Photo theft, copyright infringement and DMCAs

I decided to write this post not so much as a rant but as a celebration of success, however small it may be, and to point out that sometimes stealing a photo is not just about stealing a photo.

This screen capture above shows a web site (on the left) in Taiwan that stole one of my photo illusions to illustrate an article they posted about life being a game. They did so without my permission and even went so far as to crop the photo to remove my watermark and copyright. They did add a link at the end of the article to where they took the photo from, which was my web site (on the right). Had they not added that link I would never have found this photo being illegally used. I sent an email to the contact on the web site and received no reply. I then sent an email to the contact listed through WhoIs Domain Lookup and again did not receive a reply. I then emailed the author of the article and he did reply:

Hi Julian,

My apologies, sorry. I am not aware of the photo used, I ll inform my staff immediately to remove your photo and I do honour your copyrights.
I will inform you as soon as we remove it from the page.

Stay in touch!

Cc: Debbie, we cannot use any unauthorised photo for all of our articles. Remove it immediately.

Thanks & regards,

Roger Lee 李凱倫
Principal Trainer

I then received this follow up:

Hi Julian,

We have removed your picture and once again, I apologise for not ensuring my team uses any copyrighted pictures.

Thanks

Roger Lee

So, in a manner of speaking I won. Sadly this is only the 2nd time I’ve won when someone has stolen a photo or creative piece of work of mine.

As a creative person whose only income comes from his creative pursuits, understandably I get very angry when people steal my work. I realize that by posting my work anywhere on the internet I open myself up to that possibility, but to generate new and continued work I need to put myself and my work out there. I used to have a Flickr account where I would post a lot of my photography but I decided a few years ago to take down my account because it was the main source my work was being stolen from or used without permission. Now, I’m not talking about one photo that someone pilfered and put on their personal web site, I’m talking about quite a few that have not only been taken without my permission but altered to make it seem like it belongs to them and used on commercial sites. The worst one was a self portrait I took of myself with a microphone that I posted in remembrance of my Dad, a photo that was very personal to me, a photo that I would have refused to sell if asked. The photo was added to a banner and used as the main header for a radio and microphone retailer’s web site. I never had any success in getting that photo removed, all my emails and a DMCA take down request was ignored. Years later when I looked it up again the web site was no longer in existence. The one other time I did succeed was when a blog used the photo on the right shot here in Ottawa, without permission, to illustrate an article about the greatness of Boulder Colorado and how wonderful their bike paths are. As funny as that is, the hilarious part was that the next post was all about people being asked to do work without being paid, I left a comment of support but then called them out on using my photography in a separate article without paying me or even asking permission to use the photo. It didn’t get any response, so I shared it with a few of my photography friends who added their comments of disappointment and disapproval. That got their attention and I received an email of apology with claims of ignorance and passing the blame on to their staff. The photo was removed and replaced with a photo of a mountain that I am assuming is somewhere in Colorado!