Did you invoice the paper?
I should have, but unfortunately, I didn't know the right way to do that at the time. I merely sent them an email, which they never acknowledged.
-hh:
do you mind if I steal that image, assuming a similar situation arises?
Specifically
that image?
I'm guessing that you like the subtle "PAY ME" message?
(FWIW, I do like this as a theme for "stolen image")
My advice is that if you do have the need, I think it is better for you to use an image that is clearly your own copyrighted work, rather than to use mine or someone else's, as some slick lawyer someplace would probably use that to undermine your copyright violation claim.
And what I've failed to mention was what the original image was. To make a long story short, it was of some Euro currency, and the shot was used to accompany an article on the recent introduction of the Euro. Here's the (now modified) "original" that the newspaper grabbed:
FWIW, this image wasn't hard to create: all I did was slap some coins & bills down on a flatbed scanner. As such, its easy for you to create your own version and own the copyright on it yourself.
And now that you see the original, you can see that what I posted before is modification of this: I simply added a layer that contained my text message, and then used the "transparency" slider on the layer that the original was in, to fade it out.
Once it was saved, I then put it up on my website in the same location - - and exact same name - - as the one that was being hotlinked to. These steps were done to not break their hotlink, because I wanted their customers to see my message. The 'good' original was also taken offline completely, to try to reduce their ability to grab & save a copy for themselves to use without hotlinking.
If I were to do this again, I'd make a couple of changes.
First, when creating the original image, I'd try to have a full serial# (or two) of the currency visible in the composition. This is to make it more unique and preempt a lame claim that currency is a common item and that to hit the same exact composition was a "coincidence".
Second, I've been occasionally inserting my (C) text into an image more than once, particularly for compositions such as this one where its composition permits a "polite" one to be easily deleted ... here, the white background makes that easy. For example, there's a second phrase of "(C) 2002 H. Huntzinger" hidden on this image in a hopefully unnoticable location. The only problem with this approach is that jpg compression can easily wipe them out, as would also rescaling and other editing manipulations that a "borrower" might do.
Third, if someone does hitch a hotlink ride, I'd tailor my langage better for the application. Here, since it was a newspaper who should have known better, the language that I used was far too polite
-hh
