Bloggers stealing photos

Kinda funny how CAHeidelberger felt the need to come on here and make those corrections. guess he likes the interwebs drama

For those that may wonder why I pulled all copies of the photo off of the internet. This is simply good practice and a fairly common procedure when you believe someone has infringed upon your copyright. You don't want a bunch of copies of your photograph floating around to muddle up any potential litigation.

My argument here would be a lot easier to make if everyone here could see the photo. Many photographers understand things like DOF and telephoto compression. If there are four people in the frame and only two of them are in focus, the other two people aren't that close to them when you are shooting at 200mm f/2.8 and your subjects are ~70 feet away (the shot was fairly heavily cropped). The perspective compression at 200mm on a 1.3 crop camera can make things appear to be much closer than they actually are.


A few people have PM'd me to ask my why I won't just state my case on the blogger's website. I have a few reasons for this.

The first is that I don't see any point in posting a comment underneath a blog post on page 3 of his website. No one will even notice it and nothing will be accomplished.

The blogger has also shown a penchant for taking words out of context and using selective quoting to put words into people's mouth.

Through my research, I have read of a few accounts of the blogger not posting responses from people that don't agree with him if he can't win the argument. I don't want to get caught in a situation where I make a post, he responds with a ridiculous comment and I am not allowed to make my own counter-point.

The bottom line is that I'm not responsible for making sure that the blogger tells the truth on his website. That burden falls on him. I just wanted to warn other photographers about the potential risks of photographing politicians.

One extreme blogger stealing from an extreme site in the other direction and then taking it to a new extreme trying to muster up extreme feelings no matter how false they are like extremists do. Moral of the story is too much extreme in one place just isn't good!

I have 4 or 5 google alerts, have had them for awhile now and found many morons doing it, great service but get the weekly updates as the daily will drive you nuts!

DDCSD wrote in post #10079074
I'm not going to bother with contacting blogger about it. He removed the photo, so there really isn't anything else that would require their involvement.

Do you still believe that? This guy is harassing you.

deadpass wrote in post #10086859
Do you still believe that? This guy is harassing you.

I doubt that there is anything that the blogger website would (or should) do. They are not resposible for what this guy does, nor can they be expected to be.

I heard a report the other day saying that about 80% of photographs appearing on the internet are there without the photographers permission. It's the dark side of the net.

Have Fun,
Jeff

What is this? Where is all the good karma?

That guy should really be ashamed of himself.

Another interesting twist in the story. I just noticed that the blogger is a dedicated follower of my personal twitter account. 1 out of 5 "followers". Two of my followers are organizations that I follow, one is an organization that must have found me through one of those other organizations, one seems to be a completely random person and there is our favorite photo-stealing blogger.

I will admit that I'm not sure when he started following me on twitter (I delete all twitter emails as soon as I get them and usually don't even bother to read them), but I've only had this personal account since April 5th of this year...

I'm not sure whether to be flattered to have such a dedicated fan that follows me all over the internet or if I should just be creeped out.

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wow... that guy is creepy and just asking for a lawsuit.

But the lesson learned for us photographers here... ANY photos that you think might be of value or future value — don't post them on a public website. It is TOO EASY for people to STEAL them.

Just resist from posting them! Make galleries that are private... request invitations to see those images from customers who are serious about purchasing.

Talk about a Troll

dmccabe wrote in post #10092209
wow... that guy is creepy and just asking for a lawsuit.

But the lesson learned for us photographers here... ANY photos that you think might be of value or future value — don't post them on a public website. It is TOO EASY for people to STEAL them.

Just resist from posting them! Make galleries that are private... request invitations to see those images from customers who are serious about purchasing.

Yeah, it is a very slippery slope. You want (and need) to get your work seen, but then you have to balance that with it being seen and used in ways/places that you don't want it to because someone steals it and makes up stories to put with it.

DDCSD wrote in post #10082193
Now the blogger has linked to this thread, along with a blatant misrepresentation of one of my statements posted here.

http://madvilletimes.b​logspot.com …on-howie-brings-t-rv.html

The thing that concerns me the most about all of this is that his website states that he is employed by Dakoa State University as a research assistant. I believe that to be a faculty-level position, although I am not familiar with the details of his employment beyond what he states on his website.

Derek: I doubt whether "research assistant" is anywhere near a Faculty-level position. It may not even amount to "graduate student", as we have undergrads who are classified as "research assistant".

sparkin wrote in post #10092252
Derek: I doubt whether "research assistant" is anywhere near a Faculty-level position. It may not even amount to "graduate student", as we have undergrads who are classified as "research assistant".

I have since been told that he is classified as an "instructor" and verified that with the university's online faculty directory.

Hey Derek, sorry that this hassle has been occupying your time!

Now, a serious question: where does the line fall concerning fair/editorial use and use that is out of bounds? For instance, every day we see on Cable News and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, etc, clips from another news network or some other show, photos lifted from the newspaper/net, etc, etc. How does this compare with a blogger lifting a screen shot from a Web page? Do you consider it illegal, or merely inethical, especially since there was some nefarious "interpretations" going on that didn't match the facts?

In other words, did you have legal grounds in that this use violated the limits to fair/editorial use, whereas Jon Stewart playing a lifted clip from MSNBC or Fox for comic effect would not?

I'm curious, both to know how one would interpret the difference, and as to whether blogs are by nature some kind of "gray area" that hasn't been legally defined, or what?!

Curious to hear your thoughts!

Tony,

I'm not a lawyer, but I think the difference is that the blogger was not actually commenting on the image itself (which would be fair use), but using the image to push a separate agenda.