If you're one of 1x's photographers, there's a very good chance your work will be here. Stolen by someone and used on flickr 40 pages of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/manliomannozzi/

Imagine a conversation with this guy:

 

- What did you do today?

- I took a ton of screenshots of great photos on the web and uploaded them to my flickr account as if they were mine.

- Oh great... you must feel very proud at the end of the day.

 

Seriously, this is ridiculous.

 

Thanks for alerting, Mel.

You're welcome, Paco! Most of the images I've recognised are from 1x. 7 of them were mine. :(

 

I've since discovered that there were 20 of mine. I've had to type out a DMCA and print it.

I'd post a comment there saying "I'm glad you liked my image so much to add it to your flickr account. Would have been nice to let me know and give me credit for it though..." or something like that. So that, at least the people watching them know what is going on.

is nobody with an account on flickr going to complain to the flickr management and telling what happens ???

do a search under "Kamal Bennani and Cristina Evani " and you will see these photo all over the internet as the owner, most of these sites have the copyright clause in their front end, its up to us to request them removed.

 

Unfortunately, this is a sign of the time, if you post a photo, it will be copied. adding a water mark, no problem photoshop can remove it fairly quickly. All we can do is keep an eye out for each other and go after the web host to have these removed.

 

All we can hope for is that our name is still attributed to the photo and a hot link back to the original.

 

Go to pinrest and search your name, you will be surprise at what will show up; at least here your name and links are 99% of the time still pointing to you.

 

Cheers,

 

MarcB

A very large percentage of Flickr users don't use their accounts to post their own photos - they use their accounts to collect their favorite photos to post online. I suspect that's what this person is doing. Credit to the original photographer would be nice though.

 

I hope you're being ironic, as I was in my post.

 

It's not about being "nice". I'm pretty sure it's a legal obligation. Actually, even giving credit wouldn't be enough.

 

Credit to the original photographer would be a minimum requirement I would think.

 

Note that I do not condone what this guy is doing. I was merely pointing out that many people do not use flickr like most photographers would. Many people use flickr like pinterest. Though even pinterest gives credit to the original source.

 

Piet I went through and painstakingly cut and pasted all the links to 4 separate emails, only to discover afterwards that each email said the same thing. I was expected to send a hard copy letter to their copyright person.

 

I went back and got all the links again, then typed the DMCA out. Printed it, popped it into an envelope, put an address and stamp on it, and will send it in the morning.

 

I've since discovered that this person has google, facebook, instagram, twitter, linkedin, tumblr and other profiles, all using these stolen images.

 

Stolen, I must add, mostly from 1x and 500px.

 

I'm over it.

 

I had no idea that flickr had turned into another pinterest. How pathetic!

 

Pinterest is bad enough, with millions of people pinning without attribution, and now flickr offers the option too.

 

 

Yes I did get around to that, Marc. It's pathetic that these people run their social networks by using other people's beautiful images to attract attention.

 

Still, that seems to be the way, we're just the content providers, and the rest of the world feels free to take what they want....

 

sigh

He also took my!

what a shame!!

It's hard to imagine what they actually get out of doing this. By the way Mel, how did you find them in the first place, was it just chance?

 

Flickr doesn't really offer the feature (unlike Pinterest which offers pinning). But many people use their flickr accounts as if it were a pinterest account, taking screenshots or downloading images and posting them to their flickr photostream.

Adrian I was messaged by a friend, who found one of my images. I have since found 20 all up.

 

It seems he's also used google, tumblr, instagram, facebook and linkedin to spread the stolen works.

 

The whole point of the exercise is to build his social network by attracting people with attractive work. This in turn attracts more people.

 

To that end, I'm about sick of my work from here being used in this way, and will be closing my account

 

Mel indeed closed her 1X account :-( .....

 

:(

 

But... why?

The pictures there looked like screenshots (low-res) so I don't think you can really be protected against that on the internet, no matter if you post on 1x or any other site...

I was informed by a friend about this discussion and she told me that one of my 1x photos was posted in that guy's flickr account. I just had a look, and found 2 images of mine.

 

This guy even cropped and changed the color of the images of mine, as if they were his images.

 

I think this is definitely unacceptable. But I am not sure what we can do something about this behavior?

It's a difficult one as there is no way to stop someone from taking a screen print. You can of course complain to flickr or whatever site has the photos and you will usually get them removed - after some considerable effort.

 

The internet is a wonderful thing that allows us to share our photos across the world, but there is a downside too. Each of us has to decide if the positive of sharing outweighs the negative of the occasional theft.

I would say that the benefits of getting your work out there outweigh the cost of piracy. Pretty much everyone that posts their pictures on the internet has come to that conclusion otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.

 

I agree, Greg. What is the point in taking photos if very few ever see them? Of course, some types of art sales rely on exclusivity, so each person must decide for themselves. But, if you don't use the internet - how do you get your stuff out there?

Wow... I just did a little search on google about myself and my pictures and it's quite incredible...

 

I have found one of my pictures (uploaded and selected here at 1x) in tens of websites of people whom I don't know at all.

 

Well, actually, it seems it's not tens of different websites, most are tumblr. I don't get exactly how that thing works (I'm not too much on blogs, facebook and the like) but it seems one person managed to upload the image to his blog (in fairly big resolution) and many other "re-blogged" or something...

 

Also found it on facebook and pinterest though.

 

As it always shows my name together with the image, I'm not too concerned. I even take it as "free advertisement" for myself :)

 

Wouldn't have thought to find this though...

I guess it's also an indicator of how popular 1x is.

 

Anyway, as other have said, I guess you have to accept that making an image public somewhere on the internet means taking the risk of finding it all over the place. But people should always give credit to the photographer imo.

Tineye and reverse google image search are two ways you can see if other people are using your images. You have to search on an image by image basis though so it's not too efficient. It may be most useful on your high-value images (i.e., the ones people are mostly likely to steal). Be prepared though, you may not like what you find out there.

 

I tried tineye on this one (high-res): http://1x.com/photo/157683/latest:user:155242

 

And it said: your image is too simple.

 

Hahahaha. Minimalism is not good I reckon.