**Responses from infringers of copyright

I thought I would start a post on responses I get from those who are caught out using my work without the benefit of payment to me, or, as a last resort, permission from me. One of the latest, and probably the most amusing (and less well informed), was one from a company which had published one of my images of a rack of old, but colourful, clothes on their website (no trade marks or trade names visible). They did apologise but were most indignant and pointed out to me that they had not claimed copyright of the image (so that was OK by them!), and in any event, that I could not really sell the image as it contained "product" - hmmm... a rack of old clothes. They also advised me that "product owners have copyright of images and you are a photographer"....and "Any product image(as is in your image) belongs to product owners so it seems that you are taking pictures of other peoples products and saying it is yours and asking money for it. i dont think you can even sell these images because you are not a manufacturer of products." My response was "nonsense"! In a further email they also advised me that "next time you will take image of Statue of liberty and say you can sell it because you have copyright of image. i dont think so.in that case you will need permission of new york city to even make one penny of it." Not having a single image of the Statue of Liberty, I was much relieved but I did respond as follows:

"Darn. That is where I have been going wrong all these years. I am so glad you, a purveyor of coat racks, has enlightened me, a professional stock photographer of many years, a Getty Images contributor and other stock libraries, of the laws of copyright. I will be in your debt and will write off to Getty this minute and advise them that half of their stock library of images cannot be used. I will give them your name so they may thank you personally, especially regarding images of the Statue of Liberty " and sent them a link to the Getty search engine showing at least 1,800 images of the Statue of Liberty.

I wish I had a dollar every time I received the response that "I found this on Google and thought it was free as it did not have a watermark embedded" I really do think that the word "free" should be removed from royalty free image sites.

This brief response from an Australian commercial website who had one of my images on their site "The image has been removed, it was NOT from your website, it was a library photo I do not wish to use it - we have our own" Sigh. Of course, if they had their own, they would not feel the necessity to nick one of mine! No response to my second email and this will probably be passed on to my IP lawyer. Another US web developer who had used one of my most popular images and had sold it to a client, was most apologetic, pleaded that he did not realise it was copyrighted, was a single father and actually sent me pictures of his kids. I have since registered this particular image with the US Copyright Office and I recommend this course of action!

List of intellectual property lawyers to assist photographers with copyright infringements

Photographers would have to carry out their own due diligence regarding the lawyer's/law firm's credentials published in this blog.

United States: Carolyn Wright PhotoAttorney
United States: Leslie Burns BurnsTheAttorney
Australia: Sydney lawyer Peter Knight of Banki Haddock Fiora
UK: Mark Corran of Briffa

Please feel free to contact me with recommended IP lawyers to add to this list. Please give contact name, name of firm and country.

**Stolen photographs - what to do - Article by EPUKs Simon Crofts

Many thanks to Simon Crofts for his article in Editorial Photographers UK and Ireland for his take on tackling infringers. Click on link above ...and learn!

**"We have no budget for photography"

Oh, those wonderful words or text in response when photographers send prospective "buyers" (and I use that term loosely) a reasonable quote for use of images. Click on link above for an article by photographer Tony Wu on how to respond to requests to work for nothing but, "hey, but we will give you credit" (which most do even for paid work). Why is it that it is only photographers who are expected to donate their work - no editor, graphic artist, magazine executive, or newspaper magnate expects nothing in return for their work.

**Why are photographers expected to give away their work?

Yesterday, I received the following email:

hello, i'm french and i'm an artist.
I love this foto and i would like to peint it if you give me your agreament.
After, this painting will be sold . (ce tableau sera à vendre).
I wait your answer et i hope you will agree.

I responded thus : The fee for using this photograph as a subject of your painting is 50 euros. If it becomes a commercial proposition (such as prints for commercial usage), my fee would be 10% of the selling price of the print. I would require an annual audit of sales.

The response: I thank you for having answered me.
But I shall not thus use your photo

Sigh. When I am approached by "artists" wishing to use my work as a basis of their paintings, I always respond with a reasonable fee but always place a condition upon the use that if it should become a commercial proposition, then an additional percentage is incurred. If they are making money out of my work, I do not see why I should not also! I always think of Alberto Korda, the Cuban photographer who received very little for his famous iconic image of Che Guevara, mainly because Castro did not recognise the Berne Convention.

I can only recall one painter, based in the US, who happily paid my fee for painting several of my images. If only there were more like her...!

**Article by Paul Wallbank regarding copyright on websites

A handy and informative article by Paul Wallbank of PC Rescue (click on link above) advising website owners about avoiding copyright infringement. Long overdue and thank you Paul.

**Australia's shame*

Recently, a letter of mine was published in the Sydney Morning Herald regarding the arrest in Bali of a silly 14 year old boy who was found with a small amount of cannabis on him. The usual thing that happens to tourists in Bali. Someone offers you a good deal on some dope. Wisely, you decline because you just know that around the corner are the police just waiting to arrest a tourist on a drugs charge. The 14 year old was on holiday with his folks and stupidly fell for the sting. My letter to the Herald was thus:

What a heartwarming response from the Federal Government on the plight of the 14 year old boy in jail in Bali. But what a shame that is not shared with the many 14 year old asylum seekers in detention whose only crime was to get on a boat to escape persecution in their homeland.

The sight of politicians falling over themselves to come to the assistance of a teenager arrested by Indonesia was a tad sickening and smacked of populism (which is not foreign to this Labor Federal Government, nor of the Coalition Government before them). They care little for the many 14 year olds who are in manditory detention because they arrived by boat, rather than by plane.

**How to track the source of infringements**

There is a way you can, on some occasions, track the source of the infringement or the website where your image is legitimately appearing such as photo galleries, photo sharing sites etc. When you find your image on a website, right click directly on the image > View Image Info and you will get the URL address of the source of the image - sometimes! Recently I tried to stem the flow of an image which had gone viral. As the image was not watermarked, I knew that it was not from my website but there was a constant clue in the View Image Info on all the infringing sites that the image was uploaded at one time to my Photographers Direct site but PD always watermarks images so I was at a loss to understand the reference to PD. To explain, the View Image Info came up with the following

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fFKa-EEht4k/S-iLoTDhOBI/AAAAAAAACks/5VtWw1M8Mm4/s1600/2792kids_in_pool_pd.jpg

The clue was 2792kids_in_pool_pd.jg because this is how I name images to be sent to Photographers Direct to identify low res images on Windows Explorer which PD requires. I wracked my brain as to where else I would send the same image that I sent to Photographers Direct and then I remembered! My Gallery at fredmiranda.com
Are you still with me!? Sure enough, FM used this reference when I uploaded the image some four years ago. I have since, on the advice of Carolyn Wright, added a watermark to the image on FM and I will probably remove all other images in my gallery at FM that are not watermarked.

Using this tool, on another occasion, I tracked the image to two different State Government image libraries.

**No more Mr Nice Guy - or Girl**

After finding so many infringements and getting responses such as "Oh, we didn't see a watermark and so thought it was free" or, the best "Sorry, cannot afford your fee as we only buy images at $1.00 to $3.00", I have decided to pass on the infringements to my US IP attorney and let her deal with it. I am also about to contact an old friend who is a partner of a law firm in Toronto to follow up on the mounting Canadian infringements. Many do not even respond to my emails but then remove the image without any sort of apology or acknowledgment that they have done the wrong thing. So it's No more Mr Nice Guy or Girl and the first they will hear about infringing my copyright will be an email or contact from my lawyers pursuing an infringement of copyright suit. Even when I sent them an email advising that "an apology or removal of the image is NOT an option" and requesting payment of my account, I still get the "Sorry, have removed image" and they think that is the end of it. But no more! I am also tired of sending DMCA notices to Facebook, Photobucket, Imageshack et al although FB is quick to remove the images from the offenders' sites. I am even debating adding bloggers to my list of infringers but they are still infringing my copyright and it should be a lesson to them all.

For those interested in having someone else do all the leg work, a company called
Imagerights has recently been formed - probably because of the new Google Image Search engine - a vacuum always gets filled!

It has been suggested by one of my fellow photographers, who read my blog, that it would be a good idea if an organisation could direct photographers to intellectual property lawyers to prosecute copyright infringement actions on behalf of the photographers as it is very difficult for togs to find overseas lawyers. So if anyone knows of such an organisation, please comment. Alternatively, if you know of good IP lawyers, please list them by Country and contact details. Do not publish their email addresses as I don't want them to be spammed. I suggest that you obtain permission from the law firms to publish their contact details. Let's get the ball rolling. Here is the legal bit "Photographers would have to carry out their own due diligence regarding the lawyer's/law firm's credentials published in this blog". Phew (pays to have a legal background for 30 years)!

United States: Carolyn Wright PhotoAttorney
United States: Leslie Burns BurnsTheAttorney
Australia: Sydney lawyer Peter Knight of Banki Haddock Fiora
Canada: Toronto Doug Deeth of Deeth Williams Wall
Germany: Dr Frank Marcus Doring of Jensen-Emmerich
UK: Mark Corran of Briffa

**Tips on dealing with infringers**

This is an update on my previous blog post regarding copyright infringements found by the Google Search Engine. Well, after a series of negotiations, the police department eventually put up their hands and I settled with them for an amount which bought me a nice couple of L lenses. I got an apology from the assistant of the TV personality and another apology from the Sydney television network but I was sorely tempted to forward it to "Media Watch" but I accepted the apology anyway. Because they were not actually commercial blogs, I don't usually bother hassling them for payment. At the moment, I am pursuing several web developers in the US who have knocked off my images without licensing them. You always know if there is a long delay in their response because they are attempting to find out why it happened and whom to blame. My US IP attorney, Carolyn Wright of PhotoAttorney advises that "both the website and the web developer are liable for the infringement but you can only get one award. The company is likely to seek indemnification from the web designer if held liable". A week or so ago, I found one of my images on the front cover of a Turkish book publication but despite numerous emails, I have yet to receive a response. I then checked out a couple of lawyers in Istanbul to pursue the matter on my behalf but, yet again, no response. Amazing! Back to Google! After many emails to an Israeli online newspaper, they settled my account for the princely sum of $250.00 for one of my images on the web newspaper. When they wanted me to send the signed document releasing them, by certified mail to Tel Aviv, I told them that I was certainly not going to spend money on certified mail but they said unless I did so, I would not be paid. I told them that they had a nerve in requiring this as it was THEY who were infringing my copyright and they were getting off lightly. The next email, they backed down and said it was not required. The weird thing was that they wanted me to also fax the documents to them - fax? What's a fax!!! I emailed them a PDF.

So a few tips on what to do after finding an infringing website. For PC: Firstly, take a screen shot. (Keyboard PrtScn) then hit Start > All Programs >Accessories> Paint > Control V and then save the screenshot in My Pictures (or where you can find it again). I am advised by a helpful Fred Miranda member that for Mac, you can take a screen shot by pressing Command + Shift + 3. If you want a screen shot of just a specific area of the screen, you can use Command + Shift + 4 and select the region of the screen to capture. Both of these methods will place an image on your desktop. Secondly, you need to know how long the image has been on the offending website. For this you should go to the Wayback Machine. Here you will find the various pages on the websites on certain days, months, years. You will get the picture as soon as you try it out. This is very handy as many times, when infringers are caught, they tend to tell porkies about how long the image has been on the site. Having the actual dates handy is good ammunition should you require it. Don't get bogged down on blogs. If they don't have any money (and most don't), and its not a commercial blog, demand that they remove the image or alternatively, they place a link to your website. Most are happy to do so. If they don't remove the image or you don't get a response, then send them a DMCA Notice. Here's a link how to do this from National Press Photographers Association

I should add that if you have images on stock libraries, you should couch your email to the possible infringer that "should you have obtained this image through one of my stock libraries, please advise". You don't want to look silly if they have licensed the image but your stock library has been tardy in advising you!

Update:  It would appear that Google, for reasons unknown, is now not showing all sites in their search.  I would strongly recommend that when searching images, go down the left hand column of the Google Search My Image page and click on Past Year and this will bring up far more results than the normal search.  I found this out when going back to get information for my Canadian IP attorney to find that the current search did not come up with the Canadian infringers but using the Past Year function, the sites showed up and indeed the image was still current on their websites.  Of course, many of the sites will have been removed but its worth the extra click as you may be missing sites still currently showing your image.

Happy hunting.

**Warning - this site downloading images for free**

Yet another site allowing downloading of copyrighted images for free. I have sent them an official complaint and also on their Twitter page. I know its "finger in the dyke" stuff but its time we made a stand against this. It's an Indonesian site so I don't expect any sort of response but there you go.

Just had my 10 millionth view on my website

I never saw it click over but I have just had my 10,001,226 hit on my website. Time for a champers or three.

Second place in Digital Camera Warehouse/Canon EOS photo comp

Just won second place in the Digital Camera Warehouse/Canon EOS "Low light, black and white" competition and just looking at how to spend the $2,500 prize money to be spent at DCW. Probably will sell my 70-200 f/4 L and replace it with the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L IS II. The image is Akubra Man in the right hand column of this blog.

Theft of images and how to find them

There is now an excellent way to find out how many of my images are being used illegally and without permission from me. It's called Google Image Search. While there may be issues with the TOS of this site, it is still worth a try. I have downloaded the Chrome extension (Firefox extension also works) so I can right click my images on my website and hey presto, up comes the image and the location/website of same. Always check "All sizes" of the particular image because sometimes they show there and not in the Google pages. I have found many on Facebook without attribution or permission, hundreds on blogs which I don't really have a problem with but I have found a lot on commercial websites around the world. I have over 4,000 images on my PBase site so it will take a fair amount of time to find them all. The most ironic to date was to find one of my images of a silhouette of a bicycle being published on a UK police website about stolen bicycles. I pointed out to them the irony of finding an image on their site which was actually stolen from my website and that images should have the same protection as cyclists! I also noticed that a brochure on this website also had the same image on the front cover so it would appear that it was infringed on a hard copy publication rather than website use. It will be an interesting read when I get a response. I have also found one of my images of the Sydney Opera House on the blog of a UK television personality (who was once a resident of Sydney) but have yet to received a response from him. Another found on a religious surfer website and I pointed out that I thought one of their commandments was Thou Shalt Not Steal and received an immediate apology. Yet another on an Australian television station website which has a "foot in the door" approach to shonky tradesmen and who has since apologised for publishing an image of mine illegally on one of their webpages. And so the list goes on. I did get a positive response from one dentist in Hollywood who offered to pay (and did with 24 hours) for two years use for one image of mine and hopefully will renew the license when it expires. A pic of mine of the Richmond bridge in Richmond, Tasmania seems extremely popular with travel agents specialising in Tassie who seem to have group memory loss as to where they may have purchased the image as it was not from Tourism Tasmania (as a couple of them stated) as I have checked with them and they are horrified that their name is being used as a source. A real estate company in Sydney was most indignant that I sent him a "ridiculous" (according to him) bill for $120.00 for use of one of my images of the Rocks and offered me 10%. Sigh. It does not seem to dawn on those who nick images that it is theft, pure and simple.

Fun with fisheye lens

Just bought a Canon 15mm f/2.8 fisheye lens and I am having a lot of fun. The lens is fairly sharp but it does suffer from CA which most of the time can be fixed in Photoshop but I do avoid shooting anything with backlight. Images above were taken in Sydney's historic Queen Victoria Building.

Yet another stoush between Getty and its photographers!

There is outright revolt by Flickr/Getty professional photographers who are appalled by Getty's "take it or leave it" contract wherein RF images will be transferred to the microstock Thinkstock (yet another Getty acquisition) without any input by the photographers. (Click on headline link) There have been such vague answers by Getty personnel that images may or, there again, may not, be transferred to MS. Another aspect of the new contract advises that if an RM image has not sold for three years, it will be changed to RF and again will end up in Thinkstock. While I only have 26 images on Getty, I have done fairly well over the past 18 months but I certainly will not sign any new contract and will just wait until my contract expires in December 2011 and that will be the end of it.

**A photographer's paradise*

We have just returned to Oz after spending six days at Kaikoura, South Island, New Zealand visiting friends who returned to New Zealand after living in Australia for 30 years. They had bought an old cheese factory last August and have converted it into an upmarket bed and breakfast cum beach/guest house. It is not your normal B&B and caters to those who would like to get away for a week or weekend and spend it in luxury surroundings. The three bedroom accommodation is fully furnished and self contained, and has top of the range furniture and kitchen facilities. For those interested, here is the link Hapuku guest house accommodation End of ad!!!

The weather was fine for the first three days which was great and we took a whale watching cruise out of Kaikoura and saw a couple of sperm whales and a large pod of very frisky dusky dolphins. We spent a lot of time eating and drinking (not to excess I hasten to add) but most NZ wine is very drinkable (apart from Sauvignon Blanc which I just cannot drink) and enjoyed the hospitality of New Zealanders who are always happy to chat to tourists like us. Then the legendary South Island weather set in and the temperature dropped to 8 degrees and it rained...and rained. But, we did have a good time and bad weather can make some quite good snaps. Here is link to my gallery of images New Zealand 2011

Expected to live on air!

Increasingly, it would appear, that buyers of images seem to think that professional photographers can live on air. A week or so ago, I was contacted by someone who was setting up a slide show on a plasma screen in a restaurant in the UK with an Australian theme. I don't know if the restaurant is actually owned by Aussies or this is just a one off thing. They asked if they could use several of my images but and now I quote from the email "We are on a v limited budget and don't have lots of money to play with sadly. Not sure how you will feel about this request but images are so great and we'd love to showcase them. Would it possible to get even a few as donations as a one off?

Look fwd to hearing from you,

I quoted a very reasonble fee per image and suggested if they bought four, I would "donate" the fifth. Never heard from them again.

And about a year ago, I was approached by our national television broadcaster asking me permission to use some of my images for a staff development website. I always know when I see the term "permission to use" really means a freebie! I quoted a very reasonable fee and I received a short "we don't have a budget for photography". I suggested to this young woman that the ABC has a budget for her salary, her producer's salary and the web developers fees but strangely they don't have a budget for the photographer. Of course, I received no response.

Sigh. I am always at a loss to fathom why folk expect photographers to constantly donate their work. They appear to think that we are not a profession at all and we just wander around the streets and countryside snapping away in the hope that someone will send us an email asking us to donate our work. Oh joy! Never mind the enormous expense of professional digital cameras and good glass plus the ever ending updating of Photoshop and computer gear. And when on the rare occasion they do expect to pay, the fees they offer are ludicrous. A couple of days ago, an Indian publisher (part of a large UK publisher) approached me via one of my sites asking my fee for an image to be placed on a front cover of a new title. He said that their fee for front covers was 3,000 rupees which I thought was a nice sum until I checked a currency converter to find it was $65.00! I told him to get back to me with a more realistic offer but he said that was what they paid. By the way, the average fee for such use using a couple of stock library calculators is around $600. Now I know that was a reasonable fee back in the good old days before microstocks but to be offered 10% is a joke. Conversely, I get surprised when one does work out. A Rumanian casino contacted me, asked for a fee for use on a small poster in one of their shopping centres. The image was model released, I quoted a fee, they didn't quibble and I got paid within 24 hours. No worries. I'll definitely send him a Christmas card. As will I to a German medical company who paid for their image within two hours of my quote.

Sorry about the rant. It's Monday morning here and we are back to standard eastern time and our beloved cat Dougal's body clock is still an hour ahead and he demands to be fed his breakfast even though its pitch black outside.

Follow up on Brick Lane Gallery

Spectacularly unsuccessful as far as sales of mounted prints are concerned but hopefully someone will have noticed my work. Back to the drawing board!

Slideshow of some of my work

Brick Lane Gallery, London

A week or so ago, I was invited to exhibit some of my work at the Brick Lane Gallery, London and after much deliberation (as I vowed never to hold an exhibition again!), I took the plunge and have booked space at the gallery for an exhibition which starts on 16 March and ends on 28 March 2010. I will arrange with RedBubble to print mounted work and to deliver them to the gallery. The Gallery will do all the promotional work including creating catalogues, contacting press, etc etc - all the stuff which makes exhibiting a nightmare! All I have to do is decide on which images to hang which is no mean feat I can assure you. It will probably be a mixture of candid street images and commercial (and hopefully purchaseable!) prints so at least I can claw back some of my expenditure. One certainly does not hold an exhibition to make money and all I want to do really is to obtain some recognition of my work outside Australia (although "inside" Oz would be good too!).

I will update this post when I have decided which images to have mounted.