In the last few years, I’ve taken up photography as a hobby. In that time, I’ve generated a number of images that have generally been praised by friends and family.
Lately, I’ve noticed that my pictures are also good enough to steal. I’ve found a few sites that are using my pictures without permission, attribution or compensation. While there is a flattering aspect to this thievery, I’d have to say that I’m far more annoyed by it.
Mind you, had they simply asked, I would have been more than happy to license them the pictures for a nominal fee… but some figure that it’s easier to simply steal them.
Anyway, I recently found a site that is using one of my pics to sell floral arrangements. The site can be found here (the picture in question is the sunflower picture on the left). I took that photo back in April 2008 and uploaded it to my Flickr account (among other places). You can view it in my Flickr photostream here.
A WHOIS query gave me the name and contact info for the person who registered the site. I sent an email last week asking them to either remove the picture or contact me regarding licensing it for use on their site. So far, I have received no response.
I suppose the next steps would be to follow up with postal letters and maybe a phone call. But, supposing that I am just ignored, what options do I have? I don’t want to sue her, but I realize that it may come down to that. However, how much could the picture really be worth? In other words, does it even pay to sue?
Lastly, she apparently lives in Canada. Would I have to go to Canada to file suit?
I understand that any lawyers that respond here are not my lawyers and that I should seek legal counsel. I just want to get some general guidelines as to what my options are.
I’m positive the picture is mine. You can tell just by looking at the two pictures.
Furthermore, I have never signed any of my rights away regarding my pictures (barring the rights of Flickr, Picasa and other such sites to show the pics). I certainly never signed my rights away to this person.
Asking for the pictures to be taken down is probably all you can do. Although your pictures are copyright in your name, you don’t mention anything about registering that copyright. That limits your ability to sue and means that you wouldn’t get much if you tried. (You are limited to actual damages, i.e. money you can prove you would have received if proper procedures were adopted, which you say is nominal.)
You can register batches of pictures quarterly and only have to pay a single filing fee. Go to copyright.gov which has lots of useful advice.
I’ve had this happen to me; at least two garden nursery websites appropriated my plant photos without permission. One took its whole site off-line after I complained by phone, although that may have been coincidence.
If it happened again and I was ticked off enough, I might go the embarassment route. If the theft is well documented, let the offending site know that its thievery will be documented on your personal webpage and on sites dealing with your hobby/specialty.
That might convince them it’s not worth it to keep using your image.* Or they might threaten to sue you. Worth a try.
*I’ve seen at least one offending mail-order nursery cited for this in review(s) on the GardenWatchdog, a ratings site.
Another person is using a pic of mine (again without permission and for commercial purposes).
This person, however, hotlinked the pic to one of my online albums.
Would I be subject to any legal trouble if I replaced the picture with a graphic that says something along the lines of “Hey, company X! Don’t use pictures without permission!”
Although it won’t do anything to help get that one taken down, my suggestion is to look into ways of putting digital watermarks in all future photos you upload online to places like Flickr. This makes them less of a target to steal, since even though someone with enough Photoshop skills might be able to remove them, it’s a hundred times easier to just go to the next result in a google image search for sunflowers…which sucks for that person, but eh, if someone’s dead bent on stealing, they’re going to steal, best you can do is make sure they don’t steal from you.
I know. However, I personally hate watermarking photos.
I have begun to put a copyright notice on them*, and, as per the suggestion above, I will begin copyrighting them.
Zev Steinhardt
The difference being that my copyright notice doesn’t obscure the picture. Watermarking, on the other hand, will obscure it (which is what it’s supposed to do.)
If you dislike watermarks, the other thing you could do is take a picture of the picture, and post that. Then it would be unuseable as a background, but still allow you to display your work online.
Here’s my take:
Were you ever planning on selling this image? If not, just let them have it. You can write them and ask to be credited, but basically, if you put an image on the web, you need to expect for it to be stolen.
Doing anything else is just going to be a waste of time, and make you crazy.
Just take pride in the fact that someone likes your work. I enjoy it when I see my photos come up in Google image search, but that’s because I never intended on selling them in the first place.
That’s usually the approach I take when someone takes my work for non-commercial purposes (although I will sometimes shoot off a letter at least asking to be credited). However, it just strikes me as wrong when someone does it for commercial purposes.
This is not some backyard blogger who nicked his photo to illustrate a story about how much she loves pretty flowers. This is clearly a for-profit website, one that is attempting to make money by aggregating items that might be of interest to consumers. Hilariously, the site has its own copyright notice at the bottom of its home page.
Like you, i don’t put my pictures online with the intention of selling them. But i also don’t put them online with the intention that they will be taken, without my permission, and used to sell a product that i might not want my work associated with, for the financial benefit of someone who never even had the courtesy to contact me about using my images.
One problem with the increasing affordability and quality of digital cameras, as well as the dramatic growth of online picture-sharing sites, is that plenty of for-profit entities, including advertising and PR firms, now do their best to get images for free, or for almost no money, relying on the fact that amateurs will be flattered to have their photos displayed on someone else’s website.
What’s ended up happening is that amateur photographers often end up subsidizing large, for-profit enterprises by allowing use of their images very cheaply or for free. And professional photographers, people who actually need to make a living from their images, find themselves losing customers because businesses can get pictures for nothing by just grabbing them from the internet, or just shooting out a few emails offering amateurs the chance for some “exposure” if they are willing to hand over their pictures for free.
It’s worth it to write the site when they steal your stuff. Some of them are decent and do it due to sheer incompetence of the staff. I’ve gotten a couple of nice gift certificates that way.
