold those rights may be a different story, and again having the image properly copywritten is the best course of action.

 

[KurtsReef]

This site has some information on the law in regards to photo copyrights.

This link has information on "Fair use" which is what I was refering to with the comment on educational purposes.


It should be pointed out that copyright laws are country to country and what is true for those of us in the USA may not be true for those in other countries.

This link has several answers to questions such as the following directly from the U.S. Copyright office.

"How to Secure a Copyright
Copyright Secured Automatically upon Creation
The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. (See following note.) There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration. See “Copyright Registration.”

Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is “created” when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. “Copies” are material objects from which a work can be read or visually perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device, such as books, manuscripts, sheet music, film, videotape, or microfilm. “Phonorecords” are material objects embodying fixations of sounds (excluding, by statutory definition, motion picture soundtracks), such as cassette tapes, CDs, or LPs. Thus, for example, a song (the “work”) can be fixed in sheet music (“copies”) or in phonograph disks (“phonorecords”), or both. If a work is prepared over a period of time, the part of the work that is fixed on a particular date constitutes the created work as of that date.
"