Replies

  • Keith Kellett February 23, 2012 at 10:24am

    Send them an invoice!

    It's happened to me twice, and, each time, they paid without quibble.

    I suppose it wouldn't have done their reputation much good if I'd started making noise?

  • Uwe Ahlgrimm February 22, 2012 at 6:55pm

    Madelyn, in today's environment, you can do 3 things.

    1) Ask the Web owner to respect your rights(providing you labeled your article, Web Page "Copy Right", Go to my site, http://ecolodgeregister.com and see how I handled the Copyright Issue)

    2) Tag all of your property, ask for permission etc.

    3) You can hire a Lawyer, very expensive as the Lawyer will have to ensure that the Article is unique in all manner, per word etc.

    Even Companies are struggling to protect their printed Art, it is quite difficult, What would I do, go on and re write my Material or even mention to your advantage "My much copied "Specific Ideas" as an example"The other Web sites ID". Mention for your Benefit that it is your Idea etc. and to your advantage. However the other party may take action against you, complicated! Think ahead , be positive, go forward... regards Uwe Ahlgrimm

  • Mark Mattson February 22, 2012 at 4:16pm

    You'll be surprised at how little your content is worth in the eyes of the law. There is no big payday in recovering it with damages. The best you can hope for is fair value. An image will be adjudged to be worth what comparable images are worth. The value of your image in your is irrelevant. Since you don't own the Kennedy assassination photo, most images are worth about $10-25 in the minds of arbitrators. You will be able to recover that if you wish to spend a thousand on a law suit. You can also spend all day long writing to service providers. They will be courteous while placing your complaint under a stack of those that claim downloads of 8,000 songs and 2,000 movies.

    I think our community should be working toward simple recognition/attribution. There is not going to be a huge legislation ground swell of legislative protections like there was in the music and film industries. We are not a lobby and don't have clout. I've had many things stolen and some thieves even removed my copyright. I have received zero dollars by way of remedy. An good angry phone call relieves some of my frustration. I also find that threatening to include the thief's advertisers in any litigation really scares the heck out of the perp. Even if you never file suit, the damage to the thief's rep in the eyes of a paying advertiser or sponsor is enough to get them thinking. If you do call, have a settlement in mind, saying, "For, $XXXX, I'll overlook this." Filing a suit is pure masochism.

  • Earl Hardie Karges February 13, 2012 at 12:19am

    This is the 'Net, not the Louvre.  As long as it's only a small sample and I'm credited, then I'm okay with it and can use the publicity.  Any other circumstances would not be acceptable.

    http://hyper-travel.blogspot.com/

    https://www.amazon.com/author/hardiekarges

  • Darryl Musick February 10, 2012 at 12:25am

    Send them a Cease and Desist e-mail and letter (by some method you could track delivery, if you can get a mailing address). Complain to their ISP that they're stealing content and, if that doesn't work, consult an attorney. Here is a link to an example Cease and Desist letter you can use as a template: http://www.rightsforartists.com/examcease.html

  • Allan Lynch February 10, 2012 at 12:11am

    I would be cool in writing them (it's my new resolve to try not to be too brutal, besides they won't let me bring back the public stocks and lashings) to say this is copyrighted material and presenting them with a bill. I would suggest the next time they see something they like to negotiate first. because not everything is for sale. There could be other copyright issues.

     

    My rate for reprints is 50% of the first rights payment. If the first rights were sold for pennies or not much, then I would charge at least a week's living costs. If they claim they can't afford it, tough shit. (Opps, so much for nice.) They shouldn't have taken it. Even if they offer to take it down they used it and have to pay.

     

    If they claim they didn't know they couldn't do take other people's work, well, this is a lessons. Lessons cost.

     

    If you let them get away with it, well they'll just continue to do this. They might be sneakier. If we don't stop theft there's no impetus for anyone to worry about the consequences to them for robbing us.

  • Christine Zenino February 9, 2012 at 11:16pm

    Hi I have had this happen with photos before. If you email them and ask them to remove the article/photos any reputable company will comply. You might also want to insert a all rights reserved or copyright notice on all of your work. There is a also something called a creative commons license which allows for reproduction or your material but credit must be given.

    Not many writers use this but it is popular for photography and videos.

     

    Good luck :)

     

    • Uwe Ahlgrimm > Christine Zenino February 22, 2012 at 7:21pm

      Companies have a Legal Structure, management is bound to comply, this to avoid legal challenges.

      Home Biz owners, unless exposed to a Company type of discipline , would not dwell on the legal rights of the owners of printed matter (Photographic Art), The focus often is on finding a way to start a lucrative something.

      The Internet is tantamount to the Wild West, it Features the Good and the Bad of mankind!

      Photographers should educate themselves on applicable legal protection for their art and at the Minimum label their Art " Copyright", Facebook Members are publishing Zillion pictures, very few are so identified, are they not in the Public Domain? It is the Duty of the owner to protect ....

    • Debra Bokur > Christine Zenino February 10, 2012 at 12:13am

      I have this happen constantly, and have had mixed results with requesting that I either be reimbursed for the use of my work, or that it be removed immediately. I've had several unethical website publishers actually argue with me, stating that they were doing me a "favor" by increasing exposure to my byline. It's ridiculous that we, as authors, have to constantly police the internet for unauthorized use of our work, but it appears there are more than a few "publishers" who don't hesitate to hijack the work of others.

  • Nancy M. Dickinson February 9, 2012 at 11:16pm

    The first thing you should do is get the e-mail address (?) for the owner of the site and send them a request they either remove the offending material or reduce it to a paragraph, linking back to your site giving you credit in the process.  Make certain to mention in your kind request (not really, because you've been ripped off and are boiling but...) that failure to comply will result in a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint filed with their site host (this can be discovered using Whois.com).

    If they fail to comply, contact their site host and cite the DMCA in the e-mail.  I recently went through this where another site had completely lifted and posted my site on their website building service, removed my copyright on it and stated I was a customer of theirs.  I contacted their hosting service, included the proper language (to follow) and w/n three hours the portion of the site that had my site on it was removed.

    What I sent to the hosting service was the following:

    I found a template for the DMCA Notification here: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/09/dmca-notice-of-copyright-infring...

    Good luck - but people usually respond quickly to these, especially site hosts.

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