Posted this on my blog and figured I should make a thread so it can be more public. If you are thinking about spending your $$ anywhere, knowing the ethics that business is important.
A few nights ago the above image was used by the company that makes the incog holster without my permission. They paid daily_badass - a popular instagram feed - to post it so that they can get followers on their instagram page. This is pathetic and sad. I confronted the company on their instagram page as did others and they deleted the post completely and did not respond at all. They were also confronted on the above linked instagram feed and I was given credit for the photo, but only by the instagram feed owner, NOT by the company that falsely used my image as their own. If you know of any company who does this, you should go out of your way to call them out on their bullshit and make sure others know. This is plagiarism and exactly like if I were walk into their shop and take one of their products, posting it everywhere saying it was my own and taking credit for everything that had to do with it. Funny enough the image above is from my review of the Incog Holster and how bad my experience with it was. If you have not read the review, do it, you will see how this holster is not for you.
I wasn’t insinuating that you did steal. Obviously it’s your image if you say it’s your image. I was just thinking out loud for a moment.
There are billions of images on the net with no way to ascertain where they originated from directly unless one already knew. Were they in the wrong? They look to be certainly and they should have handled it differently once you confronted them about it but without watermarks on the photos what damages can you claim?
You need to start watermarking your pics. I recommend two, one obvious one like Sticks and a second one that would only be noticeable by you incase of any manipulation on their end and you need to prove copyright. People who don’t take pictures/video im my experience are clueless about copyright.
As I stated I posted the image on my blog, as original content.
As a photographer, the photographs I post online have inherent value, same value your image has, hence why you have to release it to those who wish to profit off of it - just like they attempted to do.
I do put watermarks on my pictures now, this was posted before I started to.
This stuff really ticks me off. My wife is a popular artist and sends her line art to a rather large company in her industry for production and distribution. In less than 6 months after her work is released it is copied to nearly identical by many of the competitors. It’s like squashing bugs, going legal would cost more than the benefits attained. These companies respond typically like, so sue me. We have stopped a few but more just pop up.
Public shaming, and word of mouth in that industry is probably the best way about it (and cheapest too).
I posted this on several firearms/ccw/tactical forums because that is their customer base. I want people to search, come up with this thread or my post on my blog and see what they did and choose to purchase from a company that is more ethical and moral.
Your photography is rather incredible. I’ve watched it over the years thru M4c and it continues to improve. Nice work. Oh, sorry about the theft. No GCodes for me.
Both Getty and Corbis hired a company to track online image theft a few years back and the percentage of images that are used without authorization is huge. I’ve taken companies to court for misusing my images, and won, but collecting on a judgement is just about impossible. What’s even more infuriating is when foreign companies use my images without permission/payment and basically thumb their nose at requests to remove the images from their site.
Sadly, online theft is here to stay. Watermarks are very easy to remove and while it may dissuade a few thieves, I’ve had watermarked images simply retouched by the thieving end-user.
Sorry this happened but it’s a case of "welcome to the world wide web’, it’s been happening to a lot of us for many many years - it definitely takes a cut out of the monetary bottom line.
About the most accurate assessment I’ve read of the situation is that if you don’t want images stolen, do not have a single image online in any manner whatsoever. That’s basically impossible for commercial photographers in the modern day but the reality is that if you post images online, anywhere, eventually they are going to be stolen and used to further someone else’s purposes.
Basically convert whatever gain they were trying to accomplish via social media and forum positive image into explanation of what happened - and they’ll lose business from it.
A third party using media that was incorrectly to be assumed open license isn’t as detrimental, but once approached by the concern not having an answer is frankly unacceptable, especially in an industry where good media creation with their products is critical to success. I was looking at an INCOG because of the price; no more.
They had that picture on their instagram account for more than a month - they deleted it when I confronted them, so this guy either re-posted it from me didn’t give credit for the photo or got it from them.
Post on his FB page with a link to this thread please.
watermark and then copyright/register all your images you want to protect and then if it happens again record it screen grabs etc… then send them a bill
been knowing a few more photographers to win with companies these days but sadly the small ones its a lot tougher but I would bill them then turn it into collections and make them deal with those people
I might have gotten that mixed up then, there were a few accounts with that image, I did not get a chance to screen capture g-code’s post but it was there for a while and they posted it as their own without giving credit.
