Help....my photo was stolen....so what happened?

For anyone that's been around here for any amount of time, you have undoubtedly seen the topics that pop up on a quite regular basis about people having a photo stolen. They are often given advice that ranges from sending an e-mail to sending an invoice to contacting a lawyer.
So....my question is....for those of you that have had photos stolen, what was the resolution? How many of you have actually received fair compensation? How many have received at least some compensation? How many have succeeded in simply having the stolen photo pulled and how many have simply given up the fight?
I would be interested in knowing what the general resolution turns out to be....it may give some insight to others on what to expect when a photo is stolen and used without any permissions.

Subscribed Jason.

We never hear from them again so I assume they sue for millions, win, and are now all lazily swanning around the Mediterranean on a solid gold yacht.

Sent the invoice off today...i'll let you know soon....

SOK wrote in post #14273062
We never hear from them again so I assume they sue for millions, win, and are now all lazily swanning around the Mediterranean on a solid gold yacht.

That's my hope

Well.. if you registered the copyright within 90 days of creation (usually before you put it out there in a method that it could be stolen), then you have rights to more financial compensation than you would if you failed to register the copyright within 90 days of the original image's creation (effectively, if you didn't register within 90 days, you can only go for actual damages, which are usually (in comparison) much lower).

Luckily, I've never really had that problem, and the only reason I would really care is if someone was specifically passing my work off as their own. Otherwise, in the future, only put low-res, highly watermarked images out on the web, so that if someone comes and takes it, they're stuck with a crap quality image that probably wouldn't even fit Facebook standards.

Many of my images have been stolen thousands of times. One in particular has over 10 pages of google image results. Of those thousands of I've contacted 27 (to date) infingers. Of those 27 I was able to reach settlements with about 1/2 just via a letter, email or phone call. I'm still negotiating with 3 of them. One of the cases is currently pending in court, and the rest I just let go either because the images weren't registered with the copyright office prior to the infringement, or they were foreign companies.

OP has a good point . . . this topic arrises over and over again. Perhaps this subject and the advice from the experienced folks who have encountered photo theft, and what corrections worked would be a good "sticky" candidate???

Just askin . . .

chrismar wrote in post #14274005
Many of my images have been stolen thousands of times. One in particular has over 10 pages of google image results. Of those thousands of I've contacted 27 (to date) infingers. Of those 27 I was able to reach settlements with about 1/2 just via a letter, email or phone call. I'm still negotiating with 3 of them. One of the cases is currently pending in court, and the rest I just let go either because the images weren't registered with the copyright office prior to the infringement, or they were foreign companies.

How did you find out that your image had been stolen?

jwm1990 wrote in post #14275338
How did you find out that your image had been stolen?

I use a combination of TinEye and Google. Both have plugins for firefox or chrome that will allow you to right-click on an image and search for it using either service. I've written scripts for "personal use" that probably violate the TOS of both services to help speed things up a little.

I've written up a blog post about this very subject: http://chrismartino.co​m …ow-to-find-stolen-photos/

chrismar wrote in post #14275406
I use a combination of TinEye and Google. Both have plugins for firefox or chrome that will allow you to right-click on an image and search for it using either service. I've written scripts for "personal use" that probably violate the TOS of both services to help speed things up a little.

I've written up a blog post about this very subject: http://chrismartino.co​m …ow-to-find-stolen-photos/

Thank you so much! Great blog post btw. How often do you submit your photos to the copyright office, and how do you submit them?

jwm1990 wrote in post #14275559
Thank you so much! Great blog post btw. How often do you submit your photos to the copyright office, and how do you submit them?

I've been doing them yearly, but I will probably switch to quarterly in the very near future. Up until last week I was submitting paper forms since I register my photos as published. The paper form costs $65, and for me, that's a tough pill to swallow to do it every 3 months. Last week I enrolled in the Copyright Office's ePilot program to register published photos using their eCO online system, which is $35. $140/year is more palatable than $260/year (to me) for quarterly registrations.

The unfortunate thing is that this ePilot program isn't available to the general public just yet. It is easy to enroll, though, all you have to do is give the Visual Arts Department of the Copyright Office a call and they'll get you set up and going pretty quickly.

I've also written a blog post on how to register your photos using the paper forms: http://chrismartino.co​m …the-u-s-copyright-office/

One the ePilot program is widely available I'll most likely do another blog post for that.

chrismar wrote in post #14275723
I've been doing them yearly, but I will probably switch to quarterly in the very near future. Up until last week I was submitting paper forms since I register my photos as published. The paper form costs $65, and for me, that's a tough pill to swallow to do it every 3 months. Last week I enrolled in the Copyright Office's ePilot program to register published photos using their eCO online system, which is $35. $140/year is more palatable than $260/year (to me) for quarterly registrations.

The unfortunate thing is that this ePilot program isn't available to the general public just yet. It is easy to enroll, though, all you have to do is give the Visual Arts Department of the Copyright Office a call and they'll get you set up and going pretty quickly.

I've also written a blog post on how to register your photos using the paper forms: http://chrismartino.co​m …the-u-s-copyright-office/

One the ePilot program is widely available I'll most likely do another blog post for that.

Another great post on the subject . . . another good reason to make this thread a sticky . . .

chrismar wrote in post #14274005
.... and the rest I just let go either because the images weren't registered with the copyright office prior to the infringement, or they were foreign companies.

For the cases where you are unlikely to see any benefit/compensation have you tried sending a DMCA notice to their web hosts? While many infringers are happy to flout the law most web hosts aren't going to take any risks on behalf of a client who is (almost always) in breach of their terms of service.

Good info Chris, cheers