a reason to watermark your pics!

[andiwm2003]

just found this link on dpreview.

i'm not sure if i should laugh or if this is scary

anyway, it's a 1 in a million chance

http://www.extraordinarymommy.com/blog/are-you-kidding-me/stolen-picture/

 

[joro]

just found this link on dpreview.

i'm not sure if i should laugh or if this is scary

anyway, it's a 1 in a million chance

http://www.extraordinarymommy.com/blog/are-you-kidding-me/stolen-picture/

Wow, as a photographer that's crazy to think that someone would blatantly violate copyright. I to some degree understand non-commercial use but this person is really putting themselves out there using an unauthorized picture in commercial use. Looks like time to get an international lawyer involved.

 

[r.j.s]

That'd pretty freaky, and it makes you wonder.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

It's a good idea not to post a full size image on the Internet, but a "web ready' small version of it. For example, one can always reduce the size of a photo to around 700 x 400 or so pixels, and then set it so it's at its maximum quality possible within 100KB in size. This is easily done with Graphic Converter and PSE6, and here is an example:

It looks good on the screen, but enlarging it further drops its quality quite fast. This one is perhaps 98KB in size.

 

[jbernie]

Wow, as a photographer that's crazy to think that someone would blatantly violate copyright. I to some degree understand non-commercial use but this person is really putting themselves out there using an unauthorized picture in commercial use. Looks like time to get an international lawyer involved.

If the person who "took" it originally was in Europe and knew the owner was in the USA then they probably figured the odds of being caught were pretty minute.

 

[MisterMe]

just found this link on dpreview.

i'm not sure if i should laugh or if this is scary

anyway, it's a 1 in a million chance

http://www.extraordinarymommy.com/blog/are-you-kidding-me/stolen-picture/

This is hardly new. A young man I knew 20 years ago discovered that he was a model for an international hair products manufacturer. A picture taken of him by an American photographer was used without the young man's permission by an offshore ad agency.

Long story short: Until there is a single international legal standard for such things, these incidents will continue to occur. By a fluke of luck this family discovered their image used in this way. However, they are by no means the only ones. Neither will they be the last. Not by a long shot.

 

[superted666]

Yea this doesnt suprise me, it happens a lot more than you might think.

I had some photo's i had taken of a club on fire used in 3 newspapers/2 magazines and 3 websites without permission! All off my flickr account and there the ones i spotted!

Also the BBC got into trouble recently for using images as backdrops to news programs without consent!

 

[designgeek]

That is really freaky. Didn't have any idea this kind of thing happened.

 

[PimpDaddy]

This kind of thing happens all the time.
I've had to of the biggest newspapers in my country use some of my pics without permission 7-8 times. Also happened with at rather large magazine.

I think they just take the chance sometimes.

 

[iindigo]

This doesn't happen only in photography.

A few years ago, someone on these boards posted saying they needed a really high-resolution aqua Apple logo. I made one for them, saved it with transparency (PNG) and posted it.

Over the years, more and more people used it without my permission. Uses ranged from Myspace page backgrounds to art for eBay auctions to avatars to everything else in between. It's even been printed in at least two magazines I know of and possibly more.

It eventually got to the point where around 55GB of my site's monthly bandwidth was taken from hotlinks of that single Apple image, and that doesn't even account for those who downloaded it and hosted it themselves.

 

[pprior]

It eventually got to the point where around 55GB of my site's monthly bandwidth was taken from hotlinks of that single Apple image, and that doesn't even account for those who downloaded it and hosted it themselves.

Change to image on your site to something really obnoxious with a label of "I steal images and am a piece of drek" or something like that. Let the cyberlinkers have that on their sites for awhile until they figure it out.

I saw an ebay auction do that once - the guy had lifted a pic from another auction and the original guy got pissed and turned it into a rather rude/crude pic and text linked under it. As the 2nd auction had a referenced link of the pic, it was hilarious.

 

[bld44]

Wow, as a photographer that's crazy to think that someone would blatantly violate copyright.

Crazy? It happens here in the US all the time.

 

[GoCubsGo]

In all fairness, they do look like an utterly disgustingly perfect family of 4.

 

[iindigo]

Change to image on your site to something really obnoxious with a label of "I steal images and am a piece of drek" or something like that. Let the cyberlinkers have that on their sites for awhile until they figure it out.

I saw an ebay auction do that once - the guy had lifted a pic from another auction and the original guy got pissed and turned it into a rather rude/crude pic and text linked under it. As the 2nd auction had a referenced link of the pic, it was hilarious.

Well I didn't take the rude route, but I did replace the image with this:

Bandwidth has now dropped back to reasonable levels as a result

 

[sangosimo]

I just release all my photos as creative commons non commercial and just pray.