Anyone familiar with Ehow.com?

I feel your pain.

"People steal stuff".

To me, if it's minor, I consider it an investment. Maybe it will drive someone ethical to buy something from me. If it's major, I fly a plane into their home.

<grin>

Twenty Twenty

I write for them. These articles were indeed written by people who were paid for the article. We are supposed to search through a library of photos that are royalty free.

I don't know why we have access to yours if we are supposed to pay for them. I'm going to notify the powers that be about your post here to let them know...

Love,
Shannon

You should contact ehow.com as well and report them of the copyrighted photos being used in the articles

Thanks Shannon! I appreciate your feedback on these. and the help in this matter.
(what have you written for them? I joined just so I could do the research, but would like to read your articles)

I've contacted Fotolia with the situation, and also emailed Ehow yesterday, but have not heard back. (thank you too anujtenani!)

I feel it's "cheap" of someone to steal these photos, as they are NOT expensive. Go figure that out?

There were a couple of really long threads in the past couple of weeks that talked about this extensively.

Thank Marhelper, will have to check them out!

Hi Carol:

I'm sorry this happened to you. I've had some of my writing stolen, and it's not a good feeling.

I write for eHow. The way it works is, the company has set up a photo library that pulls rights-cleared images from Flickr. I believe the only images in the library are those that are on Flickr with a license to use them for commercial purposes.

My thought is that someone may have bought your photos and posted them to Flickr with a free license. Then when the photo library was created, the eHow writers were able to access those photos. The reason I say that is because the Fotolia previews all have watermarks on them. The only way to get the photos without the watermarks would be to buy them. So someone must have purchased them at some point in time and violated the license by posting them to Flickr. When they posted them to Flickr, they got included in the "rights-cleared" photo library. eHow writers have no control over what appears in the library, so the three writers of those articles probably have no idea of the problem, or that your photos were used without payment.

I would definitely check Flickr for copies of your photos, and I'd write to eHow again if you don't get a response. Good luck.

Thanks for the info Izaykoski! I will definately check Flickr. I personally have NO photos posted on Flickr, so I know if my photos are there, they are stolen.

I checked the photos used and only one was a purchase....but I think I know one way it happened, and I am researshing it. And if this way was used, it still isn't right (in my eyes) to do it.

Thanks again!

I must apologize. I jumped the gun. Ehow does have a contract with Fotolia.

I was incorrect. Apparently last year, Fotolia asked if I wanted some of my photos that had not been sold in 18 mo to be put into a "free section". I still have my photos in the "for sale" portion, but I did authorize the Free Use. I didn't get the details at that time, but now I know.

This meant Fotolia makes photos (sm) available to sites such as Ehow.com and others, as long as they give credit to the photographer.

I'm sorry if I caused any anamosity.