Be "Suspicious"

Suspicious

The above image is solely owned by Cyrus Khamak. Cyrus is a professional photographer; photography is his main source of income and it pays his bills. He is also the owner of Megashot, a photo sharing site of which I am proud to be a member. While doing some sleuthing on the web, Cyrus found four of his photographs which had been copied without his permission; used not by some careless blogger but by a large corporation which should know better. A Facebook page with more info about this and other posts about image theft was created in an attempt to inform and educate people about the seriousness of the problem.

Maggie, another member of Megashot, also has had images stolen. She is not a professional photographer in the sense that she depends on image sales for a big part of her income, but she does make professional grade photos. Her pilfered photos were used in various ways, some by publications and companies which surely knew better than to do so. Here is a quote from her latest blog post:
“I have found many people using my Peace Rose, my David Austin Rose, my minature (sic) Yellow Water lily, and that was just a few minutes search.”
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So far, I have found four of my own photos (one of them is on two different blogs and another is on three blogs which seem to belong to one person) on blogs and on a website which has it listed as free downloadable clip-art. If they are stealing my snap-shots, just think of what is happening with your worked-for images.
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What this all means to you: If you post images online–anywhere online–and if you do not make an attempt to protect them, do not be surprised one day to pick up a publication or go into a gallery and see one of your photos which has been sold by someone else who stole it, removed your name, and claimed the image as their own. If that thief made a few hundred ill gotten dollars for his effort, would you be pissed? You ought to be. That is one reason why image theft should be stopped to the degree that it can be stopped.
Most people, such as bloggers, seem to be ignorant of the laws covering image ownership but there are some who just do not care. However, many of them are reasonable and will remove the image or images from their sites if they are asked to do so.

Always place the copyright symbol–©*–or the word “copyright” along with your name on each photo you upload to the net. Most people will not go to the trouble of trying to remove a name and will move on and give someone else grief. Remember, it is up to you to protect your work.

Here is a tip on another step you can take to help protect your hard work.
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*On MS Windows® PCs, make sure the “Num Lock” is on on the keyboard, place the cursor where you want the symbol, press and hold the “Alt” key while using the numeric keypad to type 0169; this should insert © into your text.