Monday 8 April 2013

The nerve! Someone stole my photo

Update: My photo has been removed, as requested. 

When I first started blogging I made a sign that someone else had made and posted on their blog. This person was quick to tell me that it was her intellectual property and that I had no right to copy it. I disagreed but I removed my version, that I made with my own two hands, and apologized. There is a fine line between stealing someones property and making a version of your own, but at the time I didn't know any better. Now there are even websites and blogs that show off knockoffs!  If the Etsy poster had of asked, I would have given her permission to use my photo any way she wanted to.

I know it happens all of the time, but someone has stolen my photo, of my work, and is selling the photo on Etsy!  Really?

I don’t know why anyone would want it, it’s not a particularly good photo, but they’ve taken my watermark off and added their own. Sheesh, she should have asked and I would have said yes, use it.

I’ve sent the offending party a message to remove it from their sale site, let’s see what happens.
Here is the photo they took, which clearly has my watermark on it.

all three 2_thumb

Thank you to WolfSilverOak for letting me know.

8 comments:

  1. They can sell a photo on ebay?
    Is that unbelievable or what?
    Really - I just can't believe it - and how do they remove a watermark - it's going to get to the point where we'll have to watermark diagonally across the entire photo I guess - what a shame - people are so immoral.
    xxx

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  2. Isn't that crazy, Mel! I found out some of my kitchen pictures are being sold as: "The cool high quality Remodelando La Casa Kitchen Remodeling wallpaper" since they still have the water mark, I take it as some sort of publicity! :)
    Your picture is really nice, love the graphics on those crates! I'm pinning.

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  3. What in the world?!?! People are crazy, keep us updated on what happens!

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  4. o.O so strange and sad. I'm sorry.

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  5. Are you serious? Oh my gosh! That's disgusting!! I'm sure this goes on all the time, mostly unnoticed. I'm glad they removed it!

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  6. I'm glad they removed it too and yeah, sadly - this happens a lot!

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  7. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. It's so disheartening when that happens. I know there were countless hours involved in making those pretty crates. And for someone to come along and remove your watermark and put their own on it and then SELL it is just unbelievable. I used to regularly search the internet for my images using Google Image Search, but that was when I had only been blogging for a few months and didn't have a lot of content yet. Who has time for that? I just signed up with a free service today called myfreecopyright.com that's supposed to "protect your original creations" by scanning the web for your photos and content and letting you know if it finds anything. I'm wondering if you or any of your readers have tried it and what their experience has been. I hope it will prevent things like that from happening. So glad they took it down.

    Debbie

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  8. I blog about our adoptions and was shocked to find that someone had copied and pasted my words on her own blog, passing them off as her own feelings. Broke my heart. It's so sad. Glad they removed it from their site!

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