My website is picture-rich, and every week or so I get another site hotlinking to one of my pictures with no permission and no credit given. These are the ones I know about- I have no clue how many people have just stolen the photos outright and are using them wherever.
Luckily, with the hotlinked ones, I know exactly who did it and how many times other people saw it, etc. Some are on personal websites and some are on forums and chat rooms.
My pictures are of my henna work. They are up as informational examples of what henna can look like, but they are also advertising for my services as an artist and for the supplies I sell to do your own.
So- what can I practically do about it? My pages are not specifically registered with the Copyright Office. Should I do that? If I decided to make a fuss in a court, what would I gain? I had heard theat there was a $2500 per incident award given to the author if the case is proven (and mine would be). Is each person who views that stolen picture an incident?
I’ve written the people and in each case got no response back, so the polite method obvisouly is ineffective.
Suggestions? I understand that many of you Are Not Lawyers, and I shall take your advice as friendly advice, not as legal counsel.
Thanks,
HennaDancer
From a practical standpoint, the best thing you can do is to rename your file and replace the one being hotlinked with something nasty. Either a graphic something saying something like “the web page you’re viewing this on is stealing my content” or a legal but pornographic/disgusting picture.
I’ll let others take care of from a legal standpoint.
-lv
Not really a General Answer, but more of an IMHO: Wouldn’t you be better off just overwriting each photo with “Visit hennadancer.com” or somesuch and explicitly allowing people to copy the photos? More advertising for you, and even though you’re sorta giving in to people who’re stealing the photos, at least you’re getting something out of it, without having to go through legal hassles.
Zut’s idea is a good one – watermark your photos with your web site address.
If your site is on a normal Apache server and not something wierd, and you feel like learning a bit more about how it works, you can use .htaccess files. www.seadoc.net/sd/archives/individual/2003/04/print-000547-htaccess_hotlink_protection_code.php+.htaccess+hotlink&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8]Google cache of helpful info…
Aside from that .htaccess does all kinds of neat things. For example on my site it does server-based redirects so my PostNuke “ugly” URL’s can at least have a normal entry point (e.g., www.balthisar.com/forum).
If you have bandwidth limits like I do, there’s another concern beyond your copyright – bandwidth stealing. Don’t forget that every time someone sees YOUR pictures on ANOTHER website, they’re being downloaded from your server using your allotted bandwidth!
Come to think of it, maybe I’ll do the same for the little bits of graphics that I have.
Yeah, I know about the bandwidth issue. I’m paying for more than I’m using by a large margin so it’s not affecting me monetarily- yet.
I did watermark the photos. It’s still stealing to use them.
I changed a couple pictures that were on a porn site (still have no idea WHY) but then the people that legitimately wanted to look at them had bookmark issues. I’ve tried putting in a notice instead of the pic, but this upsets the bookmarked stuff, too. My site is a resource for a lot of people and I don’t want to irritate them in order to irritate the theives.
Has anyone fought copyright violations personally?
HennaDancer
Yosemitebabe is bound to notice this and come kvetching, for she’s found a friend.
Your problem can be solved with technology. Talk to your ISP about how to prevent hotlinking. Schemes range from perl scripts to simple radio buttons. If your ISP doesn’t have a solution, get a new ISP.
It’s that simple. You don’t have to whinge about copyright violation, you don’t have to do everything yourself. Always explore your available options first.
So when you say others are “hotlinking” to your pictures, do you mean that they are placing links on their page that link to your website images?
I don’t see a copyright violation if that is the case. Unless you have coded specific access restrictions on your server to your images so that they can not able to be linked to externally (i.e. you must get to them through your “portal” website before viewing them), then you are giving the public free reign to link to your pages and images. HTML is that way by design, no matter what terms or conditions you place on your website. A link is just a link, it is not a reproduction or redistribution of works. An analogy would be accusing the public library of copyright violation because their card catalogs provide links and referals to locate copyrighted literature.
Note that this doesn’t give someone to copy your images, but linking to your images is completely legal if you are posting them publicly and unrestricted via HTML.
GargoyleWB is right. If you put a file on a public web server, well, it’s out there in public. HTML by design lets anyone string together links etc. to any material out there. If you want people to only see your pictures in your context, then you need to enforce that restriction through your server, probably through an .htaccess file. But I fail to see a copyright violation happening in this case; the file is publicly accessible, and somebody’s accessing it.
If, on the other hand, you have enforced restrictions so your photos can only be viewed within the context of your page, and somebody downloads a copy of the image, hosts it on their own server, and redistributes it without your permission, then you might well have a copyright violation. Heck, you might even be able to use the evil evil DMCA to your advantage, as there was a mechanism that was circumvented…
All in all watermarks are probably the most effective means to protect a picture. If they still steal it at least they are giving you publicity. A determined person can just capture the screen and there’s not much you can do but for the less savvy besides watermarks you can make the picture more than just the picture, i.e: include some text and stuff which is around the picture. You can also divide it into two or more pictures so they display side by side and you can’t notice it but if you try to link or save it you get only half. There is software to encrypt HTML too.
There is no universally recognized copyrgiht violation in hotlinking. However, as Yosemitebabe has pointed out to me in several debates, it was technically ruled a copyright violation in the ninth circuit. She must be on vacation right now or something, normally she pounces on this subject with the frenzy of a mother lion.
I suggest watermarks and/or blocking hotlinking via your ISP. The pictures are on YOUR server, so the ball is in your court to stop it. Don’t resort to invoking copyright law (esp DMCA!) if you have other options; it just makes things that much worse for the rest of us.
Actually, I think the 9th Circuit recently backed off on that opinion. I haven’t read the case, though - just the headline of the BNA summary.
Oooh, she’s gonna be pissed, as that’s all her arguments ever consisted of.
Here’s a good example of how to use .htaccess to do what you need: http://www.gotfusion.com/tutsTC/hotlink.cfm
As far as practical legal enforcement against thieves: I suspect beyond a couple of threatening letters you’re wasting your time and money.
That recently happened to me too. I eventually talked the website manager (or whatever his title was) to cool it !!! It wasn’t even a REAL website- it was part on an MSN group. So, if it is an MSN group or a message board I would suggest going above the pointy heads of the people who run the group. Bring up the copyright issue and they’ll move on it fast.
A lot of this crap is occurring because there are lots of groups within MSN, AOL, etc (oh and Message Boards). And as I said they seem to think that the authority ends with the Message Board or Group Manager - LOL are they in for a rude awakening.
Also, I do not have any Terms of Use posted on my site but I sure will now. To me, this seems unnecessary because people should know the law to begin with!!! Why doesn’t US Currency have terms of use on it? Well since it doesn’t I guess I can copy it for whatever purposes I want. Think the US Government would agree with that reasoning? Ignorance of the law is no excuse.