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Stolen Images Alarm Blog

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Bateleur:
There's another page of apparently stolen images here:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/mikamicu/album?.dir=a914&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/mikamicu/my_photos

and a forum thread about it on Shutterstock.

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23827&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Looks like this is getting to be an increasing problem. How to stop it?

hospitalera:
Added it, thanx, how to avoid this happening? No idea, SY

Bateleur:
The only way to avoid this happening is to catch a few of the perpetrators and slap swingeing fines on them.

I think it was Getty (or maybe it was Corbis) did this a year or so ago. They used a program to trawl the net and identify images that were on their books but being used illegally. Then they send hefty demands to the people using these images.

I heard of several small businesses in UK that were astonished to receive bills of several thousand pounds, completely unexpectedly.

In fact, some of the businesses were not directly involved in the wrongdoing as it was their advertising agency who had stolen the images. The businesses thought it was all legitimate.

But, whatever the rights and wrongs, I believe that put an immediate stop to people stealing images from Getty (or Corbis).

Maybe that's why the thieves are turning to microstock now   >:(

IS and SS and all the others should clamp down hard on this, too. Unfortunately some of these examples of theft are on Yahoo and, it seems, Yahoo is so big they don't give a tinker's cuss about copyright violations.

mjp:
Nice idea. Good Job! I hope you can get enough support to keep things running.

br, Mikko P.

fintastique:
I guess some of us may have to rethink the shelf life of our images I remember someone stating 5 years which may be the case for some images but if some little **** decides he is going to resell or give away your images.

I have glanced few recent threads at SS regarding illegal reselling of images, the small fish website got fried and the big fish website is still unresolved.

I suppose maybe as time goes on the agencies will fire reviewers and start hiring lawyers.

Certainly one reason to think about going exclusive.

It would be nice to see you some crucifixations to make people think twice about doing this. 

How many folk actually go hunting for illegal reselling of their images?

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