well known Dutch LFS steals pictures from...everyone?

[sidguppy]

yeah, see title
kinda sad actually.

I'll keep the name of said store under wraps, for now, to avoid a huge pile of excrements hitting the fan in the worst way possible

but it's like this:
a few very talented fish photographers found out recently that a large store in the Netherlands doesn't take copyrights very seriously

it stole a load of pictures from diverse fora; cropped off names and copyright warnings and used those for their own website.

I just took a peek and they also stole quite a large number of pictures from -for example- this Cichlid Room and Ad Konings......

if anyone wants to know how or where his or her pictures are abused, send me a pm and I can pm back the name and website of that store, so you can see for yourself

warning; their website isnt exactly easy to manage, it takes quite a bit to found the pictures.


to be continued

[Bas Pels]

and obviously, it is not in English

[mummymonkey]

Just post a link.

[sidguppy]

well, no.

if you want the link, I'll do it by pm; but for obvious reasons -for example losing this topic- I won't put up a link here.

[kmayer]

It would really be quite tough to actually determine if a picture that is used is stolen or not. It would require the presence of visible marking to prove anything like this. And people seem to have forgotten to put watermarks that are defining.

And there are even some who actually put just small names at the bottom of the picture that could easily be cropped. But anyway, people just have to be extra careful with it.

[Lisachromis]

Actually copyright on photographs does not need the actual copyright symbol on it for copyright to apply.

See http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

1) "If it doesn't have a copyright notice, it's not copyrighted."
2) "If I don't charge for it, it's not a violation."
3) "If it's posted to Usenet it's in the public domain."
4) "My posting was just fair use!"
5) "If you don't defend your copyright you lose it." -- "Somebody has that name copyrighted!"
6) "If I make up my own stories, but base them on another work, my new work belongs to me."
7) "They can't get me, defendants in court have powerful rights!"
"Oh, so copyright violation isn't a crime or anything?"
9) "It doesn't hurt anybody -- in fact it's free advertising."
10) "They e-mailed me a copy, so I can post it."

That site does a decent job of explaining what is, and what isn't copyrighted whether or not it says so.

[Bas Pels]

And then, generally speaking, the link refers to US law, which expect warnings.

European law does not expect warnings. Signs as (R) and TM, for instance, are compulsory in the USA in order to be able to sue anybody. In Europe we don't care about them, we just sue. The infringer is supposed to have looked into the register

The same goes for copyright - no warning does in Europe not impy free use - I'd say all but free use.

[Juan Artigas]

Well, when you want to create something and have to work very hard to get it done investing time, talent and money, you always have to take into consideration that the world has plenty of lowlife leeches ready to steal other's people work to benefit themselves, then you face the dilemma (and they know it) to either keep producing or spend your time trying to defend your work. Unfortunately, many people don't care about this and they just want things to be free. If this behaviour would prevail, then the world would face the fact that people don't want to produce anything new or valuable anymore because there is no point in doing it... This is why sometimes I envy applications like Facebook (or even some cichlid places) so much, they don't have to research, post and verify any information at all, they just provide the application and let people do they work of providing the information, whether it is good or bad (most likely) it could not mean less...

[bitsnpcs]

One removal method is to contact the webhost and ask them to - "remove it or accept shared liability of costs", as in reality it is the webhost hosting your materials without permission.