Photog ripped off 400 times

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Sarah Ann Loreth is a New Hampshire-based photographer with a signature style of striking images. Getting ripped off is a regular part of her job. Here she explains how she deals with it:
Re: If You Don

Take a look at this Facebook album of 400 instances of her shots being borrowed, often for commercial work, one even for an art festival for independent artists. Um, wut?
https://www.facebook.com/sarahannlor...7913746&type=3

This is just a sample of what she found. There are many more. I can't help but think of the dude in the Main forum who told me a few years ago it was legal to run any Google Images at will on his blog haha. OK, you go boi.
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Well at least watermark the images to give yourself credit, branding & hopefully drive traffic back to the source domain.

    I learned the hard way to brand everything.
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  • Profile picture of the author seasoned
    WOW! I often expect that I can shoot down a claim like this, because most ARE just IDIOTIC, but these photos are so relatively complex, that they ARE obviously identical.

    I love the one she said is photoshoped HERS makes sense, and the other is like WHAT THE HECK?!?!?!?!?

    She gives what is perhaps the best advice. For the person that entered her picture in the showing, she should contact them to have them reclaim the prize. Maybe the their will get a bigger problem.

    Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author ForumGuru
    Banned
    Originally Posted by joe golfer View Post

    Sarah Ann Loreth is a New Hampshire-based photographer with a signature style of striking images. Getting ripped off is a regular part of her job.
    You need to look no further than this forum to find a photographer that is being ripped off on a mass scale. I am guessing somewhere far north of a few hundred thousand times in total, maybe more. This image alone pops up 500 times using google's reverse image search. I posted it online back in 2007, and yes, I do have the image "branded" on the site I have it on. Sometimes the branding on the "borrowed" images pays off, but I am not completely sold on the idea that it is a fair tradeoff.



















    She could not have said it better here:

    We are upon a generation that believes that any and all information and media posted is without owner and copyright laws. Which of course, isn’t the case.
    Wallpaper sites and Pinterest users are usually the worst offenders, besides those that are trying to sell your photos or are using them for advertising. I have never posted this image anywhere other than on my own website (maybe 2 of them), and to this forum. Yes, basically the only way not to get ripped off (or borrowed as she puts it), is to not post to the internet. I have a library of 1,000,000 or so images and I keep most of my best stuff off-line, but at his point, I do have well over 15,000 images online and I suspect at least 10,000 of those have been stolen (or borrowed as she puts it).

    Notice the the google reverse image search goes to 50 pages, and I think that is the max. It would take me weeks or a month or two to input all of my online images into the reverse image search!!!

    Once you do brand an image with your website name (and you are in the image business), then that automatically tells people where they can get more great images to steal (or borrow). Sure it can bring you some business, but it brings the thieves in for more photos as well. That said, I refuse to put a big X across the photo, or use an obtrusive watermark that kills the artistic aesthetic of the image.

    All of that said, I felt exactly as she did back in about 2002 when I started posting a lot of photos to the internet. I almost said "screw this", I am never posting to the internet again. Once I got over the initial "shock" of how many people are stealing my images, for a couple of months, I put big ugly watermarks on the photos. I eventually decided to carry on and decided that a relatively unobtrusive watermark, and often times some embedded metadata, was the way to go for me.

    I have been pirated so many times, without becoming active on social media, I can only imagine what happens once I decide to start posting more than a handful images to my social media accounts. I have been building websites on the net for 19 years and I have owned hundreds of sites, and for many, many years I have lived on website traffic alone. I know, those days are ending (and have ended for some), and eventually I will have to get busy on social media.

    Cheers

    -don
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  • Profile picture of the author seasoned
    Just to let you know, Copyright laws are nation wide, or at best under a treaty, like WIPO WIPO Copyright Treaty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . A number of nations DO honor the treaties, but others do NOT. Unfortunately, those that don't honor the treaties tend to internally figure they can use ANYTHING they can simulate in some fashion. They may copy software, movies, branding of products, look and feel, photos, etc.... And it is also hard to prosecute, because the country simply encourages and allows it. HECK, one country that DOES honor the treaties is JAPAN, but they are KNOWN for copying a lot of look and feel, etc....

    And yeah, this has been my biggest concern ALSO! I am against the ugly watermarks on your own stuff, and copyprotection on sold software because it devalues it and really only hurts honest people, but it does lead one to wonder how to fix this problem.

    As I said, the place that the OP linked to probably gives the best advice for images. For software, you can include easter eggs, undocumented features, maybe some serial code check, defaults, and text branding. BTW companies like Microsoft do all that! It won't help in the cases I showed above, but WILL prove that they copied the stuff, and stop some distribution in countries that DO honor the treaties.

    Steve
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    • Profile picture of the author joe golfer
      Originally Posted by seasoned View Post

      Just to let you know, Copyright laws are nation wide, or at best under a treaty, like WIPO WIPO Copyright Treaty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . A number of nations DO honor the treaties, but others do NOT. Unfortunately, those that don't honor the treaties tend to internally figure they can use ANYTHING they can simulate in some fashion. They may copy software, movies, branding of products, look and feel, photos, etc.... And it is also hard to prosecute, because the country simply encourages and allows it. HECK, one country that DOES honor the treaties is JAPAN, but they are KNOWN for copying a lot of look and feel, etc....

      And yeah, this has been my biggest concern ALSO! I am against the ugly watermarks on your own stuff, and copyprotection on sold software because it devalues it and really only hurts honest people, but it does lead one to wonder how to fix this problem.

      As I said, the place that the OP linked to probably gives the best advice for images. For software, you can include easter eggs, undocumented features, maybe some serial code check, defaults, and text branding. BTW companies like Microsoft do all that! It won't help in the cases I showed above, but WILL prove that they copied the stuff, and stop some distribution in countries that DO honor the treaties.

      Steve
      I know one music software DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) company that I believe (my opinion only) allows piracy of their main product to go on because they make much more on the add-on sales of VSTs (synths, effects), etc.
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