Steal Pictures from Photobucket


Larry

Long Winded Old Fart
Ever have someone Steal a lot of your Photo's from your Photobucket Albums & put them on their Account Albums?
Well, it has happened to me. After almost a month of trying to get it resolved, I gave up. This guy or girl has taken about 25 pictures from my Albums & downloaded them to theirs. It happened a lot of times when I use to be on Facebook w/my military photo's.
It's real hard to prove to a web site that someone is using your pictures & they don't seem to really care as long as someone is putting something up.
I went on YouTube the other day & found my movies on someone else's acct.
Never ending battle, especially when it's a Public web site.:mad::rolleyes::eek:
 
I had a few of my photos show up elsewhere.
Maybe we need to put that little copyright symbal in the picture?
I guess that's why some people put their name on the photo, like on ebay... but it's not hard to crop it out I suppose.
 
I did an animation for a company, and they put it on their Facebook page. Within an hour, someone had already stolen the video and posted it on YouTube. I confronted the person, and they sent me back a smiley face :)

It wouldn't be so bad, but nowhere in the description for the video does it say the company it was for or the creator of the video.
 
I was one of the Squadron Photographers when I was stationed in Argentia, newfoundland in 1957 & 58. I had taken over 1000 B&W pictures on the base & off. A lot were from St.Johns, Nfld. & some were from the Air Force base there. I use to have a page on Facebook just for Navy photo's & I also had a lot of pictures on VPNavy in the Fasron 106 page. I originally started the fasron pages on VPNavy right after they started that web site.
I was looking on Facebook one day & searching a lot of towns in Newfoundland & there were all of my pictures from VPNavy & facebook all tied up together & a teenager had put all of those pictures under their name.
Made me mad & I contacted Facebook & I guess you know what they said to me; How can you prove all of those pictures were your's? I couldn't. Then they asked me; How do we know you didn't steal them from her web page?
I couldn't prove that either. So, we just have to deal w/it & forget it, because these people will get their's someday.:(:mad:
 
Well that's the risk you take putting anything on the web. Hopefully you weren't naked in any of the pictures!
I've had the experience of finding an article I wrote for an airliner modeling site not only re-posted but translated to Spanish on a Spanish modeling web site. At least it still gave me credit as the author. I decided to take it as a compliment that they anyone would bother to do the translation.
 
That sucks and is wrong of people but whatever makes thier socks roll up and down....To me its like buying a deer head mount that you didnt hunt and get. What are they going to do with it??..I'd hate to lie or have to say, "No I bought that"
He might as well say he has a custom street rod and chopper he built too.
What are they going to do when someone asks "Wow you have a great layout, we'd love to see it".
I wouldn't mind someone using my pics on their page if they gave me credit for it. I have friends share my facebook album but thats FAR different from what they are doing to you.
NOW if I learned someone made money off of my work it be different. Every key stroke on a computer and web can be traced if the crime is worth the time to look into it. Easy to prove who uploaded the information first.
 
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There are some copyright protections that can be used by the average person.

You can embed copyright data in your pictures before uploading them using steganography techniques or digital watermarking. Application software can be found with Google. At least one program, steghide, is open source.

You can also file a DMCA takedown notice per the following instructions:

DMCA Instructions
 
Larry,

It sounds like you have some great photos that I would love to see sometime. I guess I have to look for some kid's facebook account to see them he he he

I found I like to add the copyright sign and my name to photos when I care about them. I hide them in the photo so you can find it but it's not so bad to destroy the photo. It takes time but you then have rights to protect you when someone else tries to claim them as their photos.

Do you still have them on-line?
Also, have you looked into sites you can add passwords to photos to access limited. I know there are some like that. I upload a lot of photos to Costco Photo to print as well as I keep them to myself and family because I can set the albums to public or friends or no access. Then I can pass out the password to users I want to access the photos.
Just a thought and if you want to know more let me know off-thread.
Dave
 
Having the RAW file is often sufficient proof, perhaps not in a court of law but a friend used it when some wedding pics were lifted and she complained to the webhost of the offending party. Stripping the EXIf data from any posted image should be SOP, that is info that you will then only have.
 
Sorry to hear Larry, I know that kind of stuff Pi$$es a person off, especially when you can't do anything.
 
Larry you probably CAN prove those pics from Argentia are actually yours. No doubt back then you used a film camera and to get them on the web you had to scan them. You still have the orginal prints, right? Sounds to me that is all the proof you have to show. On the other hand if they are official USN photos you took as part of your duty then they are public domain and can be used or copied by anyone for any legal purpose as long as they are not security classified in any way. Even at that it is customary to state "official US Navy photo" or something similar.

BTW, I spent more than a few hours from time to time in Argentia to refuel the cutter when I was in the Coast Guard. Also made a few calls to St John's to drop off medical cases we picked up from merchy vessels out in the middle of the Atlantic.
 
what mike said about prints. but i guess this is to obvious and you thought about already.

while i understand why this is annoying you i don't think this is so unexpected. if you can see the image on screen you can capture it. if you leave something of value out in the open on the street someone surley will grab it at some point. pictures are always in the open and some must have seen value. nothing to be done, but perhaps take pride that some found use in them.

and again, don't forget, its the internetz, horrible things happen here.
on one popular social network website some prick duped my sister inlaw account, took her pictures and started sending carefully crafted nasty messages as her to people in friend list. imagine her suprise when a friend calls her up with message "so not cool of you". and who knows who this person might have sent their crap.
 
You could try going into your Photobucket Options menu and setting your account to private and leaving the 'share' box unchecked. It won't get your photos back but it may keep any more from being hijacked.
 
Having the RAW file is often sufficient proof, perhaps not in a court of law but a friend used it when some wedding pics were lifted and she complained to the webhost of the offending party. Stripping the EXIf data from any posted image should be SOP, that is info that you will then only have.

If I understand correctly, the RAW file is absolute proof in a court of law, but would require an expert to testify to that fact. Unfortunately, some consumer grade cameras no longer provide a means to download the RAW file. Something to keep in mind when camera shopping.
 
If I understand correctly, the RAW file is absolute proof in a court of law, but would require an expert to testify to that fact.

I believe you are correct.

Unfortunately, some consumer grade cameras no longer provide a means to download the RAW file. Something to keep in mind when camera shopping.

Hmmm - While true that many (most?) "lower end" digital cameras don't save RAW, I don't think "copyright protection" is a good reason to be shooting in RAW - The files are ~ an order of magnitude larger (and hence slow everything down - A *lot*) and need processing before being usable. Then even more processing before being usable on the web.

A couple of options;

- Put a big ol' watermark in the image before posting; "Copyright © 2011, Joe Blow" - This can be done by any number of programs and doesn't need to "ruin" the image - Set a little transparency and it's still "viewable", but is difficult to remove. [Apparently, the © symbol must be this - The often used "(c)" doesn't cut it - Dunno how true that is, but I read it "somewhere"....]

- As suggested, a letter (I don't think email works) to the hosting company of the stolen images with some big scary words generally works - You have to swear that "under penalty of perjury the following referenced images are copyright by me, blah, blah"; [I can find the correct wording if needed]. They'll push back unless you identify each individual image with a complete link, and the wording needs to be "correct" to get their attention.

Having said that, you put 'em up in a public forum - Some folk are simply gonna steal 'em - Hopefully, most use proper attribution, but welcome to the 21st century :(

Here's an example from Suttonimages - One of the big outfits covering motorsport - It's viewable, but hardly "useable" & certainly not printable [It's only 32k]

As always, my 02c,
Cheers,
Ian
 
Basically I have resigned myself to the fact that income from photography isn't going to replace my Engineer's salary, so the loss of potential income from the occassional download isn't worth my loss of sleep and angst. It used to bother me a lot more, but I've mellowed. Or something, I'm just too old to get worked up over it. Some of my pics from our gallery I know have been lifted 100s of times. Probably 99.9% of those were simply because someone liked it and saved it for some unknown reason. For that I'm honored. And even a copyright won't legally prevent someone just saving it for posterity, it falls under "Fair Use" anyway. Haven't seen any on coffee mugs at the fleamarket yet....

But I do place the © symbol on them now just to give notice.
 
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Lifting a photo for private use I personally do. If there is something I like and want as a desktop back ground or in the modeling world would like to recreate I copy the picture and past it in my files. I'm no lawyer but I doubt that is even illegal. It is akin to saving the label of your cereal box. Now You have every right in my opinion to be mad about them showing up somewhere else. I have some treasured photos of my pet railroad the Coeur d'Alene Railway and Nav. Co. There are just a handfull in existance. I have obtained written permission to use them should ever the need arise. I captured them off the net, but sought the owners of the photos for permission to use them. Even though they themselves are not copyrighted the web page is. It's a matter of respect. They are not mine and I should recieve no personal gain from there use without permission.

The problem is most people do not believe in good old fashion morals anymore. We are a narcassistic society that puts self first. We are talking about photos the root problem is much bigger than that. The people stealing your photos don't care about you, the web host doesn't care about you, the ones viewing the photos don't care about you. They care about themselves.

Wow I'll step down from my soap box now.

When you post them I agree get the copyright on there and then make them so small and low quality that they are useless for anything other than looking at on the net. Then offer (if you want) higher resolution pictures upon request.

Don't give up caring though. You may not be able to do anything about it but if you stop caring and become numb to it, then futher degradation of morality continues. Stay mad about it, please, it means you care.
 
... Stay mad about it, please, it means you care.


I still very much care, it is just that being mad about it doesn't fix it and only affects me. One can care a great deal without being angry. I can choose to let it affect me, or I can choose to not. If I let others determine my happiness, they're in charge. I choose to be in charge of me and determine my happiness myself.

But I do understand your point.
 



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