Does anyone care about tracking image theft online?

Do you care about online image theft?

  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Never thought about it

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    2
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Name
Jack
Edit My Images
Yes
What do you do when you find your images being used online?

I just signed up to an image tracking portal, and now they're telling me my images are being used in a lot of unexpected places. I now have the choice to ask these unknown users of my images to buy a license, or just ignore it.

I am unsure. It's just one photo that has multiple hits, and I took it on my iPhone, and I feel uncomfortable charging anyone to use it might be unfair.

******** offer to handle the whole legal process, which seems too serious for an iPhone picture!

So just wondering what would you guys do if someone is using your photos without permission? Would you use a service like ******** or just leave it?
 
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Welcome to the forum Jack. There is a thread somewhere here on the forum - I did have a look but can't find it - whereby a member received a nice sum of money for his images being used without permission. Hopefully the author of that thread will see yours and chime in.

In the meantime, why not nip over to this area of the forum and introduce yourself https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/welcome-forum.11/

David
 
Hello Jack, the thread David mentioned is here; hopefully, it should help answer your questions.
 
It's just one photo that has multiple hits, and I took it on my iPhone, and I feel uncomfortable charging anyone to use it might be unfair.

There are a few issues here, firstly a “moral” one: they have taken something that is your property and used it without permission, some people seem to need educating that it is polite to ask first rather than just helping themselves.

The second is are they making money off it? If they are, do you think you deserve a share? Don’t think that because it’s just on social media or whatever someone isn’t making money from it, they may well be using it as part of a marketing campaign or even just driving hits to a page they get ad revenue from. The professional ‘togs on here will also point out that people getting photos for free undercuts their business (personally I think it’s a bit more complex than that) but it does raise an expectation about the cost of photos for online use.

As for the “legal” process, my guess is that an official looking letter/email threatening action is often enough to either get a token fee or get them to stop using it. Any compensation you get will only be related to how much money those using the image were likely to make from it, less the cut taken by Copytrack.
 
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