Unauthorised Usage

[DJ]

I came across a post on another forum warning about a website which contains photos posted without the knowledge of the photographer, the poster had found several of his own images hosted on the site. The site claims to be a "nature photography bookmarking site" and allows it's "members" to upload photographs they deem to be beautiful examples of the same, even if they are not the photographer.

The site has now put up a banner explaining that it's members should not upload photographs without permission of the photographer, but I suspect the majority of the photographs on the site are there without the knowledge or permission of the photographer who took them. I have seen examples of photos on the site from UK photographers I know by name, Ian Cameron for example ( whom I have notified ). To be clear, this site is not linking to images hosted elsewhere, it is hosting them itself and in most cases without crediting the author.

Perhaps you might like to check the site to see if any of your images have been stolen. The site in question is :

http://www.pixdaus.com/

and if you recognise any photographs on the site, even if not your own, perhaps you could notify the owner.

[IanG]

By chance looking at my own sites stats I've found images have been used a few times. It's hard to police but each time I've threatened action the images have been removed very promptly.

More recently I noticed a lot of referrals from a Canadian Art Journalists Blog site, when I looked I found taht he'd used 5-6 of my images over a period of around 18months, the images had been re-sized and renamed but full Credit had been given along with a link to my own site. That's to me is fair practice.

But the site linked to here does have a line about Copyright and flagging images, that's the wrong way around they should get a poster to fill out the copyright at the start, otherwise there's no check on Image theft etc.

Ian

[jb7]

This might be as good a place as any for this little piece of alarmism...

http://duckrabbit.info/blog/2010/02/pho ... not-a-joke

[DJ]

According to the latest from BJP, there has been a concession to the legislation surrounding orphan works and what constitutes a "reasonable search" to find the author, instead of leaving it open to interpretation :

http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPa ... age=873216

however the clause which allows the secretary of state to transfer copyright without the owner's permission lives on...