Widespread copyright infringement on blogs.

tell them your agent is yakuza,that should do the trick.

Nathan,

In my experience, the average blogger has no idea what image licensing is, so playing hardball from the get go usually doesn’t lead to the results you want.

I would send an e-mail to let them know that they are using copyrighted images, and request that they remove them, or inquire about rates for usage.

Also, remember, if you don’t register your images with the copyright office, your monetary claims are restricted to usage, not damages. so copyright!

A lot depends if the blogger is making money x his blog (and therefore with your pictures) or not… If he does you can try the yakuza agent or tell him your best friend is a hacker specialized in zapping blogs…

John

allen,the neccessity to copyright your work is a united states thing.in great britain(and the rest of the e.u.,i think?)your copyright,as long as you can prove authorship,is automatically protected.

My favourite was a bunch of images that got stolen (somehow?) from my old agent and ended up credited in my name on a blog. I did a narnie and my agent had them removed immediately. Don’t think he was Yakuza though but making a bit of noise seems to do the trick…

Nathan -

I’ve been teaching at the college level for more than ten years. In that time, I’ve found that students have a rudimentary knowledge, at best, of copyright. I’d guess that most people have used your images because a. They can and b. They don’t know any better.

Why don’t you write them a simple letter saying that the images are copyrighted. What are you hoping to get from the bloggers? Removal of the images? Money? Credit? You can probably get them removed by emailing the upstream provider under provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Credit is probably easy. Money might be harder.

Don’t worry, Im quite nasty when it comes to someone using my images without permission. My friend here is more than willing to help me collect on a few debts.

I’ve already had some personal success with this, had my agency get onto a few blogs that were using my images and two of them turned into paying customers. What Im interested in at the moment is should we go after blogs that are freely using images that arn’t neccessarily ours.

For example a friend was telling me about a very popular blog on all things Japan Art/Design world today so I decided to check it out. http://jeansnow.net/ The image front and center on the top page was shot by an A.P photographer, its not credited and Im (fairly) sure it hasn’t been licenced (its taken directly from the article the blog links to).

A.P. have enough money and resourses to do their own dirty work but its the principle that has me bitting at the bit to write to the blogger in question and let him know that his use of the image is a copyright infringement and that he should only be using imagery that he has the rights to.

Should we, as a community, take it apon ourselves to attempt to educate the blogsphere?

Also John, I tend to dissagree that there is a difference between making money off the blog or not. Using the imagery gives the blog an air of credibility, of sophisitication if you like , and that in turn reflects positively on the blogger. I have another friend here in Tokyo who bloggs on the fashion scene (but uses his own images) and even though he makes no money directly from the site itself he is making a killing off the work and contacts that the blog generates.