My first stolen photo - I feel so proud :)

Hi. I'm NOT a professional photographer, but I've been an avid enthusiast for decades. Way back in the mid 1990's, I was piloting a small plane over Boston and took some photos with a 35mm camera using ISO 25 professional film for best grain structure. Then I shipped the exposed film to Kodak for developing and high-resolution scanning onto a photo CD. Recently I put one of the best of these images at medium resolution onto PhotoBucket (see here) so I could share it with a few friends. Reading this forum, I discovered Tineye.com, and started checking images from my Photobucket album. To my amusement, I found that same photo posted in a Spanish photo web site, Photopaises. I contacted them to enquire whether I could use that image commercially, and was told that it it was copyrighted, and that I absolutely had no right to use it. Of course I have no intentions (at present) of selling that image, but I'm honored that another web site should claim ownership. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

Gotta be careful what you post on the internet.

Congratulations!

I got a question about tineye. Does it just search for the name of the file? So if they change the image file name, then Tineye can't find it? Seems that way from the description on the website. Also seems pretty dumb if people don't rename the image once they steal it.

thetathink wrote in post #12089840
I got a question about tineye. Does it just search for the name of the file? So if they change the image file name, then Tineye can't find it? Seems that way from the description on the website. Also seems pretty dumb if people don't rename the image once they steal it.

Just searching a name would be useless, and would also cause false matches. I'm not sure how you got that idea after visiting their site. Did you read these pages:

http://www.tineye.com/​about
http://www.tineye.com/​faq

And you're obviously going to contact them again about their double standards aren't you

casp3r wrote in post #12090139
And you're obviously going to contact them again about their double standards aren't you

Why bother. As far as I can tell, they're not selling photos, just displaying images that others have uploaded. My guess is that somebody snagged my photo and then uploaded it to Photopaises, claiming ownership. That's happened to videos I've uploaded to Youtube as well. I accept this as a sign of approval of my creative work. It has no impact whatsover on me financially, since I don't earn any income from this. Life is too short to get bent out of shape from inconsequential improprieties.

First of all you will need to learn how to speak Spanish it is really not worth the effort to go after them.

I use Tineye as well but did a check of your photo and it shows it being used by pubs.usgs.gov and www.fotopaises.com as well. Good Luck.

kona77 wrote in post #12091197
I use Tineye as well but did a check of your photo and it shows it being used by pubs.usgs.gov and www.fotopaises.com as well. Good Luck.

When I first posted that photo on my personal website in 1996, I received a request from the USGS to include it in their monograph on urban estuaries. I agreed to allow its use in return for a photo credit, which was honored. No problem with that use. They even gave me some color glossy copies of the publication.

How does the saying go?

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"

moose10101 wrote in post #12089930
Just searching a name would be useless, and would also cause false matches. I'm not sure how you got that idea after visiting their site. Did you read these pages:

http://www.tineye.com/​about
http://www.tineye.com/​faq

I didn't read those pages, but if your search results in 0 matches, it shows a page with some reasons why. The below quote is listed along with other reasons.

"TinEye looks for the specific image you uploaded, not the content of the image. TinEye does not identify people or objects in an image."

thetathink wrote in post #12091695
The below quote is listed along with other reasons.

"TinEye looks for the specific image you uploaded, not the content of the image. TinEye does not identify people or objects in an image."

Right, because their software doesn't know people or objects. It wouldn't match your photo of a person with another photo just because that same person was in it. It looks for similar bit patterns in the files.

So you're saying someone stole your photo and your happy about it?

Kind of a double edged sword. I would make them stop but the publicity is nice