Found my photos on Ebay for sale

[tilley441]

Found my photos on Ebay for sale from an American seller, just a quick look and they have sold over $1000 worth of prints/canvases with one of my photos, is there anything I can do about it, stop them selling claim money etc?

The photo was taken from my flickr (I had download disabled)

[sherman]

Only way is to find out where they live, get on the next available plane and kick seven bells out of them. take your money from them and get the plane home. (this may cost more to do than the money you would get back from them)

Chasing them through the courts will probably cost you more than $1000 so is it worth it? Use it as a life lesson and watermark your pics on flicker or dont post them up.

[GetCarter]

tilley441 said:

Found my photos on Ebay for sale from an American seller, just a quick look and they have sold over $1000 worth of prints/canvases with one of my photos, is there anything I can do about it, stop them selling claim money etc?

The photo was taken from my flickr (I had download disabled)

I suggest that they are almost certainly breaking ebay rules. I'd check out ebay's T&Cs carefully, then when fully armed contact the Yanks and tell them to stop selling immediately, to re-reimburse you for what they have obtained illegally, or ebay will cut their nuts off.

This happened to me a while back - someone had nicked a photo and was making key-rings. I got him to destroy the entire stock and got him to pay £500 to a local charity - or I was going to see him in court.

ETA.. here ya go. eBay should be able to sort it for you: http://pages.ebay.co.uk/vero/notice.html

Edited by GetCarter on Monday 1st July 13:38

[ukaskew]

I found various eBay sellers selling my photos a few months ago, contacted them and they just ignored me. I then contacted eBay via their hugely annoying/convoluted system (you have to fax them) and you guessed it...heard nothing.

In fact, a quick search of my one of my more popular ones and it's still there now...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Brooklyn-Bridge-Night-vi...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BROOKLYN-BRIDGE-AT-NIGHT...

[CommanderJameson]

American seller? DMCA takedown notice, surely?

[londonagent]

ukaskew said:

I found various eBay sellers selling my photos a few months ago, contacted them and they just ignored me. I then contacted eBay via their hugely annoying/convoluted system (you have to fax them) and you guessed it...heard nothing.

In fact, a quick search of my one of my more popular ones and it's still there now...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Brooklyn-Bridge-Night-vi...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BROOKLYN-BRIDGE-AT-NIGHT...

This plagiarist has made himself very easy to find by putting his personal details on the ebay listing. I'd be tempted to fire off a letter to them asking for £xxx in compensation, then when that fails go down the route of the small claims court. wkers like this fk me right off.

[Wyvern971]

Sorry to hear that you're having this issue.

Unfortunately with the way of the world, people simply think that they won't get caught, and even if they do nothing will come of it.
(There's a few threads in talkphotography).

One useful one I was told about was searching google images using an image. google then goes off to trawl the web for similar images.
(I must be a crap photographer though, I've not found any of mine yet )

[size13]

ukaskew said:

I found various eBay sellers selling my photos a few months ago, contacted them and they just ignored me. I then contacted eBay via their hugely annoying/convoluted system (you have to fax them) and you guessed it...heard nothing.

In fact, a quick search of my one of my more popular ones and it's still there now...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Brooklyn-Bridge-Night-vi...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BROOKLYN-BRIDGE-AT-NIGHT...

That has been ripped off a lot!
http://www.tineye.com/search/4ae9ea0682b7232431347...

[julian64]

Don't mean to sound rude, but how does any court know that it was you that took the picture.

In other words how do you prove you aren't a scammer?

[CommanderJameson]

julian64 said:

Don't mean to sound rude, but how does any court know that it was you that took the picture.

In other words how do you prove you aren't a scammer?

Producing the RAW image would be pretty definitive.

[julian64]

CommanderJameson said:

julian64 said:

Don't mean to sound rude, but how does any court know that it was you that took the picture.

In other words how do you prove you aren't a scammer?

Producing the RAW image would be pretty definitive.

Assuming the photo has been processed? Even so proving the starting point from a number of possibly manufactured RAW options?

I think anything that appears on the internet in digital form has effectively been given away.

The trick would be to find a way of digitally marking an image to construct a trail. The trouble is it would have to be covert rather than overt.

[GetCarter]

julian64 said:

I think anything that appears on the internet in digital form has effectively been given away.
.

No, No, No, No, No!

Nothing on the internet belongs to anyone else unles stipulated.

I hold intellectual property rights to all my material on CD on the net, on the TV, anywhere, be it music or photography whether it has watermarks or copyright or whatever. The sooner the world learns this, the better!

[AndWhyNot]

julian64 said:

CommanderJameson said:

julian64 said:

Don't mean to sound rude, but how does any court know that it was you that took the picture.

In other words how do you prove you aren't a scammer?

Producing the RAW image would be pretty definitive.

I think anything that appears on the internet in digital form has effectively been given away.

Why the distinction between online and "real world"? You wouldn't steal a postcard from a newsagent or a print from a gallery. Why does it become ok because you're at a computer? That's a difficult mentality to rationalise IMO.

As for proving ownership, I think if I needed to I could definitively prove authorship of any of my digital images. Either by demonstrating ownership/ possession of the camera which took the shot (all images *are* stamped at time of capture) or by producing shots that had not been in the public domain from either side of the image in question.

[DannyScene]

I don't ever have to worry about this happening because I only take st photographs

[bashful]

tilley441 said:

Found my photos on Ebay for sale from an American seller, just a quick look and they have sold over $1000 worth of prints/canvases with one of my photos, is there anything I can do about it, stop them selling claim money etc?

The photo was taken from my flickr (I had download disabled)

Can I ask what resolution you posted the image to Flickr at? I'd have thought a low-res image would've printed very poorly at that size, even on canvas. (Stable door, horse bolted, etc., but I only post up to 1280 pixels on Flickr.)

[CommanderJameson]

bashful said:

Can I ask what resolution you posted the image to Flickr at? I'd have thought a low-res image would've printed very poorly at that size, even on canvas. (Stable door, horse bolted, etc., but I only post up to 1280 pixels on Flickr.)

This is exactly the reason I put my stuff on Flickr at 1024x768. Not even much use for computer wallpaper, what with screens being mostly 16:9 and 16:10 these days, rather than 4x3.

And it works! No-one's stealing my stuff, it seems!

or looking at it

>harrumph<

[Podie]

GetCarter said:

julian64 said:

I think anything that appears on the internet in digital form has effectively been given away.
.

No, No, No, No, No!

Nothing on the internet belongs to anyone else unles stipulated.

I hold intellectual property rights to all my material on CD on the net, on the TV, anywhere, be it music or photography whether it has watermarks or copyright or whatever. The sooner the world learns this, the better!

Correction.

The sooner the world enforces this, the better!

[MartinP]

I'm even more cautious than that and only post at 750px along the biggest side. Would stop someone trying to sell it as a large canvas but hasn't stopped my images being copied onto web sites all around the world...

[GetCarter]

I'm so used to it with my music that I don't bother with res or watermarks on my photos. I just come down like a ton of bricks if my work is stolen. Works well if you are prepared to back it up.

I am, as some will confirm.

[markmullen]

GetCarter said:

I'm so used to it with my music that I don't bother with res or watermarks on my photos. I just come down like a ton of bricks if my work is stolen. Works well if you are prepared to back it up.

I am, as some will confirm.

This.

I don't want unsightly watermarks splashing across a composition I've spent ages perfecting. I will, and do, however, frequently search for my images, and strike down with great vengeance and furious anger on those who try it on.