Images Being Stolen

[kayee]

I wasn't quite sure where to post this, so hopefully this is the right forum (apologies if it isn't!). I just ran across a seed seller on etsy that I found out had stolen some of my photos. By the looks of his listings he's stolen many photos for his products. I hate to link to him because I don't want to give him the traffic, BUT I did want to share the account in case anybody else's photos here had been stolen (he stole mine off a website I run, not here, but since this is a highly frequented forum it's not crazy some might be from here or from websites by members).

Anyhoo, this is the account here.

If he has stolen any of your images, on a desktop on the left hand side, under the category listings it says "report this shop" and you're able to report the listing with your images that were stolen. Etsy will respond very quickly - or at least they did in my case.

I just hate seeing people's pictures being stolen for commercial purposes.

[worth1]

In the old days it would be like if they came in your house and took your negatives.

[kayee]

In the old days it would be like if they came in your house and took your negatives.

Not just the old days, I won't even tell you what film processing costs anymore .

[karstopography]

I didn’t see any images that I took.

I was a member on a fly fishing interest forum and saw that one of the other members I didn’t know from Adam used a photo I took myself as his Avatar. Sort of a weird feeling seeing someone use a photo without asking for permission to do so or acknowledging the source. I got over it as I’m not a professional photographer and don’t watermark any photos and never even brought the matter to the attention of the other member.

I wrote a brief fishing report once upon a time on a different fishing forum and then see my exact words appear in another online publication. I guess I was flattered they thought enough of the report to post it somewhere else.

[bower]

Watermarking is always a great idea if there's concern about your work being used without acknowledgement.
If anyone had images stolen from TJ, we could look at engaging some kind of protection. Watermarking is a best practice though for anyone deeply concerned about this. Maybe a tutorial would help.

It is a bit different from going to your house to steal your negatives. In this day and age, it's more like taking your laundry off the line. I accept that what I put out there is in the public domain and there is a risk someone will use an image, but most uses would be harmless and fair enough, if the point is to convey some information. I would feel differently if someone was claiming credit for my work though.

[kayee]

@Bower I might go back and watermark all my images, although that's a big job with all the photos I have. What really gets my chaps my hide more than anything is people stealing them for commercial purposes. This dink has made almost 17K sales, with prices at about $4 CAD (since I'm in Canada I see the exchange not what he lists them in USD), that's about $68K CAD. He could easily contact people and license the photos for a reasonable fee if he really wanted to use them.

Since obviously none of them are his photos, he must be brokering the seed - I doubt he's actually growing any himself, otherwise he'd just take his own photos, right? I also noticed he's reusing the same images for different tomato varieties when I was looking through his listings to see what other photos of mine he had taken. So that's interesting.

[bower]

@kayee I just had a look (didn't want to give him a click through on your first post) - IMO this guy is probably not growing any seeds and not taking any of those photos either. First thing I saw was packet of Sungold 12 seeds for over $4, so you know these are being bought in a large volume and resold a few in a packet. So this is just a vendor, buying wholesale and selling retail, and probably no connection to growing.
So the vendor is taking any images needed to 'show' the product, from what he probably considers 'public domain' because it's out there in a google search without a watermark.
I have to say that he has good taste - very nice images including yours! (no wonder he took several).
Have you approached the vendor directly about licensing your images? I think that would be a good approach. Maybe the person will readily agree to pay for the use? You might interest him with an offer to provide (for a licensing fee) true images for those different varieties where the wrong image was plugged in. It would be interesting to know what the vendor's position is on this, you may well get 'Nobody pays for.." bla bla bla, due to the free cribbing that is endemic to the internet, or you might get an apology? and an offer? especially if you can provide more images that better represent the product he's selling, it could be worth his while to pay a licensing fee?

I read a really interesting article the other day, about a possible 'reset' on the whole internet transparency/attribution issues, arising from current and imminent issues with AI. Bit of a long read but very insightful I thought (as a non computer professional). So maybe the future internet will not have these issues. Could take a while but for sure some moves are overdue...
https://www.newyorker.com/science/annal ... e-is-no-ai

[MissTee]

I had the same issue last year. I saw a tomato photo of mine being used without attribution by a seed company. I approached them, they apologized profusely saying they normally ask permission. They then offered me a $20 WebCode and an attribution line. Unfortunately, a couple of months later, I saw they had posted some more of my photos without permission. Give someone an inch, they'll take a mile.

Anyhow, I would ask for attribution on your photos and/or a fee you are comfortable charging them for their use. Or ask them to remove them from the site.

In my case, they had the last laugh on me -- the seeds they sent either had poor germination/old seed packs, or weren't true to type. I continue to peruse their website every couple of months, making sure none of my images are used.

[kayee]

Have you approached the vendor directly about licensing your images? I think that would be a good approach. Maybe the person will readily agree to pay for the use?

@Bower I've actually licensed photos before so that wouldn't be foreign to me, so something I'd be open to generally. However, I contacted him saying he had used my images without permission, and he told me to eff off immediately (although not that nicely!), so not somebody that particularly cares about paying people.

I did get his items taken down that had my stolen photos by Etsy for copyright violation. Still bugs me that there's obviously dozens of people he's done this to and he thinks he's in the right, obviously.

@MissTee I bet this exact kind of thing is a lot more common than we think, thankfully at least your experience was alright, although I don't generally buy the whole "oh we normally ask but this one time we didn't." Call me cynical .

I guess I'll be going through and watermarking my images. That should take me like a year to do .

[bower]

That's disgusting @kayee .
And what a huge hassle the watermarks.
I can only hope for a future with attributions built in on the internet.

That being said, if anyone ever has images stolen from TJ, please let us know!! We'll stomp on em with the biggest boots we can get.

[MissTee]

@MissTee I bet this exact kind of thing is a lot more common than we think, thankfully at least your experience was alright, although I don't generally buy the whole "oh we normally ask but this one time we didn't." Call me cynical .

I guess I'll be going through and watermarking my images. That should take me like a year to do .

You’re right, I think most people think the internet is public domain and that anything posted is available free for their use. I did get a bit of restitution, but I am very wary now and do try to crop/add text to my pics that makes them unlikely to be copied. With a good software/computer hopefully the watermarking won’t be too exhausting for you.

[Mark_Thompson]

Just take junk out of focus pictures, problem solved!

[Kraky]

The thing with watermarks too is that it's relatively easy to remove them with AI, but it does increase the barrier to entry so it might push people away

[MissS]

The thing with watermarks too is that it's relatively easy to remove them with AI, but it does increase the barrier to entry so it might push people away

Yes. I was going to say that watermarks are quite easy to remove these days. Watermarks are not worth the time that you spent to put them in place.

[MissS]

The nice thing about this site is that you have to be a member in order to see the images, so no lurkers will be stealing. The bad news is, if one of your images was stolen from this site, then it would be one of our trusted members.