Has anyone got any experience of website photo copyright?

I have had a random message from RB Copyright, and initially thought it was spam so didn’t call back. I have now started some searches and found my own images in a lot of places online. What would be the best way to go about this?

Has anyone used a company like them?

I’ve not heard of RB Copyright, however, I use Image Witness and Pixsy to monitor my images. I was chasing down infringements myself, however, Pixsy now throws up several thousand infringements so I’m letting them chase them for me and will see how it develops.

Call the company and ask to speak to their photographer as you’d like to commission them for some work…

A cycling mag uses my image wothout aauthorisation saying they got them with permission from a 3rd party site. Bastids!

I’ve not heard of RB Copyright

Nor have I, but if they’re cold-calling I’d be filing them in the same drawer as PPI reclaim companies.

captainsasquatch – Member
A cycling mag uses my image wothout aauthorisation saying they got them with permission from a 3rd party site. Bastids!

POSTED 10 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST

I hope they removed them, seeing as they DIDN’T have permission!

My brother in law has had music published where he owns the copyright

His experience is that if you haven’t go the financial clout to make a claim then the copyright is worthless

An e-mail asking them to pay or take it down will costs you nothing. Beyond that proceed with caution

instead of garnering spurious anecdotal evidence on a cycling forum try here:

http://www.epuk.org/the-curve/the-infringement-pathway-a-step-by-step-guide-for-issuing-a-copyright-claim

I hope they removed them, seeing as they DIDN’T have permission!

Nope.

There is a mountain bike guiding company whose entire branding / photo library is stolen from my Flickr site..

[url=https://flic.kr/p/As4kks]dirty2ride 5[/url] by Ben Freeman, on Flickr

pinched from…

[url=https://flic.kr/p/acz6yv]Luca Bortolotti[/url] by Ben Freeman, on Flickr

Irony was, the model in the photo emailed me about it as they were guiding on his turf in Italy…

I’m surprised business owners seem not to even think where their marketing photos come from! And showing off photos of someone else’s work, so their clients will obviously be under the assumption it is theirs!

I’m going to watermark all of my photos and replace them on my site.

Hi I am the Managing Director of Refined by Ltd who own rbcopyright.co.uk. No it isn’t a hoax. I started life running a design agency and working for some pretty big brands intent on protecting their IP/Brand and other Assets. We designed some software to find infringements and, as I wanted compensating for where my or my Client’s work was used on the web (as opposed to it just being removed), I worked with Solicitors and Legal Counsel to see what fees could be recovered for use to date.

Pursuing one case is expensive, pursuing hundreds; there is an economy of scale. At any one time we are now pursuing in excess of 2,000 defendants. There are no upfront fees, we just get paid on a no win, no fee basis where we are successful. We work with individual photographers, small businesses through to international photographic agencies.

If you have received a call, we have found an infringement where we believe you are the originator while researching one of our Client’s work. Our Agent is contacting you to see if you want us to act on your behalf to get the image removed and, where possible you to receive a fee for its use to date. if you have any questions please get in touch.

Dammit man! This is the Internet! You can’t just join a conversation, explain your business model and rational for the work that you do in a clear and sensible way! You have to make up “facts”, blame another forum member and add a bit of conspiracy!

Hey don’t worry my rational explanation was a result of fearing a whole host of conspiracies; Google telling me an image could be removed… eventually, solicitors telling me that pursuing a case would be too expensive etc, etc,etc !

We do get to hear a lot of other conspiracy theories as to how an image got onto someone’s website though!

At the end of the day, if you took the photo it is yours. If you didn’t expressly give permission for someone to use your image, they can’t. If someone owns a website, advert or other printed media using your image they are 98% of the time liable.

I blame Wiggle.

we just get paid on a no win, no fee basis where we are successful.

What percentage of the payout do you take if you win?

If I’m looking for images for a website or whatever that I can’t take myself, I’ve gone with a Google Image search and the “labelled for reuse” filter.
Does that count as due diligence?

*bookmarks*

What percentage do we take? That depends on how far we have to take it. Happy to discuss if you get in touch. Unlike Pixsy and Image Witness (mentioned above) we do not charge a monthly fee and we will continue to monitor the use of your images on an ongoing basis.

Google searching ‘Labelled for reuse’. Basically you cannot rely on any image being ‘copyright free’ unless you have written permission from the creator of the photographer that they grant permission for you to use the image.

If you find an image online and you want to use it track down the creator and seek permission, and only use the image if written permission is granted. Anything less than this and you are exposing yourself to a serious risk of liability for copyright infringement.

We deal with numerous defendants who have claimed to have sourced images using similar searches for ‘copyright-free images’ or ‘free to use images’ etc.

However images are orphaned by infringers and distributed deliberately or otherwise online. These infringed images then appear down the line in all manner of Google searches.

The court will not make any distinction between the first or subsequent infringers when determining liability and copyright infringement can prove extremely expensive.

The sun
Daily Express
Daily Mail
The metro
The scottish Farmer
Have all used one of my images without my consent.They got given it as a screenshot from facebook by someone.
I’m not a pro tog so I invoiced them for use of the image and they all paid me (and removed the image)
It took me 60 emails between the lot to get £1070 from them, it was a bit of sport for me and I came out a grand better off, I had nothing to lose but a bit of time.

Send an invoice in for the use of your image.
Give them a range of options, an invoice for 1 month or part there of, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months and exclusive unlimited use.

Good luck

In fact seeing this thread and doing a reverse google search now has thrown up another couple of new sites using my image since i first discovered it 2 months ago.

The sun have put it online after removing it too! Cheeky ****

Time to get the type writer back out again I think!

I (sadly) have to deal with newspapers for images they use. They are crap at paying and I’ve had to take one of the larger ones to court. They knowingly flout the law over this hoping to avoid paying.

Invoice them, plus interest and pursue it hard. Just keep racking up the costs till they pay.

Also bookmarked. Some useful stuff here!

How are you all searching to see if your images have been used elsewhere?
I get some will just be chance occurrences that you’ve spotted them, but must be a way to search specifically?

Haha,
Turns out its even been shared on here! right near the end of this
Here

And this ^^^ is why I watermark anything I care about before it gets near the interwebs. My Zenfolio galleries are set up in such a way that clients can share their photos online but every time they do, my brand is plastered on the image. Free advertising innit.

My images were hotlinked, so they borrowed bandwidth too.
Easy fix… replace those images with filth from a XXX site.
It was the travel company that would be breaching copyright of those rather naughty images, by displaying them all over their home page 😉
I’ll use animated GIFs next time 😈

Just done a reverse image search, and have a load of images ‘pinned’ on Pinterest.

Not Happy, and appears to be no easy way to get them down!

Charge them for it.

benmusc

I have a very popular image on sale royalty free on a couple of stock sites.
However I do not allow it to be resold as a stand alone image. imagine my surprise to find it being sold by numerous retailers including a national retailer as a canvas print of my picture.

I can prove 100% that I am the copyright holder and creator of the image as it is actually composed of 2 different pictures then photoshopped, I still have all original files used with camera exif data.

Is this something you would be able to help me with as I would not know where to start.

dirtybike. Honestly, you have your answer. Put a picture online and prepare to have it nicked and used by all and sundry. The only answer is a great big, dirty watermark which will be a pain in the bum to clone out.

A few stock libraries insist on non-watermarked photos. Photographersdirect springs to mind. Footflap’s case is absolutely extraordinary – I’d be up there with a pipe bomb.

user-removed

I agree once it is online it is hard to keep track of but a quick image search and my copyrighted image is pretty easy to find, so I am assuming that a national retailer would have some liability to me by using it outside of any license that I allow.

My theory is that someone has bought it from a stock site and resold it as their own work.

What’s a quick and free way to watermark images?

Try The GIMP It works under Linux, Mac and Windows

…and tutorial linky here (Loads of written tutorials and videos out there)

Polarr also has a decent watermark tool.

I’ve gave upp chasing my used material being used online years ago.

If you dont want your stuff used online or copied, dont post it!

I try to creative commons my stuff now with an license. But if it still gets abused…. who cares.

FORGEDABOUTIT!

Am almost disappointed…

1500 of my photos for Pixsy to search through, and not a single match…

A certain Top Gear Test Track related air show nicked my photos and used them on their site and then I discovered in flyers they’d been giving out locally having found a pile of them in my local Chinese takeaway! (must have been in the 10s of thousands of prints)

Thing is, they’d actually asked me after seeing them in a photo forum when I posted said pictures, and asked about prices. I gave them a price, never heard back and they used them anyway. I sent them invoices based on the use (the print run they did especially), tried to contact them, nothing.

I gave up as didn’t want the hassle of taking it to court, but should have really.

Another reason why “Jim” of “get orf my land” @ Winterfold fame pisses me off, as he’s exec of the show and owner of the airfield. Not to mention his continual desire to build thousands of houses on the airfield.

Hi DIRTYBIKE, yes, we would need to talk, but I think we can help, if you get in touch by emailing me at ben@refinedby.com we can start talking.

deadkenny happy to have a look at this for you. We used to right in our capacity as an image broker to all defendants to start with but found, the larger ones, are a little bit more co-operative when our solicitor writes.