MicrostockGroup

nothing much we can do. a lot of my images are probaly stolen too ,usually i'll just leave it.

Err ... why have you got images on Flickr? If you're intent on making money through stock I don't understand where Flickr comes in to the plan. You're just setting yourself up for issues such as this with no likelihood of a financial gain. Say 'red' backwards.

Hi Paulie
I had been in a similar situation before where a guy on FLICKER stole my image.

Link for  my image and my comment.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cafecathi/3839201933/#

The moment I found out, I replied in the comment area asking him to take off the photo, he never did. Therefore, I sent an email and a letter to Yahoo.com and they never responded. My image is still under his name. I don’t think there is much you can do unfortunately unless you have some sort of copyright and that you can legally ask him to take it off.

Kone

I would bill him with a triple amount. And write that if he decided not to pay, he would hear from my lawyer.

Good idea. What about plan B if that doesn't work?

Send a cease and desist letter and ask him to remove under 10 days or else you'll sue him for 10,000$. If he doesn't comply, sue him for 10,000$ or more. Copyrights are important and should be enforce.

Plan B is to save his page and maybe have some people look at his page and see that it's your image. They can be used as witnesses if needed. (This should be done BEFORE the bill/letter is sent) Then get in contact with a copyright lawyer and sue. Most likely a letter from a lawyer will be enough to open the cashflow

I have found my images in use without compensation two times (once in a magazine and once on a company web page). I sent them an extra-large bill and a letter explaining the situation and threatened with legal action if not paid. It worked both times.

A couple of times I have found my images on some poor-ass kids blog, I just let it be - they don't make money with my images nor would they have the money to pay. I don't want to harrass some college kid. But a real estate agent charges thousands of dollars per sale, they have money to pay.

Seems unlikely that he didn't know what he was doing, since he had to get around Flickr's security to get a usable image ("screenshot or something".)   You might try and find a lawyer to write a letter and take his payment on contingency.

fred

I find this statement quite ironic!

You state that the images that you put on Flickr probably wouldn't sell, yet a real estate agent is using one of those images on their business website to help with their own sales.

It's a picture of a local town scene that would only probably have appeal to a local business. So, the buying audience would be fairly limited and probably not looking on a stock site for the image. Even so, it might sell once or twice so it's not worth the effort to submit it.

I treat stock like a business too __ thus I don't bother with Flickr.

Your attempt to sound like some sort of tortured artiste is frankly pathetic. Get a grip on reality. You can be as 'creative' as you want but, as a supposed stock photographer, if you then upload your work to nonsense hobbyist sites like Flickr then you fully deserve to be royally screwed.

True.  Even more when it's in the internet, people think everything there is free.