Here is my image on sale as a photo wallpaper! I guess this is illegal, right?

http://www.okazje.info.pl/okazja/dom-i-ogrod/wally-kwiaty-18-fototapeta.html

and here

http://www.wally.com.pl/p1605,fototapeta-na-drzwi-kwiaty-18.html

I found it through google images search. I never sold this image under EL. There are lots of stock images there. Maybe you guys should all check it.

My theory is that some unscrupulous company has become a partner with one (or maybe more) of the sites. They have hi rez versions of the images. They offer the images on a "wallpaper" site that allows free downloading of the image. The images get downloaded and posted to another "wallpaper" site. "Wallpaper" in this post meaning FREE. It spreads like wildfire and pretty soon the whole rest of the world has free images. 

I think this because I found the same thing, only with Russian "wallpaper" sites. My image was being offered for free download at high resolution on one site. While checking out the links, I noticed a ton more "wallpaper" sites also in Russian.

And I've done a search and found a ton of Chinese "wallpaper" sites, too.

I don't understand why they offer the images for free. I presume that they are making a ton of money from all the advertising on the site. So maybe the offering of the images for free is kind of a "screw you" and they are willing to make the money off the ads.

My theory is that some unscrupulous company has become a partner with one (or maybe more) of the sites. They have hi rez versions of the images. They offer the images on a "wallpaper" site that allows free downloading of the image. The images get downloaded and posted to another "wallpaper" site. "Wallpaper" in this post meaning FREE. It spreads like wildfire and pretty soon the whole rest of the world has free images. 

I think this because I found the same thing, only with Russian "wallpaper" sites. My image was being offered for free download at high resolution on one site. While checking out the links, I noticed a ton more "wallpaper" sites also in Russian.

And I've done a search and found a ton of Chinese "wallpaper" sites, too.

I don't understand why they offer the images for free. I presume that they are making a ton of money from all the advertising on the site. So maybe the offering of the images for free is kind of a "screw you" and they are willing to make the money off the ads.

We're all on the same side of the fence but a few things have to be corrected:

The partner sites don't automatically get all high res files once they are affiliated. Only in the event of a purchase the stock agency will transfer the high res file. That's what I have been told by numerous agencies.

The affiliates are not supposed to save the high res files or at least not host them on their servers for future purchases as it would make sales tracking impossible. Naturally the agencies have a high interest that their affiliates report proper sales figures so they can match those up with their transferred files. I would even go that far, that agencies perform "test purchases" to see if the affiliate reports it correctly. But this is speculation.

There are wallpaper sites and there are wallpaper sites.

The one in question here is literally selling printed wallpapers. They need to have an EL at least and they could do that with a proper license (I'm not saying that they do or don't have that).

Then there are the desktop wallpaper sites that indeed just use awesome images to drive traffic to their site for ad revenue. As soon as something is offered free it's about generating traffic, that's even the same with the stock agencies offering freebies. Those wallpaper sites simply don't have the licenses.

This would be another interesting task to find out if there was ever a wallpaper site that did purchase an EL or any other appropriate license for redistribution.

Quote from: luissantos84 on July 06, 2011, 10:26

http://www.etsy.com/listing/64339742/large-wall-stencil-eastern-lattice-for

I have this one too, I am thinking they are selling the wall background not my bench with pillows but.. what do you guys think?

What are you concerned about here? Your image of the bench? That only requires a standard license and that's it.
It's plain advertising and not reselling your image in a printed way or even digitally.

The background would be subject to copyright infringement if that seller ripped anyone's images.

that�s what I was thinking too.. sorry to bother jeez

The website support sent me an email explaining the situation. They basically buy only a single license to show the product on their website, and if someone actually buys the wallpaper they pay for the proper license. It makes sense, because it would be too much for them to pay EL for every item they have in their catalog, before they are sure they will sell it.

They just sent me an email saying: "Thanks to you I will clear all these licence related issues. I want to sleep well at night, without emotional rollercoaster and penalty threating issues."

I guess these guys are OK. They were probably poorly informed, and they are trying to correct the error right now.