Removal of stolen images

[Hitch]

I have it in my mind theres a few legal type people here, perhaps i am wrong....

Anyway, it was bought to my attention that someone had used 2 images of mine on their website.

I emailed, and also sent a copy by post, a letter asking for the images to be removed.
The offender replied, but with a bad attitude, and kept questioning my reasons and objecting.

So i have now emailed the website host, who have been unhelpfull, insisting i must get a solicitors letter to the owner of the site.

I havn't asked for a credit, i havn't asked for payment, just for removal.....

They are two images of a sculpture I made (someone elses design) sometime ago, nothing special.
Its not harming me really, just annoying. Had the guy had said, oh, sorry, do you mind if i use them, i'd have said yes, carry on. Its the principle more so.

Any tips on where i should go next?

 

[doctor Bob]

a/ Chose a solicitor with copyright knowledge.
Be prepared to pay costs up front, can be substantial.

b/ put up a link to the site and we can all bombard him with angry emails

c/ live with it

 

[doorframe]

c/ live with it

Definitely C.

Principles are fine, but life's too short to get hung up on this.

Without going into details, I've sat with an invisible grin on my face while listening to others taking the credit for my hard work.

Just rise above it.

 

[Jacob]

Can we see them? Post them up here and we will tell you if they are worth fighting over.

 

[No skills]

I want to have a go at option B.

 

[houtslager]

I second No skills, lets all try option B

 

[Baldhead]

Hitch
Get intouch with the offender again, tell him to remove the images and advise him should he fail to do sothe next correspondence he will recieve will be from an IP solicitor, also state that once you have involved a solicitor, there will be no turning back and you will be applying for costs should you win.
A good solicitors letter will cost £100 perhaps £200? and pray to god that the thieving so and so has a lot of money, because that's what it could cost.
In the mean time go for Doctor Bobs option B.

BH

 

[doctor Bob]

Yeh.... post up a link I want to be rude, go on, go on, go on........

 

[Gui]

This is unlikely, but if they have just linked to your pictures from their site instead of actually copying the pictures to their own host, then all would be setup for a classic web prank opportunity not to be missed: simply replace the pictures with others (let your creativity flow, but anything tastefully offensive would do) using the same file names, and simply rename the original pictures and change your site code to point to the renamed picture files. That way your site would remain the same, and theirs would become the subject of great hilarity (don't forget to post the link of course). :mrgreen:

 

[Noel]

In addition to Bob's plan B you could send the guy an invoice, say £100 an image or whatever. If he ignores it, send another, then a final demand, then pay your £27 or whatever with online Small Claims and see him in court, he should cave in by then, maybe even pay you.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Ooh lots of options here, I like the thinking!
I've recently successfully challenged a breach of my IP, so I understand only too well how annoying it is to have others try to profit from one's own work. It's a hassle to challenge it, but they know they are in the wrong and once you threaten them with Court action and show you mean business (I refer you to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988) they will be well-advised to cave in.
Good luck, IP is just as important an asset as a physical one.
S

 

[WandrinAndy]

I agree with "doorframe" that option C is the only way..... Life is too short to sweat the small stuff.... Rather do something worthwhile!

 

[Jacob]

This has reminded me that that Derek Cohen has an image of mine on his site! ***t!
Could send him a bill but I expect I'd be paid in cowrie shells or whatever they use down under.

 

[Mr_P]

should we all be putting copyright "Insert name" on our pics ?

Not a problem for me as my close up pics are pants.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

This has reminded me that that Derek Cohen has an image of mine on his site! ***t!
Could send him a bill but I expect I'd be paid in cowrie shells or whatever they use down under.

I suspect their "cowrie shells" are probably a more stable currency than the £GB at the moment.

 

[MIGNAL]

I'm not sure why people do it. I've had two images taken directly off my website and used. No credit. Nothing. If they emailed first and asked I would have given permission straight away. They were of no real commercial interest.

 

[Boxer]

I love travel and photography and used to upload some of my travel photos to a couple of sites. It didn't take long to have three of my images lifted and used in other websites. One was of a tropical beach that suddenly featured in around twenty travel agents sites, as well as being used in the Times of India. It was definitely a bit of a shock to see a whole bunch of commercial enterprises using my photo to make sales. It was so widespread that I simply had to accept that it was out of my control.

The retrospective advice I got was that if you put a picture on the web, then you must watermark it with a copyright to yourself (Photoshop enables you do this). If its not copyrighted then its considered fair game. However I also know of cases where unscrupulous website designers have lifted photos and then used Photoshop to remove the copyright, however as long as you still have your original image you should still be able to prove original ownership if you wanted to get legal on their ***.

The only "success" I had was with another photo. I emailed an ultimatum to one travel agent - billing them $50 for the image they had stolen from me and used prominently on their site. They didn't pay, but they did remove it.

 

[JakeS]

If its not copyrighted then its considered fair game.

This is the nub of the matter; the younger generations who have grown up with the web quite naturally assume that since Google provides a tool to search for images matching certain descriptors, sizes and so on, that it must be perfectly OK to use said tool whenever they want an image for any use whatsoever, including on their own websites or those of their clients, in some cases! Of those who do actually understand that it's immoral and illegal, most shrug and reason that they're very unlikely to get caught, and if they are, most people will be satisfied with them just taking the image down again, so they'll lose nothing.

The easiest pre-emptive fix is actually to set up a robots.txt file for your website, which describes which files search engines like Google can or can't include in their indices. in Boxer's case it's pretty unlikely that each of those travel agents actually visited his website, saw the photo and thought "that would look good on our website"! More likely they just went to Google or some other image search, searched for "tropical beach" and picked one that looked decent. If Google doesn't index your image, they can't find it and won't copy it.

To illustrate the attitude that drives this behaviour: I know one guy who got emailed a complaint that the copyright notice he'd inserted on his pictures made it difficult to use them for other things. Yes! That's the point!
I've personally had someone email me angrily after I did the trick someone mentioned above of altering an image someone had referenced from my website to something embarrassing (and, of course, altered my website to point to an undoctored copy), and he didn't seem to appreciate that he'd done anything wrong in the first place.