i am absolutely incensed with this website

[Osmer_Toby]

that used one of my shots without my permission. i was informed today that a shot i had up in my commercial gallery had been hijacked and used on a white supremacist website. uke-rig:
:angry1:
the shot is of three white standard poodles; the assh-le who posted it on the website claimed the dogs were his, as well as the shot. i can't believe someone actually stole my work like that. i always thought that i would be kinda gratified if someone thought my work good enought to steal, but i feel nothing but anger right now.

the shot is actually going to be the cover photo of Poodle Variety Magazine for August- so it's even worse than a simple theft. i will be calling my lawyer tomorrow, but in the meantime, i wondered if anyone knows how to prevent this from happening. i've read that ultimately, you can't prevent a knowledgeable person from stealing images online, as all you have to do is find the url of the image, go to it directly, and copy it. this idiot actually linked directly to the image and thus didn't even have the intelligence to edit out my watermark. what a f-cking d-ckhead.
sorry for the expletives, but i'm pissed as all hell right now.

the actual owner of the dogs alerted me to the situation- she's contacted the webmaster of the site, and he says he'll take the photo down. instead, i deleted the file from my gallery, but that really sucks that i have to do that, ya know? the owner found out because she had done a search on "standard poodles" and up came a link to that forum page. you can imagine how shocked she was to see her own poodles used in such a sickening way. and me, i'm still sick to my stomach over the whole thing. any advice on how to prevent another such incident?

 

[voodoocat]

On a forum I visit they have a nice way of letting someone know they shouldn't leech an image. Usually it's done by replacing the photo on your website with a picture someone normally wouldn't want to see (using the same name as the original). Then when people visit their site or read the thread with the picture it will display as the image you replaced it with. It's especially humorous when it's posted to a forum because then you can read how people reacted to the new photo.

I think replacing the photo with a photo of gay black men having sex would be especially appropriate for a white supremacist. of course update your website if it is linking to that picture at all.

 

[LizM]

Have no clue - especially since he didn't even edit out the watermark. But at least with it being that blatant you shouldn't have any trouble winning a lawsuit!

 

[ZacKrohn]

Slighty confused...was the white supremacist thing a joke... or do they put out a Poodle Variety Mag...or are you the one whos putting in on the mag...No matter what the case that realy sucks...I know theres some code you can put on a website that will disallow right clicking but I am not too sure how much that would help you...watermarking seems like a good idea but aparently it doesnt stop some people. Bigger watermarks seem to detract from the picture for people who acctually care about it. Bummer...hope all works out with you lawyer and all...Good luck

-Zac

 

[danalec99]

I don't know if this would be of any help, but you might want to check out these links that I found at NYIP


Digital Dialog - Copyright, Copywrong! - April 2002

Digital Dialog - Copyright, Copywrong! : Follow up - July 2002

Digital Dialog - Copyright, Copywrong! : Part 3 - September 2002

Digital Dialog - Copyright, Copywrong! : Part 4 - November 2002

 

[Osmer_Toby]

I think replacing the photo with a photo of gay black men having sex would be especially appropriate for a white supremacist. of course update your website if it is linking to that picture at all.

hahahaha- awesome idea. wonder where i can find something like that....

 

[voodoocat]

I think replacing the photo with a photo of gay black men having sex would be especially appropriate for a white supremacist. of course update your website if it is linking to that picture at all.

hahahaha- awesome idea. wonder where i can find something like that....

Well the forum I visit has a "bank" of images used for this exact purpose... of course there is always google image search without the filter.

 

[Osmer_Toby]

i did just exactly that. i found a real raunchy jpeg via a yahoo and put it at the old image address. i checked it out- heheheheee- works perfectly. i feel better. i hope those damn nazis love the photo of a gay black man servicing a white dude on their website....


:twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

thanks for the idea, voods!

 

[oriecat]

I know that in my webspace, there is something I can set up so that hotlinking does not work, which means that the images can only be viewed through my own site and even I couldn't for example post them here and have them show up. You could look into that maybe. It is called Hotlink Protection in my cpanel. You can also specify an address for any hotlink attempts to reroute to.

That really sucks, Tobes.

 

[Chase]

Sorry to hear it, man

What gets me is, beyond stealing the image, they were actually pulling it directly from your site?? You'd think they would at least download it and store it on their own server. Stealing bandwidth along with stealing your image :roll: :angry1:

Happy to hear that changing the image on your server worked! :twisted:

 

[LizM]

Cyber-revenge ROCKS!!!!

:lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao:

 

[Geronimo]

hey tobey, search for .htaccess at google. There you can prevent hotlinking or only premit certain sites to hotlink to the image.

 

[StvShoop]

good job with the switcharoo :salute:
the fools probably think you're a hardcore hacker now. ph3@r!

 

[rangefinder]

A while back the government was listing a site that was sort of a "no call list" against spammers. Sorry, but I can not remember the name/url.

There might be a link there to an agency, like the FCC, FTC or something like that, that may be able to help. They'll probably forward you to the FBI.

Maybe someone out there has a url for that site. If I come across it again I'll post it for you.

 

[oriecat]

The no spam list got shut down by the FTC. It's too dangerous, to get on the list, you'd have to provide a real email address. There would then be a gigantic list of real email addresses for someone to steal and start spamming to. You can't trace most spam anyway, so there would be no way to enforce the rules...