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Messages - click_click
2676
« on: October 08, 2009, 13:27 »
...and yes, I shamelessly added my referral code to those links 
Thanks, you naughty boy!
2677
« on: October 08, 2009, 13:00 »
To sell footage I'd assume one would upload to:
Istock
Shutterstock
Pond5
Fotolia
Clipdealer
Revostock
Canstockphoto (because of their Fotosearch.com affiliation)
Which other agency is worth contributing to and where else did you have sales - if you dare to share?
2678
« on: October 08, 2009, 09:21 »
Sorry for the horrendous spelling in my last post. I was still trying to wake up...
2679
« on: October 08, 2009, 08:08 »
This is correct.
Another thing:
I contacted the agency on behalf of another fellow contributor because I tried to contact him several times vie email and via phone.
No response. There is only so much I can do since it's not my images that has been stolen but in this case I stunned that the original copyright owner wouldn't respond.
In this particular case fritzkocher used that image at least 5 times in his compositions.
Still online at BigStock...
2680
« on: October 07, 2009, 20:45 »
From IS license FAQ:
Prohibited uses for both Standard and Extended license
(...)
Use that depicts personal endorsement by model
Also, from DT:
If an Image depicts a person and is used in a manner that implies the use or endorsement of a product or service by that model, you must indicate that the person depicted is a model and used only for illustrative purposes. Under no circumstances, you cannot use an image with a person or more, in a context suggesting he/she or they are endorsing a subject that can be seen as sensitive.
FT is not as clear, but I believe it also means the same:
he or she shall not: (...)
take any action in connection with the Work that associates it or the creator of the Work, or the persons or property appearing in the Work (if any), with any political, religious, economic or other opinion-based movements or parties. Thanks for that. I believe a significant percentage of such downloads will be used for "endorsements" anyway.
2681
« on: October 07, 2009, 20:32 »
That would be oh, so, against the iStock license.
Sean, would you mind to elaborate on that. Why "would it be" against the iStock license and what does the iStock license actually say? (brief outline would be fine)
2682
« on: October 07, 2009, 19:37 »
2683
« on: October 07, 2009, 16:45 »
It's not over yet:
I just sent another email to Bigstockphoto as still more stolen images remain in his portfolio.
I can not believe that the copyright owners who have been informed by me do not take appropriate actions to inform the agencies.
Furthermore BigStock was informed on multiple occasions to remove the images and they did not consider banning him up to this point.
Something is really off here.
2685
« on: October 06, 2009, 20:27 »
...
Stolen images - payback time
Theft again - please see if your images have been stolen, too.
...
Where people say they have done nothing and were suspended or closed unfairly.
@ RacePhoto: Just to make this clear: The list you brought up included two of my threads where I did not complain about a company shutting me down for stealing anybody's images. Just to recap: I found one of my images all over the internet through Google's image search. In fact someone uploaded my image on Zazzle and sold products with my photo. I managed to expose the culprit to Zazzle and they paid the commissions to me instead of the thief. Very cooperative behavior which you can not expect from any stock agency. I once talked to StockXpert about splitting the lost commission with me but in the end they didn't offer anything. The other thread was to inform other fellow photographers about a site offering stock images via rapidshare. I'm just trying to help out the community.
2686
« on: October 06, 2009, 20:13 »
@click_click. IS is making this happen, but they think there is some sort of a lag - they should all be gone (they said StockXpert's systems didn't work the same way theirs did; that's true - the StockXpert systems sometimes didn't record any of the Jupiter sales revenues until contributors hollered loudly enough  I am getting responses from IS HQ.
I'm glad the wheels are turning. As a non-exclusive though I have to mention how sad it is what's happened to Stockxpert. Unfortunately as soon as Getty was in the picture things got really messed up there. StockXpert used to be a great performer and very responsive. Some nice people there have left the company. Sad thing to see.
2687
« on: October 06, 2009, 17:43 »
If someone copied "your idea" - there is NOTHING you can do unless you have a lot of money to spend on a very good lawyer.
Ideas and concepts can not be registered for copyright.
Therefore you would have to bring forth evidence that the other party has used your image to create another image that resembles yours.
It's up to you to produce the best possible image with "your idea" so buyers will go with the one of the highest quality.
It's basically called competition.
Keywords are also not copyright protected. That's agency-internal stuff. If you're lucky the agency will deactivate the image or have the owner change the keywords.
2688
« on: October 06, 2009, 17:33 »
Some of the images have gone from StockXpert, but not all (one of the three of mine is still up; several of the lady liberty shots are even though one or two have gone). I've contacted IS again about this to let them know and urge them again to work to get StockXpert to pull the whole portfolio.
Submitters who repeatedly and willfully violate the terms of the upload agreement should not be allowed to be submitters, even for the images to which they do own the copyright. Otherwise how to discourage anyone from doing this, taking the money and running when caught?
I do hope that particularly in your case the affected images will be removed very soon. It's such a shame that you as an exclusive photographer can not even have your own rights enforced within the same company...
2689
« on: October 06, 2009, 14:31 »
...Of course offering an image for 'resale', which is effectively what he has done, would have required an EL anyway. ...
Please elaborate on that. Are you saying that anyone can buy my images as EL and then sell them as their own? This case here is a full blown copyright infringement not a licensing problem.
2690
« on: October 06, 2009, 11:55 »
It is almost unbelievable that all of these agencies seem to be allowing this to continue long after the issue has been reported. It seems almost as if they are deliberately allowing this. With luck someone with lots of followers will Twitter this story. Then maybe PDN and the other industry sites will pick it up.
This is one of the problems with some of the microstocks and the customers should know.
It is a problem indeed. Now to clarify a few things. No agency is "deliberately allowing" this. I was affected many times of issues like this and of course I was very upset when it happened. When I contacted the agency I "expected" that there is one person waiting for my complaint and then starting to investigate right away to shut those idiots down. Well that's not the reality. The agencies receive a lot of these reports on a daily basis and they have to investigate every single one of them. It does take time. Shutterstock is usually very fast on that one. If I report it before lunch I can expect that the portfolio is down by the end of the business day. At Dreamstime you have to get up earlier. If you report it early in the morning (Eastern Time) it might be taken care of by the end of the day. Bigstockphoto is also very responsive. All other agencies will take longer and that means agonizing hours and days... Why SS and DT in this particular case have re-instated the account - I don't know. Also please note this is only one situation here. There are a lot more out there selling our stuff. I have written about this about 6 months ago here in the forum and received very little acknowledgment. I hope more people become aware that this is a bigger problem than it looks like at first glance.
2691
« on: October 06, 2009, 11:05 »
Also, every single time I reported a thief to 123RF they ONLY removed the stolen images but left the portfolio online.
I got a response from 123RF that the first time this happens the account holder gets a warning.
Now suck on that.
2692
« on: October 06, 2009, 11:01 »
...iStock has removed his tiny portfolio (14 images) there. Now we just need to make sure he stays out of commission at SS and DT - didn't someone say he'd been suspended before but then allowed back online at both places?
Yes, I said that. Right after my friend reported him to SS and DT they removed his entire portfolio for investigation. By "accident" a few days later I saw his portfolio back online at DT and someone here mentioned his portfolio at SS. I'd assumed that SS re-instated his account but I didn't see that for myself. However, after posting this issue here and contacting all the photographers that we could figure out SS and DT finally removed his stuff. I can vouch for what I saw at DT: After he got re-instated some of the copied material was gone - probably removed by DT. Now two things: 1. This idiot didn't think of disabling all the other files he stole although he "got a second chance" - thank god for his stupidity... 2. DT obviously only investigates reported images and NOT if the thief has more images in his portfolio that are stolen. So the agency ONLY reacts to reports and not on suspicious behavior. That's why I said this is really tough for us photographers since we NEED to find our stolen images because no one else is likely to report them to the agencies. Therefore there won't be any actions taken by the agencies...
2693
« on: October 06, 2009, 10:44 »
I thought this post of his on the SS forum was particularly funny:
Hi there guys.....well I live in Auburn which is close to Sacramento, CA and im looking for a fun photographer to go out and about with to take some shots....maybe feed off of each other, maybe give e ...
I don't know maybe we should give him some points for trying...
2694
« on: October 06, 2009, 09:08 »
It is beyond me how he could possibly be active on the SS forums and never get caught!!!
My buddy who caught him first last week, found one image totally by accident.
To steal someone's images and sell them is bad enough and absolutely wrong.
But to brag about sales figures based on stolen images is totally ruthless.
How can this guy live with himself???
He's like a stock image terrorist or something.
2695
« on: October 06, 2009, 07:30 »
2696
« on: October 06, 2009, 07:03 »
He didn't steal my work, but maybe you should also check/contact cafepress....
http://www.cafepress.com/fritzkocher
also on Bigstock his portfolio is still around...
I think it's a good idea to have a separate section of MSG dedicated to identify thieves. My friend and I have been reporting this guy to 4 agencies. At this point I'm tired of writing any other agency - especially since two of them hesitantly re-activated his account for some mysterious reasons (and deactivated it a second time again...). I hope the copyright owners who are involved in this did everything necessary to get the rest of his junk removed asap.
2697
« on: October 05, 2009, 22:10 »
Aside from the stealing issue, that is some of the cheesiest Photoshop work I've seen.
Frankly, it sucks. Mostly the ripped off images were creating the majority of his income. There seem to be quite a bunch of images where he "tried" to create something artistic but it's basically falling into the category "Photoshop fail". This however is a great example to show that his bestsellers couldn't come from him as the rest just flat out sucks.
2698
« on: October 05, 2009, 18:42 »
Nice set though.
2699
« on: October 05, 2009, 15:22 »
Hey Click! Actually I've been a contributor for a while now - long enough to know how these things work and happen to have a career before MS that is relevant to the subject as well 
Actually I'm talking about people potentially suing the agencies not the fraudulent contributor - I realise these people are hard to track down, and its not really my point. An agency is allowed to host our images because we grant them a license to do so.
In the event that the host a photographer's work without authorisation from a fraudulent contributor and receive license payments for that, then they're actually in breach of copyright themselves. In this situation they would still be liable to the copyright owner for any profits that they have collected from the unauthorised use of the copyright holders work, but its unlikely that they'd have to fork up major damages.
If this happens innocently and the agency takes steps to fix the problem they have a defense to the breach of copyright that would hold up in most jurisdictions. If they don't take adequate steps, then they're potentially opening up a can of worms for themselves.
You may think its unlikely that an agency would get sued - but what happens if the copyrighted material happens to be part of an exclusive collection held by - say Getty or Corbis - or a high profile RM photographer?
I do appreciate your experience in the field but I have some questions: Many of my images have been used for stuff like this and I shut down a LOT of people who tried to screw me. Now what you're saying sounds like I could sue all the agencies this has happened to me before? I've registered copyright to all my images does that increase my chances of making such claims? If so, most agencies would be out of business right now if just I had pursued damages of my stolen images from them. I think we also signed our right away to claim such damages because of "unknowing" circumstances - which could be like that EVERY single time it happens. That's why I suggested using Tineye. Now, furthermore, while I understand that a "high profile photographer" most likely has a higher amount of damages to claim, I wonder why we are not entitled to the same rights of ownership? I've heard of cases here and then what happened to photographers trying to screw each other (Getty related). Lots of damages had to be paid. But here we are playing on a different field. Low commissions and many idiots trying to screw us. The other day a suggestion came up that every account should have a minimum balance of $3000 or so before the first payout is made. Those $3000 stay in the account until you close your account with them and then get the rest paid out when you leave. So in case you're one of the idiots screwing other people, at least some damages can be paid to the original copyright owners out of court. All this stuff is never going to make it to court. I'm in the middle of suing a printing company in the US for selling my images without a license and claiming copyright. I'm 100% on the legal side of this and yet the lawyer expressed concerns that this is not even going to hold up in court as the owner only has to claim "he didn't know". Our images that are cheap and widely spread all over the planet are easy to retrieve from many sources at any given time. Hell I've seen my images as backgrounds for ebay auctions and those people just told me: I downloaded it from Google - I didn't know. What do you do then? Then it's up to you to prove that they DID know... Good luck on that one. That's why only Nike sues a shoe manufacturer that manufactured 5 million or their mist successful shoes without a license because the economic damage goes into the double or triple digit millions. This is a topic you only want to think about for a few minutes - if you do it any longer you'll just get too upset. I'm off shooting.
2700
« on: October 05, 2009, 15:07 »
I looked at half of his portfolio and I don't see anything from me there - does it mean I am not worth stealing? 
I think the first report might not lead to an immediate closing of the account, but then if the report is real the agency should close the account and (maybe then even do that) report that to other agencies. Merely deleting a couple of infringing images is not a correct attittude.
A plain copy is easy to spot, the problem with edited material however is that one can claim rights if the change is significant, isn't it? "Significant" is a very subjective thing.
This whole thing is BS (not your post madelaide!). 123RF will warn those idiots if it happens one time! They will NOT take the portfolio down if a stolen image has been used in compositions!!! I do NOT understand that. I have never ever seen that a removed portfolio at Shutterstock got reinstated ALTHOUGH the thief had stolen images in his compositions. It happened this time and after repeatedly informing Shutterstock his portfolio is now offline again!!! Question is for how long? Dreamstime also removed the port and reinstated it although many other stolen images were still in the portfolio. It is obvious that reported images will be compared, deleted and then the portfolio will be reinstated. Why? I have no clue. It's already a breach of the terms and conditions we all agreed to. So the agencies do NOT look at any other images in the portfolios to make sure that other content may be affected from violations or not. It seems it takes to many human resources to do so. This places our original images at high risk as mostly only the copyright owners will report violations and not unaffected competing photographers. Although Tineye offers an API for commercial use it appears that none of the stock agencies are using it to prevent duplicates form being added to their collections. Probably also too expensive. Again, I feel that the agencies don't do enough to minimize the risks of this happening. Fritzkocher has sold over 2000 images on Dreamstime which roughly breaks down to $2000. He also sold images on Shutterstock, 123RF, Istock and Bigstockphoto (maybe somewhere else as well). I think it's safe to say that he made around $5000 from this. He got most of that money transferred to his Paypal. Commissions that were paid to him AND the agencies. Those commissions are not seen by any original artists who got ripped off. The culprits won't be legally enforced to pay anything so it's a Win/Win/Lose situation. Culprit wins, agency wins and original creator loses BIIIIIG TIME!!!! This is extremely lousy and I think the microstock industry needs to seriously work on this issue to stay in serious business for the near future.
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