^^ But you're assuming:
1- That people can read
2 - That if they can read, that they will than read a warning/notice.

From my experience, I've got better odds of winning the lottery than seeing that happen! 

Lisa - just curious.  How does a Google alert manage to show you illegitimate image usage?

Lisa - just curious.  How does a Google alert manage to show you illegitimate image usage?

I didn't see myself directly credited, but I am guessing these jokers are not smart enough to strip the exif.  Somehow Google is still indexing it under my name "Lisa F. Young"...

Quote from: pseudonymous on May 07, 2011, 06:55

... By the way, 1% of my own images being stolen is 1% too many and I'll do whatever I possibly can to try and keep theft down.  Saying "oh well images get stolen, it's a normal part of life" doesn't mean we should make it as easy as possible for the thieves, does it?  Just accepting that it happens isn't good enough for me and probably for many others. 

I know how you feel but realistically we won't be able to catch them all. However, we stay on alert and do what we have to do whenever we find our images unlicensed.

That's true but what I meant was that I won't accept that 1% of my images being stolen is okay, just because it's expected. 

Quote from: louoates on May 07, 2011, 15:43

I found quite a few of my images on someone's Facebook page. I commented on each that I loved those too, mainly because I took those photos myself. What irked me was how other folks were gushing their appreciation with the images and the Facebook page person never said that he didn't actually take the photograph or say that he was merely posting photographs of others that he liked. I emailed him that if he wanted to post the pictures he should properly attribute them. I'm not too concerned because none of them had any stock value.

I once had someone post a pic I liked on Facebook and when I asked if it was hers she blatantly said that it wasn't and that she stole it.  She was bragging about it.  When I told her off, she changed her tune and played dumb and said that she just wanted the image so she can draw it on a bar stool at home (she was apparently an artist herself) ... as if that's okay to do as well!  I was utterly disgusted so I shamed her on facebook and let everyone know that I notified the true owner of the stolen image (which I did).  I also reminded her that I have no control over what action he would take.  She disappeared voluntarily from Facebook after that.

I'd guess she just signed up using another name

Quote from: lthn on May 07, 2011, 06:21

Could you give me a percentage? I bet you it would be less than 1%. What we are talking about is whether those ppl would buy the pics if there absolutely wasn't any other way to get them, and they wouldn't. Most times its just some  wallpaper site to gain popularity for an URL and get some ads. Those ppl wouldn't buy anything anyway. What contributors should worry about (besides getting shafted constantly by the agencies) is that many buyers don't give flying f**k about getting extended licences for usages where they should. That's a real loss there.

lol a percentage of what, the Zazzle database which is over 40 billion? Yes that's right, 40 BILLION products.  I hope it's not anywhere near 1% of 40 billion!  No I can't give you a percentage but I can tell you that whenever I open a thread in Zazzle asking for products to promote, I usually find at least one person with stolen images...  they don't even bother hiding it, it's so common.  You can do a search on this forum and you'll find some threads with many many images stolen.  I've never reported them here myself.  There are just too many to bother.  There are so many that I got to the point one time where I was spending more time reporting items than creating them.  I've had to turn a blind eye to it all because it was putting me off creating products... now I only worry about my own images being stolen.

It's irrelevant saying these people won't buy the images if they could... we all know they won't.  The issue is whether we want to just hand them over a nice large unwatermarked copy or whether we protect our images as best we can.  I'm sure there are those that can remove watermarks but with the smorgasbord of images on the net, they're more likely to pick a large unwatermarked one to spare them a few minutes adjusting it.

By the way, 1% of my own images being stolen is 1% too many and I'll do whatever I possibly can to try and keep theft down.  Saying "oh well images get stolen, it's a normal part of life" doesn't mean we should make it as easy as possible for the thieves, does it?  Just accepting that it happens isn't good enough for me and probably for many others.  

lol, a percentage of your stock income, # pics in your portfolio or at the stock site, that was hijacked, lol : ))

lol, a percentage of your stock income, # pics in your portfolio or at the stock site, that was hijacked, lol : ))

Well that's useless as I've only been in it for just over a year and don't have a huge port.  I mentioned above that tineye has only started indexing my images so I haven't been able to find many of my own yet.  I find heaps of other images that have been "hijacked" though.  When I say heaps, I mean I was finding from 10 to 20 a week when I was looking.  I wasn't looking through the database for images intentionally as I'm sure I would have found a lot more.  I'm just talking about images I'd come across on my zazzle thread.  For example, I may have been promoting yoga products and I would start a thread in Zazzle asking if anyone wants me to consider featuring their products.  I'd get a few pages of people giving me links to their products.  Each time I did this, I would find products using images that have been stolen and I'd report them and notify the original owner.

Quote from: lthn on May 07, 2011, 05:31

...First of all most images 'stolen' (so to speak) aren't used in any commercial mean that would generate a sale otherwise.

I wasn't aware of that. Has there any research been done about this that I haven't heard of?

If someone wants one of my images to use a nice little print on their bedroom wall or as a screen saver/desktop background they better pay me. Otherwise I'd upload my stuff to flickr under the Creative Commons license with free personal use, which I don't.

I perfectly understand that, but imho there's a difference between stealing your images, or you and others wanting to squeeze more money out the market... actually I phrased that wrong... it's more like you want to squeeze 'more market out the people' if you know what I mean.

Quote from: click_click on May 07, 2011, 08:06

Quote from: lthn on May 07, 2011, 05:31

...First of all most images 'stolen' (so to speak) aren't used in any commercial mean that would generate a sale otherwise.

I wasn't aware of that. Has there any research been done about this that I haven't heard of?

If someone wants one of my images to use a nice little print on their bedroom wall or as a screen saver/desktop background they better pay me. Otherwise I'd upload my stuff to flickr under the Creative Commons license with free personal use, which I don't.

I perfectly understand that, but imho there's a difference between stealing your images, or you and others wanting to squeeze more money out the market... actually I phrased that wrong... it's more like you want to squeeze 'more market out the people' if you know what I mean.

I bet most contributors will find this comment of yours a tad insulting... especially those trying to earn a living out of selling their work.  It's their work... their livelihood that you're refering to.  Are these people supposed to give away their work for free to those who admire their images and want to use them for personal use?  "Squeeze more money out of the market"?  lol, come on!  You say this as if the thief has a right to pinch people's work just because it's for personal use and because they've displayed their work on flickr.  If flickr was a free-for-all site, they should get rid of the option of uploading copyrighted images altogether but it's there as an option isn't it?  If you're happy to give away your images, there's nothing wrong with that.  But stealing images that are clearly labeled as not free is just not on.  The contributor is not trying to squeeze the market.  If anything, it's the market that keeps squeezing more and more from the contributor. 

Quote from: lthn on May 08, 2011, 06:26

Quote from: click_click on May 07, 2011, 08:06

Quote from: lthn on May 07, 2011, 05:31

...First of all most images 'stolen' (so to speak) aren't used in any commercial mean that would generate a sale otherwise.

I wasn't aware of that. Has there any research been done about this that I haven't heard of?

If someone wants one of my images to use a nice little print on their bedroom wall or as a screen saver/desktop background they better pay me. Otherwise I'd upload my stuff to flickr under the Creative Commons license with free personal use, which I don't.

I perfectly understand that, but imho there's a difference between stealing your images, or you and others wanting to squeeze more money out the market... actually I phrased that wrong... it's more like you want to squeeze 'more market out the people' if you know what I mean.

I bet most contributors will find this comment of yours a tad insulting... especially those trying to earn a living out of selling their work.  It's their work... their livelihood that you're refering to.  Are these people supposed to give away their work for free to those who admire their images and want to use them for personal use?  "Squeeze more money out of the market"?  lol, come on!  You say this as if the thief has a right to pinch people's work just because it's for personal use and because they've displayed their work on flickr.  If flickr was a free-for-all site, they should get rid of the option of uploading copyrighted images altogether but it's there as an option isn't it?  If you're happy to give away your images, there's nothing wrong with that.  But stealing images that are clearly labeled as not free is just not on.  The contributor is not trying to squeeze the market.  If anything, it's the market that keeps squeezing more and more from the contributor.  

If you look at it from the cold-hearted business standpoint, running circles around this issue makes even less sense, bacause as mentioned, these aren't 'lost sales', they wouldn't pay for it. Basically you are wasting time with an issue where there's no money involved. Okay, some might find it a tad insulting. Ever tried looking at this from the other side? Search for forums and blogs aout getty's extortion letter campaign, how insulting that is (coz that's the only way to squeeze money out of this) Photographers sometimes start to look like these big companies that everybody loves to hate, (including most photographers) trying to pressure everyone for any penny they can get. One more thing to give the craft a bad name. I also still strongly hold the opinion that this is all just a side effect of RF, which a hole the photogs helped to dig for themselves : (

If you look at it from the cold-hearted business standpoint, running circles around this issue makes even less sense, bacause as mentioned, these aren't 'lost sales', they wouldn't pay for it. Basically you are wasting time with an issue where there's no money involved. Okay, some might find it a tad insulting. Ever tried looking at this from the other side? Search for forums and blogs aout getty's extortion letter campaign, how insulting that is (coz that's the only way to squeeze money out of this) Photographers sometimes start to look like these big companies that everybody loves to hate, (including most photographers) trying to pressure everyone for any penny they can get. One more thing to give the craft a bad name. I also still strongly hold the opinion that this is all just a side effect of RF, which a hole the photogs helped to dig for themselves : (

Urgh, I am looking at this from a cold-hearted business standpoint.  I never look at anything from another angle... ever lol!  I'm not sure if you're narrow-minded or just refuse to think this through a little.  I have been talking of people stealing images and using them on Zazzle.  How can you say I wouldn't lose anything in that scenario?  If someone comes along and steals one of my images and puts it on a mug and posts it for sale on Zazzle or CafePress or wherever, isn't there money involved?  If a buyer finds their mug with my image on it before finding my mug, am I not losing money?  That's the POD side of it.  What about images ending up on a hundreds of CDs with tens of thousands of stolen images sold on ebay for about $5.00?  What if these ebay buyers sell products with these images on them, is there no money lost?  What if they upload these images on another microstock site?  Sure they'll be caught eventually, but what of all that revenue I could have potentially earned.  Actually, I would have "earned" it, but it would have been stolen.

This issue is probably a waste of time discussing this with you, but it's definitely not a waste of time trying to do whatever possible to make sure that any revenue earned from the use of my images ends up in my pocket.

ETA:  And to put this issue to rest (from me anyway), if someone's asking the question "should I watermark my images on flickr", my answer is "F#$% YES! Absolutely" 

 

Quote from: pseudonymous on May 08, 2011, 08:52

Quote from: lthn on May 08, 2011, 07:32

If you look at it from the cold-hearted business standpoint, running circles around this issue makes even less sense, bacause as mentioned, these aren't 'lost sales', they wouldn't pay for it. Basically you are wasting time with an issue where there's no money involved. Okay, some might find it a tad insulting. Ever tried looking at this from the other side? Search for forums and blogs aout getty's extortion letter campaign, how insulting that is (coz that's the only way to squeeze money out of this) Photographers sometimes start to look like these big companies that everybody loves to hate, (including most photographers) trying to pressure everyone for any penny they can get. One more thing to give the craft a bad name. I also still strongly hold the opinion that this is all just a side effect of RF, which a hole the photogs helped to dig for themselves : (

Urgh, I am looking at this from a cold-hearted business standpoint.  I never look at anything from another angle... ever lol!  I'm not sure if you're narrow-minded or just refuse to think this through a little.  I have been talking of people stealing images and using them on Zazzle.  How can you say I wouldn't lose anything in that scenario?  If someone comes along and steals one of my images and puts it on a mug and posts it for sale on Zazzle or CafePress or wherever, isn't there money involved?  If a buyer finds their mug with my image on it before finding my mug, am I not losing money?  That's the POD side of it.  What about images ending up on a hundreds of CDs with tens of thousands of stolen images sold on ebay for about $5.00?  What if these ebay buyers sell products with these images on them, is there no money lost?  What if they upload these images on another microstock site?  Sure they'll be caught eventually, but what of all that revenue I could have potentially earned.  Actually, I would have "earned" it, but it would have been stolen.

This issue is probably a waste of time discussing this with you, but it's definitely not a waste of time trying to do whatever possible to make sure that any revenue earned from the use of my images ends up in my pocket.

ETA:  And to put this issue to rest (from me anyway), if someone's asking the question "should I watermark my images on flickr", my answer is "F#$% YES! Absolutely" 

 

The zazzle etc thing is EL sale lost, not the flickr pehom, I already adressed that.

Sigh.  It's not about losing an EL.  I don't offer print licences.  The loss of revenue I was refering to is the loss of Zazzle revenue and considering I make about 4 times more revenue on Zazzle than I do on all the microstock sites combined, that's the revenue I'm mostly concerned about.

Look, if you're happy for your images being stolen and you tolerate it, that's just great!  I'm sure there'll be a few thieves out there happy to hear it.  Perhaps you can identify yourself so they can mosey along to your flickr page and help themselves to your wonderful high resolution unwatermarked images.  Personally, I will never tolerate let alone encourage theft of my images and will always recommend others who value their images and care about theft to protect their images where they can.  I'm fully aware that my images will be stolen where I have no control but I can guarantee you that if I upload high resolution images on my flickr account, many many more will be stolen...  why on earth would I want to encourage it?  It's bad enough these images are stolen without me actually giving them away.