A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.
This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.
My most stolen photo has been stolen over 100 times and almost exclusively is used on other professional photographers’ websites, including one national photography company.
Gonna take a real nice vacation when all the settlements come in.
It takes a special kind of stupid for a photographer to act like they don’t understand copyright.
Yeah a shocking number of people think that if anything is ever publicly accessible then they are free to take it for themselves and do whatever they like with it.
If they're AI generated you know I'm stealing that shit
I mean, if it's AI generated I'm just gonna scroll on by. Why steal it when I could generate it myself? Gotta admire the plethora of accounts who've managed to amass followings and sales from AI content though, good job on taking advantage, but it's sad when they try to pass it off as genuine photos.
One of the ones I've gotten pretty often that makes me laugh is when I'm contacted by someone putting together a TV show (usually a documentary/nature show of some sort) to ask about using photos, maps, or videos of mine.
I always respond something along the lines of, "Sure, let's talk about a licensing fee." Often there is silence after that. If they do contine I'll let them know what I've received for use in other TV shows for a non-exclusive licensing fee, and offer to let them see a copy of previous contracts. Again, the most usual response is silence.
A small portion follow up and we can finally have a serious conversation.
People want free stuff, and if they can't get it for free they'll generally either sulk or steal it.
for example, have you ever been able to get a 3d printer that does not require them to use?
I took some photos of bioluminescence in the ocean near here about 10 years ago. Within that timeframe they've been stolen and used illegally thousands of times - most commonly (falsely) claiming they were taken in South America.
I've begun litigating against all the ones I can using Pixsy and if all the current claims currently running (which is fraction of the ones I could and probably will instigate) I'll be able to buy a new car by the middle of next year. I've already received over $5000 just off three successful claims. I currently have 15 for booking.com alone.
Something to bear in mind if it happens again.
Many years ago, I posted a series of concert photos I took of a particularly famous band at the time to my tumblr page and it blew up way more than I've ever seen before. That was at least 10 years ago and I still see them reposted on the various fan pages for that band today.
I suppose it's just part of the deal when putting your work on the internet. 9 times out of 10, people don't give a fuck about copyright when the "Save Image" option is right there for the taking with zero consequences. I'll admit, I've given up trying to fight it years ago and now just see it as part of the process.
Yea, totally the same deal with me. I have local photographer friends who were always sending me links of people using my photos without permission and I chased them for a while and then just gave up because it was a never-ending problem and I had better things to do with my time.
I submitted a load of cases to Pixsy about six months ago because they kept emailing me and I thought, fuck it, I'll put a few in. I submitted about 20 I think on that original batch and I kept getting rejection after rejection. In fact I even deleted my account and then the next day they emailed and said 'congrats you've got a pay-out, here's $700USD'. So I had to get them to undelete my account so I could put my bank details in for the transfer.
This is like the time when the band Red Jumpsuit Apparatus used a photographers photo, took out any credit for them and tried to get their fan base to freaking harass the photographer after the fact when the photographer complained.
People are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling.
You posted to a platform where 100% of the time someone will download the photo
god forbid you be entitled to your own work.
If you dont want your photo stolen why not restrict the size of the image and just add a watermark like Getty Images, Blackstar,Magnum etc..
I always post a lower res image and watermark it, but that doesn't really take away from anything here. The real issue is the entitlement of these people to use your work for their gain and get upset about it when you say no.
You can't catch them all, but when you do, it doesn't void your rights just because someone else is getting away with it.
Thats why I would not post full size images with no watermarks or just not post it at all. The moment you post a full size image on the internet it will get stolen and now you will need to spend so much time fighting battles. This is why agencies do not post them.