**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 Do not publish their email addresses as I don't want them to be spammed.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.

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.