Copyright lawyer

[C_Dave45]

There is a website (forum) that has taken all of my personal work photos from my photobucket accounts, and then put them on their own servers. They have since blocked me so I have no access to them. I do not give them permission to publish my photos.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a lawyer who deals with this kind of stuff? It's not a huge dollar amount, but it's more the principle of the thing. I'd like to send a "cease and desist" letter and hope that would take care of it.

[Nitro5]

McLeod Dixon worked well for Sean Banjeree

[Isaiah]

Before you spend money on a lawyer, have you tried sending them an email advising that they are your photos and requesting that they remove them?

When our website was developed, the company who created the site used a photograph of someone else's work. The US company sent us an email telling us to remove the image and, despite the fact that they couldn't have enforced it since we are in Canada, we removed the image right away out of good faith.

[C_Dave45]

Originally posted by Nitro5
McLeod Dixon worked well for Sean Banjeree
Haha...I did NOT want to sound too "Sean Banerjee-ish"...but I guess that was inevitable. lol.


Originally posted by Isaiah
Before you spend money on a lawyer, have you tried sending them an email advising that they are your photos and requesting that they remove them?

When our website was developed, the company who created the site used a photograph of someone else's work. The US company sent us an email telling us to remove the image and, despite the fact that they couldn't have enforced it since we are in Canada, we removed the image right away out of good faith.

Yeah, that was my first move. There's harsh feelings, so I'm not optimistic a request will work. It's been a day since I emailed them. Not even sure if an official C&D letter from a lawyer will work, but it's quite a large forum, and the owner is a very "upstanding" guy with a huge reputation behind him, so I'm hoping cooler heads will prevail.

[cancer man]

You should've had a time stamp/date and your company name on them.
Are they posting them as their own creations or just ideas ?

[CompletelyNumb]

I'll second the watermark suggestion on all your future photos.

If the letter of request doesn't work, you could contact their host with a DMCA request for removal of copyrighted materials. If you can provide proof of ownership, most hosting companies in north america will remove the content for you. Repeated violations would get their account suspended.

If it's hosted offshore you're sol.

[A790]

Dave, e-mail the site/details/etc. and I'll see what I can do for you.

[C_Dave45]

Originally posted by A790
Dave, e-mail the site/details/etc. and I'll see what I can do for you.

Done.

And as expected the site owner told me to pound sand.
The photos aren't listed as their work, they're posted under my username, but there's no indication of who that really is. I used to have a link to my company website as well as Facebook business page, but they've taken those links down.
But the site has a huge viewership and the owner makes a healthy living off the ad-click revenue. And we all know, pics bring in views.

[mr2mike]

That sucks. I know a buddy found a site that had a picture of him in. It was a wedding related event and he just sent them a message to remove the photo. It was a local company so it wasn't a big deal.

Hopefully, this forum removed them promptly. You'd think that eventually they knew they'd get caught for this.

edit: Also I'm certain there's a site where you can upload your pictures and it'll search the net for ones identical so you can see who else has your pictures used.

[ExtraSlow]

Originally posted by mr2mike
edit: Also I'm certain there's a site where you can upload your pictures and it'll search the net for ones identical so you can see who else has your pictures used.
tineye is what you are looking for.

[DeleriousZ]

Originally posted by mr2mike
edit: Also I'm certain there's a site where you can upload your pictures and it'll search the net for ones identical so you can see who else has your pictures used.

You can search by image on google now. You drop the URL to the image and google finds other images that are similar (or the same) to the image in question.

I was under the understanding that anything that's posted to the internet using a photo hosting site was then open to public use?

[xnvy]

^No. If you upload on Flickr and such you still own your photo.