MicrostockGroup

Oh, there is one of Andres Rodriguez's, too - with Andres himself in the picture!!! Would be funny if it wasn't so annoying.

I don't really understand why someone would pay for the images (or steal them somehow) and then display them on Flickr just like that. What could they possibly stand to gain? Thanx for letting us know, Elenathewise

Yeah, thanks... I've been going nuts the last couple of days finding my stuff all over the place on sites I've never heard of!!!   And the ones that I have been able to trace go back to.......yeah,   FT!!!!!

Neither of my  TWO pix on FT were there (the reason why only 2 there explained in other threads and too long to repeat again) .

and yes,  if that isn't the most asinine watermark I've ever seen.....  I'm pulling my FT port  ..... pulling as soon as I can be assured they will be pulled off all the other  outfits  FT is  or is not (by the disclaimers on these other sites) associated with!! 
I'll be damned to hades if I'm going to pull them from FT and these other morons  are still selling them.  One of them is my #2 selling foto all time!! I should have walked away from them with the first outrageous problem I had with them years ago! =tom

ha ha ha ha.... Elenathewise... I am so SURE there are plenty here that have suggestions for FT... most of which should not be printed here on a family oriented site...LOL. =tom

I think we must take an action to protect our work.

If you are concerned about the effectiveness of the current watermak used by Fotolia, please copy the message you will find below, 
connect to your account at Fotolia, go to Contact Support and send this message (you may add your own words or send a different message of course)

The more of us send it the more chances we have to get results... Please send this proposal to all stock photographers you know.

Let's act now!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Fotolia,

I am seriously concerned about the effectiveness of the current watermak against image theft.

This problem affects us all: the company, image buyers, and image producers.

We urgently need a more effective watermark to be better protected against the unscrupulous people
 who visit Fotolia with the only intention to steal images.

Thank you in advance for your prompt attention to this matter.

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Thanks a lot. I have found 2 of my images too... What is the best way how to remove them? Should I write email to Flick with the link to my FT account and also Fotolia too?

They may have been purchased RF by the Flickr user which allows website use, they have not made them downloadable or given descriptions where they claim to have taken the photograph themself, and they might well think that by putting them in a Folder with the website name they are giving credit and are ok.


B. By placing Flickr restrictions they are not allowing Download
C. Is Flickr an electronic bulletin board
I. Are they claiming IP they do not claim to have taken the images, you may argue that are they claiming IP by uploading the images to their stream, but view the Image Properties which they have not hidden and the copyright is Elena Elisseeva, so they have not claimed IP or copyright.

Agree it is against the terms & conditions of Flickr, but they are not offered for redistribution.

Flickr do not help with F.A.Q.'s like the one here, there is no firm message in the text:


As much as there might be a slight case for miss-use, a bigger question would be if I was the alledged offender and had purchased the images legally, then I might just talk to my lawyer having been publicly accused of theft by the OP.  

Maybe think of a better title for these type of topics, I know from my own forum experiences that you have to be careful with comments which can be read as accusations against a person, if they can prove that the deflamation has affected them they could come after you, under libel law the onus is on the accuser to prove that the statement is true, therefore you must prove that the image or copyright has been claimed stolen before you write words to that effect.

David

I'd agree. I'm not sure that the Flickr poster is actually doing anything wrong here. I've no idea why they spend their time/money doing it but I see no evidence of 'theft'.

I've just found one of my food images on Flickr too but it's not watermarked and can only be downloaded in a tiny size __ there's plenty of other of my images in use (legitimately) which could be right-clicked and downloaded in much larger sizes.

I've had this experience too, with Flikr.  In one case the Flikr member WAS claiming it was their own photo and giving it away in all sizes.

However, in the other case, it was a legitimate buyer.  They were a small news agency who had bought the images and was keeping them in a Flikr folder so they could hotlink them from their website.  Like in this case, the images were only available for DL in tiny thumbnail size.   

In both cases I went through Flikr's process and was able to get them removed.  Advice to Elena would be dig a little deeper before assuming that this was a theif, and to Warren - you might want to remove your comment publicly accusing the Flikr account holder of theft unless you know the facts. 

What's the saying - Never attribute to malice what can be explained by simple incompetence.  (or something like that)

This was exactly my take on the situation. It appears to be being used as a catalog of what purchases they have made. Nowhere do they claim to have taken them, they are tagged as copyrighted, and they are not offering them in large sizes for download. Posting comments on the images that they are "stolen" is a bit much, in my opinion, since you do not know that at all and are making rather far-fetched assumptions.

In the earlier days of Flickr, before there were a lot of "image bucket" type options, many people used it as a photo storage area for hot linking.

Oh, theft it is. Those who doubt, please compare this:
http://www.fotolia.com/id/11001622
with this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40003475@N07/3677469194/#

You can also see why this person chose this particular image  - see how Fotolia "watermarks" are just around the model and can be easily removed by simple eraser tool? Both images are exactly the same size.
Plus, as I said before, I found this image with the link to that Flickr portfolio in a web article. Which means someone downloaded it from Flickr and used it for free. Which should not be allowed, right? Even if the bozo bought the image and them posted it on Flickr, the license does not allow re-distribution of the image itself. But he didn't. He just downloaded a large thumbnail (he has small ones, too!:)) and then removed the watermarks.

Yeah, this is definitely against Flikr's policy, and although theft is a possibility, more likely it's just a buyer who didn't read or understand the fine print in the license agreement.  

Let's remember, lots of our buyers are not professional designers and may not be savvy about image licenses and limitations.  Discussions around here have shown even a lot of sellers on this board are confused about what's allowed and what isn't so you can't expect every buyer will get it right.

Here's a link to a sample DMCA letter.  

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/09/dmca-notice-of-copyright-infringement.html

Fill one out, send to Flikr, all will be set right.  It's a good idea to keep a template of the DMCA letter on hand.  This kind of stuff comes up all the time.  

Better to just nip it in the bud and move on