Website Stealing Images- Warning,Request for Help/Advice?

[gonzalu]

Nick,

Social media can help tremendously as well. Take to Google+, Twitter and Facebook and immediately mount a campaign to discredit these folks and the ISP(s) hosting the site, the owners of the ISP, the domain registrar, the Country Government itself, and also post in as many sites that have members that do not want their images taken: Flickr forums, Smugmug forums, Pbase, Picasa, etc.

Systematically continue to Mention (@) and hash-tag (#) on twitter all of the above with messages stating that such ISP or person or government is condoning such behavior and the more people that go on that site and find their images will mount the pressure.

Anyone who does this sort of thing has to have a really low sense of worth... or maybe just ignorant!

William, I am sorry, I forgot... but you could still know a thing or two :P

[NIKV69]

I would think the admin will just block the users that are posting the inflammatory stuff. Better to keep pounding away ay the ISP he uses and tell them he is stealing copyrighted stuff. May work better.

[PhilDernerJr]

That works, too. But adding work to the admins in banning people, editing comments, deleting emails, rejecting phone calls, opening letters....also much easier to delete the stolen photo.

[NickPeterman]

Lots of great replies here, thank you all. First allow me to clarify, this IS a domestic website near as I can tell (somewhere in the midwest, WI perhaps, although I don't have the address in front of me. As honored as I would be if other photographers would take to the internet to comment away on the photo and their forums about the situation, I don't want to explicitly condone such a move. What others will do on their own time, however, is of course their business. We are now up to 3 photographers with confirmed stolen images, and I anticipate that number will climb, as I have posted this same message on fence Check, Airliners.net, etc.

I have identified some next steps thanks to the various responses I have gotten, but sadly steps that are likely to take considerable time. In the interim, short of going on their site and starting topics on the thread, posting comments on their Facebook (as Manny suggested), and continuing to comment on the image itself, I am short on ideas. Any other help/input is of course greatly appreciated.

It is somewhat frustrating that a photo that was supposed to be used in an article that is only a few days away from publication will no longer be used due to the current issue with this site.

Nick

[PhilDernerJr]

Nick, not kidding, if you were to be paid for that article, I'd suggest going to small claims court to get your earnings back from, this guy's theft. Little effort and a small fee of like $20.

[NickPeterman]

Not a bad idea. I'm even more pissed having discovered countless more sites that this individual has either posted the image on himself, or where other people have downloaded his post and copied it elsewhere. Anybody know the dimensions of photos on this site when they are hotlinked from flickr? I widely suspect that at least a few of those posters ripped the image from here as well as my flickr.

[Cary]

Nick, not kidding, if you were to be paid for that article, I'd suggest going to small claims court to get your earnings back from, this guy's theft. Little effort and a small fee of like $20.

Slightly off-topic, but that's what I should have done when I was young and dumb, and Aviation Week & Space Technology used one of my photos and never paid me as per our agreement. I noticed they used my photo months after it was published, and when I asked why I wasn't informed or paid, the Assistant Managing Editor, Michael Stearns', response was essentially "YOU need to keep track of when we publish your photos - send us an invoice" (how I'm supposed to know when I'm published when I don't get issues is beyond me). I sent them an invoice, then followed up when I never got paid, which was ignored. I told them to return all my slides, which they did, with the slide carriers in poor shape and slides scattered about.

[gonzalu]

One of the best courses I took in college was Business Law and then followed by a class on Photography Marketing in High School. Great two classes everyone should take, regardless of business.

I am going to repeat what I always say, metadata the hell out of your images. It is an extra layer of protection. If you're really anal, watermark subtly across your main subject!

[NickPeterman]

Thanks again to everyone for the advice, especially Manny for taking extra time to talk me through several things today. I'm now up to 20-some odd sites, foreign and domestic, using the image. One or two sites i could manage, but 20? There is simply no way for me to fight 'em all, especially as I am not a particularly intimidating person on the phone or via email/written communication. I am contemplating registering a ton of my photos with the copyright office, however, to try and cover myself going forward.

I will try to keep up the pressure on Patricksaviation.com, and am teaching myself about DCMA takedown notices to see if I could file one successfully with their ISP. I appreciate the encouragement and many viewpoints y'all expressed. Its a shame that when I should be excited about my first article to be published, I am instead embroiled in this non-sense.

You live and you learn, and I obviously will cover my assets better next time :) I'll let you know what (if anything) changes.



Nick

[Cary]

DMCA notices are easy. Some webhosts even have a DMCA form for you to fill out online, if one of their customers has stolen your content. If they don't, just use the template here: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/09/d...ringement.html

I've used it a good number of times with lots of success. Good luck.

[NickPeterman]

Thanks Cary,

In case anyone is interested in reading it, I have attempted one last non-confrontational means of achieving my goals, posting an "open letter" on their site:

http://www.patricksaviation.com/foru...ead.php?t=4226

Perhaps someone there will have enough guts to actually do something about the problem.


Nick

[Cary]

Nick, if they don't take down the image within a short amount of time, I'd send a DMCA notice to [email protected], as InterServer is the webhost. That should get a prompt reaction.

[NickPeterman]

I have been told to send it to GoDaddy who apparently registered the domain (or who he registered it through I guess)

Where did you find your info, or should I send it to both? Or am I being dumb?

(My bets on the latter)

[Cary]

I have been told to send it to GoDaddy who apparently registered the domain (or who he registered it through I guess)

Where did you find your info, or should I send it to both? Or am I being dumb?

(My bets on the latter)

Doesn't matter where the domain name was registered...that can be totally different than the web host. I found the site's IP address through a traceroute, and that maps to Interserver: http://whois.domaintools.com/66.45.238.155

Just send to [email protected] -- GoDaddy has nothing to do with it.

[NickPeterman]

Roger that Cary. Thank you for the info. If I had 5 bucks for every contradictory recommendation I've gotten today, I could retain me one of them lawyer thingeys ;)

I'll let you guys know what happens