Copyright and photography - a losing battle....

Silva360

I see a lot of threads on this site regarding copyright issues. This is an very interesting story from one photographer who has suffered significantly from internet copyright breaches.

As a low count poster I can't post links unfortunately. So if you are interested just cut and paste 'Bugging out: How rampant online piracy squashed one insect photographer' into your browser to read on. Perhaps a more senior member can put the link in...

Cheers.

ComeraghBlue

Its a big issue.

I dont do photography for money but after a football match I put the images on my website (with small watermarks) and share the link around and a few days or weeks later I see the images all over twitter as profile pictures or just being tweeted and my watermark has been cropped out.

I wouldn't mind if the people kept my watermark on the images. But seeing my image and knowing that I'm the only one that knows who took that picture is disheartening.

smcgiff

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/one-mans-endless-hopeless-struggle-to-protect-his-copyrighted-images/

Bee aware (:o sorry)

candytog

Yea recently I caught one of my images used where they had cut off my watermark and added their own. All I could do is request they take it down, which they did. That's the law basically, you can't sue unless they refuse to take it down. It's up to us to keep a check (google image search is your friend) and take immediate action.

spookwoman

Had an issue where one of mine was shared to a local Facebook page thats I want nothing to do with because I had a run in with the owner, the poster had sent pm but couldnt be bothered to wait for response on sharing so posted it.
I contacted one admin asking for it to be taken down because of the owner and they didnt bother at all. Then I had on line argument with the owner about copyright and that i have the right to say where my images are posted and that I want nothing to do with him and was told that because i posted it on a page anyone was entitled to what they wanted with it.
So be aware that those who create Facebook pages for photography can be just as bad when they want their site to look good with other peoples images.

Innisfallen

spookwoman wrote: »

I contacted one admin asking for it to be taken down because of the owner and they didnt bother at all. Then I had on line argument with the owner about copyright and that i have the right to say where my images are posted and that I want nothing to do with him and was told that because i posted it on a page anyone was entitled to what they wanted with it.

Facebook is straight forward to deal with, you just lodge a DMCA take down request with them (actually, online in general is easy to deal with - most web hosts are terrified of DMCA requests, and respond within a few hours.)

That said, I am a fan of invoicing - those cameras don't pay for them selves...

spookwoman

Just had to lodge a DMCA request after someone called larry power sent my picture of lightning this morning to Barra Best via pm

candytog

Also, Google image search is your friend.