Bildertube - massive infringements

BilderTube http://www.bildertube.com is a Portuguese based website (but the text is German) who is massively infringing the work of photographers worldwide by allowing free downloads of thousands of images that they have stolen from websites around the world. Many of my images on this site were taken from my Fred Miranda Gallery plus my PBase site.  The English text at the top of their webpage states "Picture [Bildertube] tube is the new free image database. Can be found in our database royalty free images and photos that you can use for free on your website, whether private or commercial (but be sure to check our terms of use when you want to use an image without a license. Have fun!" Images are uploaded from anyone, anywhere and are then downloaded for use in websites and blogs without payment or reference and certainly without accreditation. In fact, I found one of mine with ©BilderTube on a blog and after my request, the blogger removed the reference and corrected the accreditation. I have contacted GoDaddy in Germany with a request to remove my images and hopefully pull the site down. The email I sent to BilderTube bounced.

UPDATE:  Good news.  I wrote to the ISP and received the usual "We will request them to remove the images etc etc" but I felt that that was not good enough so I wrote them the following:


With respect, this whole site is infringing copyright and I am sure that the EC would be interested in having this site removed entirely.  Germany is a signatory to the Berne Convention and this site is contravening Article 1 (amongst others) of said convention.  There are possibly many other images of mine which are on the site which I have yet to find along with hundreds, if not thousands, of other images of professional photographers whose intellectual property rights are being abused.  The text “Picture tube is the new free image database. Can be found in our database royalty free images and photos that you can use for free on your website, whether private or commercial (but be sure to check our terms of use when you want to use an image without a license . Have fun” is in contravention of Article 1.  They are inviting contributors to upload images to their site without any reference to the copyright holders and they are then being downloaded by websites and blogs illegally.  On one occasion, I found one of my images with attribution ©BilderTube so they were also passing off one of my images. 

As their email address is false, I believe that your “request” rather than “demand” will be ignored

 (and today the site has disappeared).  One for the good guys but just the start of a long process of bringing these sites down.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Checking more infringements today, they would appear to have taken down several other "freebie" sites, all possibly linked to BilderTube but under other names as the websites were almost identical in nature with same images being published illegally.

David Hoffman v Drug Abuse Resistance Education (UK)

It would appear that there is now a legal precedent in the United Kingdom regarding websites publishing images without prior licensing the images from the photographer, even if they believed that the images were "covered by Crown copyright and understood that the text and images could be used". An excellent precis of the judgment is given by Alamy photographer DavidC on the Alamy forum

US Copyright Small Claims Court Proposal

Click on title link above. It would appear that the US Copyright Office is looking into the feasibility of a small claims court to assist photographers whose intellectual property rights have been infringed. Makes an interesting read. Comments would be appreciated.

What get's up my nose is the indignant ones

You know the ones. Those who, when caught out infringing one's work, come up with "well it was not watermarked" and then suggested that all images should be watermarked. Like all products on a supermarket shelf should be marked "do not nick". Today, this came from a person (a journalism student who should have known better) who nicked one of my images from one of my stock libraries (which are not watermarked for obvious reasons) and when confronted, disputed the fact that it was taken from GlobalEye images when the metadata stated exactly that. Along with the metadata of all the other images on the site. (And I have a screenshot). And offering the gem "I think the lesson here is to ensure that your images are watermarked or similar - just a suggestion. That way it would be clear from the outset, irrespective of source origins of the site (web trawling via search engine versus deliberately and maliciously ripping off a web library notwithstanding)." The delicious irony of the last sentence did not go unnoticed!

All I did originally was politely suggest to the person in the comments section of her website that she should obtain permission of the photographer before publishing images.

Tumblr, Pinterest, Photobucket and Facebook - multi-infringements

I am so tired of seeing my work plastered across sites such as Tumblr, Pinterest, Photobucket and Facebook. Whilst they are quick to respond to my requests to remove the images, I am mighty tired of having to go through the rituals of removals. I sent the following email to Tumblr after asking for the removal of one particular image which was all over the site.

Your site massively infringes the copyright of photographers. You cannot truly believe that all the images on the site are owned by the individuals who post them or that they are part of a creative commons license? With this particular image, it is apparent that it was just passed around your website with gay abandon without any thought by your contributors that they were infringing a photographer’s copyright.

Tumblr, Photobucket, Facebook and many others are responsible for the images published on their sites and you cannot hide behind “sorry, we were unaware” garbage when it is blatantly obvious that images are being infringed. One hopes that one day, one of your “contributors” places a Getty exclusive image (which has been registered with the US Copyright Office) on your site and the first you will hear will be from Getty’s lawyers with a damages bill in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Well, one lives in hope! Maybe photographers who get their work constantly infringed on these sites should start a class action against them and then maybe that they will actually monitor more closely the images placed on them with a less laissez faire attitude.

**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.