MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: PaulRookes on October 01, 2016, 04:07
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Hi.
I've bee using pixsy to locate my images, some seem to be legit and linked to skock agencies I use but a few dont have any obvious links, holiday websites, magazine websites......any advice az to how I politely contact these sites to confirm where they got my images, I dont want to be heavy handed incase the did legally obtained them, but I do suspect they came from my flickr...
I've searched, but all the advice is for clear cut, take dowm.....however it becomes a bit muddled if you sell through stock agencies.......
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In a case where a big legitimate company has used my work for a project that would require an EL and i know i havent sold one I have sent a message saying "thank you for licensing my work for use, could you please let me know where the license was purchased from for my records"
But my advice would be don't hassle customers if there's a chance they are legit. You should have a watermark on your flickr images so you know when they have been lifted.
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My advice is that you don't contact them unless you have really strong reasons to suspect that they are stolen. They don't have to credit you or the site they bought them from. It wouldn't be good business to alientate buyers by harassing them.
Sometimes an image can have a watermark still on but has been bought legally. I saw a case where a photographer started threatening a site for using his images illegally and it turned out that they had just accidently left the comp image up after buying the image.
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It's the huge downside of RF*.
As said , you should watermark images you put onto social media, but also be aware that a lot of 'lifting' is from legally purchased files.Many times there are invitations to 'share' which could easily be interpreted as meaning the image is free to use.
You can get a clue sometimes when a file has been used several times at a the exact same size; but that size is not a downloadable from an agency -the chance of multiple buyers deciding to resize to exactly the same dimensions is slight, unless there is an optimal size for a platform eg Facebook. A dead giveaway is multiple uses of the same crop.
All that said, unless you were certain who was the legitimate buyer, think carefully before approaching a user. A legitimate buyer could contact the agency, who might take a dim view.
*'Lifting' and other abuses/misuses also occurs with RM, but it's a bit easier to work out who the legit buyer was.
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All that said, unless you were certain who was the legitimate buyer, think carefully before approaching a user. A legitimate buyer could contact the agency, who might take a dim view.
I'd agree. Legit users are going to be offended if you ask them where they obtained the licence to use your images. You also need to find out what the rules are at the individual agencies you contribute to.
If you sell RF, you are always going to be able to find unlicensed use. That is unfortunately the name of the game.
I'd only bother with the most blatant, commercial abuses personally.
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Approaching customers directly might be a violation of your contract with the microstock company. Contributors don't have access to customer information at all...
I would be offended as a customer, and I would contact the agency to complaint.
Contact the agency first and see what they have to say.
In any case, that's the nature of microstock, PODs...yeah we are the copyright owners and so on, but we also signed a contract with the agency.