DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY. THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. THIS IS SIMPLY MY EXPERIENCE THAT I WANT TO SHARE WITH YOU IN HOPES THAT IT MIGHT HELP YOU IN THE FUTURE.
By now, if you have shared any images online, chances are someone else is using at least one of them for something without your permission. It’s just a sad, sad reality that copyright infringement is rampant all over the world. Someone stole my pictures online too. Actually, it happens all the time.
The image above is a screen shot of just one of 100’s of disgusting people stealing my content. This website has three other websites that look just like it. All of them stealing blog posts of mine within 30 minutes of my posting the article. They are stealing all my images AND my text, even though I have a plugin that stops people from right clicking images, and copying my text.
I’m not going to link to the sites because this person makes money every time someone hits this page, so I’m just showing you screen shots, but you can see the URL for yourself. This is also an experiment to see if they automated this – how funny would it be if they posted this article about them stealing my blog posts on their “news” site? We’ll find out.
UPDATE: The sites I mentioned above are definitely not automated. This is my first post in a while that they didn’t steal because it was all about them.
Below is an example of a seed company using one of my images to sell a packet of seeds. I personally think this one is extra fraudulent because the tomatoes in my image WERE NOT GROWN FROM THEIR SEEDS! So anyone buying these are led to believe that their tomatoes will look just like the ones in my image. Shall we say, “False Advertising” together now?
I can’t tell you who this company is at the moment because this is one of the companies I am going after right now to sue them for copyright infringement. They are located in the US, and they are using this for commercial purposes – makes for an excellent copyright lawsuit.
Anyway, you get the idea, there are 100’s more just like it.
Table of Contents
HOW DO YOU FIND OUT IF YOUR PICTURES ARE STOLEN?
So how do I know when my work gets stolen? I use an image tracking service. There are now several just like this one. I’m using PIXSY. Their slogan, “Find And Fight Image Theft”. That pretty much sums it up.
Please know Pixsy is not paying me for this post, they are not endorsing me, and they have no idea that I am writing this post. I do use them to find the infringers, or shall we call them lecherous thieves?
Here is a screen shot of my stolen images section, called “Matches” :
Last Monday, I started with over 600 images that matched 🙁 Sadly, Russia is always the largest infringing country. There are websites showing my entire food photography portfolio as someone else’s work. They have about 50 of my images on these webpages.
Many of those images they have are older images of mine that aren’t registered with Pixsy. But the one or two images that I have with Pixsy, show up on these pages and I find all the others. So the real number of all my images being stolen is much higher.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
So, it’s pretty easy. You upload jpegs of all the images you want to keep track of for free. Pixsy keeps them in their database for you, and the automated system scans the web regularly to find the stolen content.
Once they find a “match”, you can look it up. They can now go after companies in many countries, so even if the the thief is not US based, you may still have a case.
After you look up the case and agree that this is indeed your image (sometimes they find images that are very similar to yours), you can open a case for free – but only if it is a company or business stealing your image. They won’t go after individuals stealing your images. It’s about commercial use. Is that infringer using your image for financial gain – like selling a product?
This is very important, there has to be a financial loss from you not being compensated for that company using your image. There’s a lot more to this. I just want to give you the basics of how this process works.
They will tell you if they can go after the infringer, or not. If they can, they take over the case for free. If they win, they take 50%.
If they can’t, you can get them to assist you in what’s called a DMCA takedown. I will cover this in my next post.
WHAT ARE YOUR OPTIONS IF YOUR PICTURE IS STOLEN?
1. Do nothing. It’s certainly the easiest and less heartache for sure.
2. Use a service like Pixsy to assist you in going after the company (it must be a business). If they win the case, you get 50% of what they win. I had a case they won this year. They got $500 for a very small image that was used on a website of a restaurant in the US on their home page. I got $250 from that. I did hardly any work. I just filed the case with them.
3. If you don’t want to use a service, you can try to approach the website yourself. Tell them they don’t have permission and to remove it. Pixsy suggests to NOT contact them, as it might make getting a financial settlement very difficult.
4. Try to do what’s called a DMCA Take Down (next post).
5. Hire a copyright attorney to go after the infringer. I’ve done this several times when it was a large company stealing my image – they all settled out of court, and I got thousands from the settlements. It must be a big company, or brand though for this to work out, or you could end up with a lot of legal fees to pay.
COPYRIGHT YOUR IMAGES FOR EXTRA PROTECTION
One thing that is very important, you must copyright your images, and copyright them within 90 days of taking the image, is the most ideal. It just saves a lot of headache later on if someone does steal your images, and they are a big company.
If it’s been more than 90 days, still copyright the images. It can help.
Again, I’m not an attorney. Just trying to give you some ideas to help you. Please speak to a copyright attorney in your area for more info.
Technically, the moment you take your picture, you own the copyright of that image. This is automatic upon image creation. However, it’s way easier to PROVE it’s your copyright when you register the images. That’s the main difference.
If you live in another country, simple google “how to register the copyright of my image in _________” Fill the blank with your country.
SCRAPER OR SPAMMER SITES THAT HOST IMAGES ILLEGALLY
I’m a huge advocate of artists protecting their work. I get very upset when I see websites stealing images. Many of the worst offenders are outside the US, creating sites by stealing content of others by taking images from google, pinterest, and from your websites directly. Then they give our images away for free claiming they are free stock images. They actually post the link directly to YOUR image on your website.
This means that YOUR website is now hosting the images for them. So you will see your bandwidth use go up as a result.
One of the worst ones is called PinsDaddy.com. Again, not linking to them so that google doesn’t use that to validate their site. This disgusting website has 1000’s of images of photographers, and illustrators that they have stolen, and they have about 30 of mine that I can find so far. I’m going to talk about this more in another post because it’s a different issue dealing with these types of sites.
If you feel this post can help a friend with some stolen work, please share it and sign up for future posts on the right side bar so you don’t miss the next one.
You might also like:
How To Do A DMCA Takedown Notice
Tina
Hi Christina, very informative article. Thank you. 🙂
You mentioned that you have a plugin that is supposed to stop right clicking for image lifting, can you post what the name of the plugin is that you use? I’m going to look into some for my other website with my artwork that people have been lifting images from for years, and for the food website as well. I’m going to bring my artwork site back to life and restructure the entire thing soon, while building my food and nature photography sites, and I want everything in place to protect myself.
Thank you so much for all of your helpful information to protect us from those who cannot seem to understand the difference between right and wrong.
Tina
Christina Peters
Hi Tina, the plugin I use to stop right click is older so do a search in the plugin section for WP for one that is highly rated AND has recent updates. It’s really hard to find plugins that are active. But just know – no matter what we do, they will screen shot our images to steal them as well. And you are very welcome!
Presley
Hi Christina, do you have a post about how to easily copyright your images, for someone who creates new images frequently?
Christina Peters
Hi Presley, I am working on two posts – one for just images and another one for how to copyright your blog posts 🙂
Peter Murphy
Hi Christina,
Adrianne & I are lucky in a way as we are both in Australia & at the moment we don’t have Copyright “Fair Use” legislation, so an Australian Company cannot steal your photo off the Web & claim it as Fair Use. Things can always change though!
Cheers from chilly Victoria Australia
Christina Peters
Hi Peter, you are lucky. It’s just ridiculous how little protection we actually have here in the US. I’ve actually done some extreme security measures that I will be talking about in my next post.
Adrianne
Hi Christina!
I found this a very interesting and informative article to read – thank-you for sharing.
Definitely see your point about the tomato company and no that is not fair to their customers or you!!
I have benefited greatly from being a part of your food photography group online and I thank-you for your inspiration and guidance as I love seeing my work improve.
Take care and keep on fighting to keep your work, recognised as yours!!
Cheers from Sunny QLD!
Christina Peters
Hi Adrianne, thanks for reading the blog and I’m glad the group has helped you out.
Carolina
Hi Christina, thank you very much for sharing.
I wanna start soon my own blog and I was looking how to protect my content.
I have found this side http://www.copyrightsworld.com, where you can protect every thing. But, how do I know if the provider is really good and serious?
Greetings
Christina Peters
Hi Carolina, thanks for sharing that link. I just had a look and actually had an online chat with them. All they do is create their own way of registering your images in a manor proving that they are yours. They DO NOT register your images with the copyright office of your country. This to me, makes the entire thing pointless. In the US, you can only get statutory damages in a copyright infringement case if the images are registered with the US copyright office. So you will still have to register the images with the US copyright office.
Susan Croft
It’s just absurd how people think they can just take whatever and start their own social media!!!! I have experienced this for years! A great book of professional copyright info to research is The Copyright Zone by Edward C.Greenberg and Jack Reznicki
Christina Peters
Hi Susan, it is absolutely crazy and disgusting to take someone else’s work as your own. Thanks for the info on the book!
Manu
Great advice, this kind of information is sometimes set aside, both by photographers and bloggers, and it is extremely vital to put your mind to it.
I have a small query, Can the articles of your blog be protected? Is it done individually or by legalizing or registering your blog all its content is under the protection of copyright?
Thank you for the information, your article is very valuable.
Christina Peters
Hi Manu, you can protect the articles on your blog. You can copyright every post – and that’s what I do. You can do several posts at one time. You “print” out the post as a PDF and then use those PDF’s to upload to the copyright office.
Thomas
Hey Christina,
good read and interesting service.
I’ve had a lot of damage by copyright infringement on my images and found a service called lapixa.
My experiences with this service were amazing so far. I also heard about pixsy before, but went with lapixa because they’re taking only 43% for their services AND the user interface was way more comfortable from my point of view. I also made really good experiences with the customer support of these guys. Maybe you should check them out 🙂
best regards, Thomas
Christina Peters
Hi Thomas, sorry to hear that you’ve had work stolen too. Thank you so much for the referral to Lapixa. I’ll check them out as well.
Suzy Taylor Oakley
Christina, I’ve shared this post in several of my Facebook groups. Thank you so much for the tips, and I’m sorry you had to learn these lessons the hard way!
Keep on clicking. You do good work.
Christina Peters
Hi Suzy, thanks for sharing. The more people are aware of the problem, the more help we can get when it happens to us.
Joanne Wood
Reading this sends shivers down my spine! Gosh 🙁 I’m not surprised at all that this goes on, there are people who do not care for doing the right thing, law, morals etc but reading about it and realising just how prevalent it is makes me so sad! Thank you so much for sharing this and that website sounds really great. Good people need to stick together which is what I experience with the Instagram community who really look out for each other. Reposting work without asking for permission first is so common on Instagram it’s like it’s just accepted that its ok if you tag the creator, but it would be nice to be asked first!! Stealing from my website is a whole new territory for me though, not one I’m thrilled about navigating! Thanks for sharing x
Christina Peters
Hi Joanne, yes indeed, it does take us working as a group to try to fight this together. It will never go away but there are services that can help us now.
Peter Murphy
And then you get a Judge that ‘Rules Images That Are Found and Used From the Internet Are ‘Fair Use’
https://fstoppers.com/business/court-rules-images-are-found-and-used-internet-are-fair-use-263567
This is further a worry for all of us as this photographer would have had to pay at least his costs, possibly even the thieving companies costs. I hope he appeals & wins.
Christina Peters
Hi Peter, I heard about this last week. It’s very upsetting. The judge here is completely ignorant to how copyright works.Thanks for sharing this here.
Carol
Wow, I would have never known that it went that deep. Super good post!
Christina Peters
Hi Carol, sadly it does. Thanks for reading.
Susan Croft
Thank you SO much for sharing this information!!
People steal my images and start their own Instagram page!!! Crazy!!! I will follow up ! Thank you again…!
Christina Peters
Hi Susan, it’s just awful. So much abuse going on with Instagram too.