Stolen property scavanger hunt with yours truly!

Rhonda loje · Post by **Rhonda loje** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 12:33 pm

Is there any way the Observer can place a block on the photos submitted so they can not be lifted for a use unknown to the author or the Observer without permission or credit?

There are several sites that just lift our photos to place for use in their business or for their personal Facebook use without asking permission from the author or at least giving the author credit.

Rhonda

dl meckes · Post by **dl meckes** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 12:38 pm

Sample Copyright Cease and Desist Letter

Dear Sir or Madam

We are the proprietors of all copyright in a literary/artistic/musical work entitled ____________________________(The "Work"). We have reserved all rights in the Work, which was first expressed in material form on ____________________________20_______.

It has come to our attention that your work entitled _____________________________ is identical/substantially similar to our copyrighted Work. Permission was neither asked nor granted to reproduce our Work and your Work therefore constitutes infringement of our rights. In terms of the Copyright Statutes, we are entitled to an injunction against your continued infringement, as well as to recover damages from you for the loss we have suffered as a result of your infringing conduct.

In the circumstances, we demand that you immediately:

1. remove all infringing content and notify us in writing that you have done so;

2. credit all infringing content to ourselves in the following manner: _________________________;

3. pay a licensing fee in the amount of _____________________;

4. immediately cease the use and distribution of copyrighted material;

5. deliver-up for destruction all unused or undistributed copies;

6. undertake in writing to desist from using any of our copyrighted Work in future without prior written authority from us.

[Delete the ones not applicable]

We await to hear from you by no later than close of business on __________________________.

This is written without prejudice to our rights, all of which are hereby expressly reserved.

Yours faithfully,

stephen davis · Post by **stephen davis** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 12:47 pm

Rhonda,

I think any image that you can see on your screen can be grabbed as part of a screen dump, with the resulting image being editable as a JPEG. The results may be of limited quality, but that is not the issue.

If you never want anyone to use any part of your photos, just don't put them up ANYWHERE. The Observer can't protect you any more than your own copyright.

To my knowledge, there is no site or software that can protect your online image completely.

Steve

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Rhonda loje · Post by **Rhonda loje** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 12:53 pm

Steve,
Thanks you! That is great information.
Rhonda

Dee Krupp · Post by **Dee Krupp** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 1:02 pm

Ivor,

I hope you decide to follow through with some sort of action.

Jerry Ritcey · Post by **Jerry Ritcey** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 1:29 pm

Personally I like to mark my Picasa photo albums with a license (creativecommons.org) . You can customize the license to your own needs, either allowing noncommercial user, remixing or various other uses.

Hunting down unattributed plagiarism and photo use on the net is difficult.

Jim O'Bryan · Post by **Jim O'Bryan** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:06 pm

Rhonda/Steve

If you use photoshop you can embed a digital watermark into the image which cannot be seen by anyone, but can be found with software that surfs the net. If you own a legal copy of Photoshop I believe you can apply for this service.

As for copyright and illegal use. The Lakewood Observer is more than willing to take offenders to court, however we have to know who they are.

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Ivor Karabatkovic · Post by **Ivor Karabatkovic** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:21 pm

Use of my photos of on the web is a completely separate issue here. These photos were somehow lifted from the web and put into a brochure/class catalog that was printed and sent out to residents.

There's a lot more that went into it than right click and save. Someone actually had to lay out the design of the two pages, and put the six photographs into the layout, knowingly.

With the help of Matt Markling, who left ate board meetings twice to take my phone calls, I had the chance to briefly address the issue with the Treasurer. I gave them an invoice, and am now waiting to hear back from them.

When the work of photographers in the community and all over the industry starts becoming free for the taking, that's when photographers have to step in and remind contractors and organizations that there is a proper professional way of acquiring images and it involves paying photographers for the use of their work. My work is my entity, and I have to protect the value of it, because it puts food on my table and pays for my college and allows me to keep working.

stephen davis · Post by **stephen davis** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:29 pm

Jim O'Bryan wrote:If you use photoshop you can embed a digital watermark into the image which cannot be seen by anyone, but can be found with software that surfs the net.

Jim,

Can this protect from final use that is not on the net? Can I print an image with a digital watermark on my office printer? If I frame the image, and hang it on my wall, it will certainly not be traced on the internet. That kind of offline use, in this case with a brochure, is what Ivor is concerned about.

Steve

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Jim O'Bryan · Post by **Jim O'Bryan** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:53 pm

stephen davis wrote:Can this protect from final use that is not on the net? Can I print an image with a digital watermark on my office printer? If I frame the image, and hang it on my wall, it will certainly not be traced on the internet. That kind of offline use, in this case with a brochure, is what Ivor is concerned about.
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Well the short answer no.

However, it is questionable if anything can stop that. Online images including all that can be accessed here at the LO and other Observer projects, are like most on the net Low rez. So it is very hard to get any real quality out of them. If you are a member of the staff than you can get to the high rez images, but then only those that would use them in the paper has access to them. That would be the way that most protect images online. So the Adobe product would help with online theft, and it is getting very serious and many people are out prosecuting and suing over theft. The fines, are pretty massive. AP has been getting hundreds of dollars per view of their stories and images. This means a little local site that lifts a story, can be bankrupt, and possibly the owner bankrupt as well with one use.

AP no longer goes by the law Jerry posted. They believe anything over 1 sentence is theft.

The second part of court is damages. Which now comes into play heavily with Ivor. If Ivor would allow this to continue it would devalue all of his work. So that case could be made.

Now it is funny, as some people think a free website, means there is no loss or profit, so it is alright to steal away. In that case the argument would go to how much they lost, how it devalues the product, photo or story. Now the person stolen from have the opportunity to apply the value. I believe AP offers a program where you can join AP for $1,000 a month and get free use of everything. However in the fine print you can see where they charge $1,000 an image and $1,000 a story for single use. So that they can ruin a life very quickly. Again in the case of small sites, they cannot be protected by incorporation, and usually it is easy to prove the owner either did it, or approved of it. This is one of the crazy things about these new free tools that collect news and places them on a page. Easy to do, easier to get sued for.

I had the pleasure of printing some of Ivor's prints with Ivor in the morning, leaving here and running into Erin Fach moments later. It would seem that both would like a chance to talk about it and reason it out. I do hope that is how this goes.

FWIW

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Rhonda loje · Post by **Rhonda loje** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 4:50 pm

In my case..it is very interesting that my images that were depicted on the Facebook pages that I referred to are now mysteriously changed to another image. I guess they read the deck!

Rhonda

Jim O'Bryan · Post by **Jim O'Bryan** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 5:52 pm

Rhonda loje wrote:In my case..it is very interesting that my images that were depicted on the Facebook pages that I referred to are now mysteriously changed to another image. I guess they read the deck!

Rhonda

Rhonda

Well they all read the Deck, it is just that they love to marginalize us. They think it is cool, er kewl!

Second drop the faux friends of facebook that are just blocking each other, and come on back to the light of adult discussions. Nothing to fear anymore, the real nasty people are on facebook ignoring each other.

peace

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Joe Ott · Post by **Joe Ott** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 6:13 pm

Sorry to read about your frustrations Ivor.

What was done is wrong. Plain and simple. Sorry it has happened. It sounds like you have people on your side though. That's good.

Like Jim mentioned, it's a bump in the road. There will be more. I doubt it will slow down somebody with talent like you have.

Last years LHS yearbook includes some of my pictures. I don't recall anybody asking to use them. It's theft. I'm not even sure where they got them from. Somebody made money off of it.

The yearbook included a DVD. On it are at least 20 of my pictures. About 15 of those clearly show my copyright! I would bet some of yours are on there as well. Were you paid for them?

The yearbook isn't a free flyer passed out with thumbnail images. People pay $50 for them. Jostens makes money off of it. I'm sure the HS makes something too.

I don't post many pictures anymore. Go see how many are in my LO photoblog. Zero.

It costs me too much money in equipment and time to give them to someone who will profit from it.

For those wondering about how to prevent images from being stolen, the only answer is to not post them.

Keep in mind when you are browsing the internet it's not like watching tv where what you see is broadcast to you. Basically, everything you see on your screen has been downloaded then rendered through your browser. If you look hard enough you will find the images on your hard drive.

Of course there are many ways to suck images off the net too. From a simple screen print to slick Firefox add-ins.

I add copyrights to my images. At least when you see them in print with your copyright it's obvious who owns them.

Jim O'Bryan · Post by **Jim O'Bryan** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 7:00 pm

Joe Ott wrote: The yearbook included a DVD. On it are at least 20 of my pictures. About 15 of those clearly show my copyright! I would bet some of yours are on there as well. Were you paid for them?

The yearbook isn't a free flyer passed out with thumbnail images. People pay $50 for them. Jostens makes money off of it. I'm sure the HS makes something too.

I don't post many pictures anymore. Go see how many are in my LO photoblog. Zero.]

Joe

I suppose it all depends who you are, what you are doing and why. If the only reason you take photos is for your own pleasure, then you are right why share them. If you take photos strictly for money, then NEVER post them. However I have always seen the Lakewood Observer photoblogs as a way to get the color and beauty of Lakewood out to the masses. Without giving too much away most images that people can get to on the deck and in the photo blogs are unusable in 95% of all printed material. Only a desperate fool would try to print anything of quality with photoblog images. We did that on purpose.

I noticed that both you and Ivor use other photoblogs that allow for the image to be grab at a larger size and higher rez. One of the problems. Also what is their policy on letting others use your photos? Maybe you give up all rights with their services. At the LO you retain ownership, and we are more than willing to go to court to protect our contributors. Are they?

A reason why Ivor might continue is to show just how good he really is, and get jobs.

If someone is using your images illegally with or without Â© 2009, you should take them to court or send out a cease and desist order immediately. A copyright is just like a trademark, only as good as your protection of the mark or image. Roll over, and not prosecute, will make it hard to ever collect on any stolen work in the future. Call your brother, he is a great intellectual property attorney, I would.

Personally, I think it is nearly a crime for photographers as good as you, Jacob, Ivor, Gary, Rhonda, etc. to not share with others, and help showcase Lakewood to the world. To me, a good photos are made to be seen, and the next with its very low rez quality makes it a perfect way to do it.

There is another very real fact to all of this. Something I learned taking photos at Formula One races. Easily one of the most regulated place to take photos. But I will leave that for another discussion.

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Rhonda loje · Post by **Rhonda loje** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 7:13 pm

Jim,
I think your right. (Oh god did I say that!)
Rhonda