I know I promised the next blog would cover Wedding Websites and I promise I am working on the Wedding Website blog but but I thought this topic was VERY important.
As many of you know I am a moderator on the Phototips forum. (www.phototips.biz)
Recently Jimmy the owner of Phototips podcast, blog, and forum has written a few blogs about someone on Facebook stealing other photographer’s images and using them as his own. As photographers we work hard to capture beautiful images and when someone steals your images and uses it as their own it is shocking…it is also against the law.
Last summer I had to contact a photographer whose wedding and engagement session we were hired to capture. It came to our attention that he was using some of our photographs on his website and Facebook page. Our solution was simple (a solution that I pursued with Jimmy’s help) I wrote him a letter and asked him to either remove the images or to put a note on each and every image that said the image was taken by Special Treasures Photography. He removed the images. We chose not to pursue the fact that much of his website is a copied and pasted version ours, our clients know our work speaks for itself, but the answer is not always as simple.
To help photographers when this happens Jimmy created a website called PictureDefence.com that offers a detailed step by step instructions on how to handle this situation using the proper methods when it happens to you. While this is written mostly for US photographers it also applies to Canadian photographers and we need to be active in making sure that this behavior is not allowed to continue.
Remember it is against the law to use, alter, edit, and post without credit to the original photographer!
To See Jimmy’s blogs by clicking one of the links.
http://www.phototips.biz/2013/01/did-facebook-consent-to-image-theft.html
He followed that up with:
http://www.phototips.biz/2013/01/phototips-members-take-down-30-websites.html
So what can photographers do?
Visit and support www.PictureDefense.com and spread the word!
http://www.phototips.biz/2013/01/help-someone-stole-my-images.html
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