UK Daily Telegraph caught infringing copyright

Oh dear.  The UK Telegraph's picture editor is ill informed regarding copyright of photographers as outlined in the British Journal of Photography website.  Historically, UK newspapers are very tardy in reporting usage of images and sometimes they don't report them at all and stock libraries, namely Alamy, seem to have a laissez faire attitude towards this problem not wishing to upset their big clients.  So stuff the photographers....!

Follow up:  Here is a tongue in cheek response from the photographer to the photo editor of the Telegraph HERE

Registering images with US Copyright Office

There are many benefits in registering one's images with the US Copyright Office.  Carolyn Wright of Photoattorney has a great blog on  US Copyright Office registration

I cannot recommend strongly enough to register one's work as it does add strength to any litigation and a lot of US IP attorneys will not handle any cases without it.  

An excellent app to find images via GSI

I found this on a blog http://www.wirefresh.com/find-out-whos-stolen-your-images-online-with-src-img/ where you drag the app here to your bookmarks bar on your browser.  Then go to your own website/gallery and click on the app on your bookmarks bar and all the images on that page have an upside down question mark. Click on the image and it directs to Google Search by Image function.  This will save a lot of time and you won't have to download the Firefox/Google extensions or drag the individual images into the Google search box.  A neat app and thanks to the developer and Wirefresh blog.  This will only work with Firefox or Chrome.  It will not work with IE.

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, after the current search, ALSO 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.

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.