My Alaska photo (The stolen version)

[jimhanus]

This is my first post of Alaska photos. This photo is a favorite, and also seems to be a favorite for copyright infringement. In looking at my website statistics, I saw lots of referrals from sites I have nothing to do with. So in checking I found a lot of people linking to this particular photo (without photo credit of course). Fortunately they didn't copy/paste but linked to the original. So, I changed the file to have copyright info all over it. I also attached some of the screen shots of the sites that now have the copyright covered version. I asked the YouTube site owner to remove it first, but the owner of that site argued that he got the image from Google Images so it was OK to use .

Jim

[steve.ledger]

.. the owner of that site argued that he got the image from Google Images so it was OK to use .

Well, made sense to the owner.. Seems it's gone now though.

It's a very nice image Jim - I can see why people chose to borrow it.

[jimhanus]

sledger,
That was about a year ago. I kept checking every few months to see if it was changed. On the page it shows the last time the owner logged in and he did regularly so I guess he didn't care (for a while anyway). Had another small graphic of a round button that was also stolen and used as a repeating background. I changed that one to say "This image was stolen from Jim Hanus" or something similar. That one was up for months. I stopped checking after a while, don't know if it ever was changed.

[Rhanna]

Great photo Jim.
I suppose it is a back handed compliment that people want to steal it!
One of the problems with publishing on the web.
Rupert

[jimhanus]

The photo was also used in a blog post about an earthquake in the Aleutian Islands, even though those islands are about 1,000+ miles away from where this was taken (Mt. McKinley). I got the hosting company to remove that one.

[steve.ledger]

One of the problems with publishing on the web.

Yes, and 'borrowing' images is never going to go away. Once you make your image available on the web, you loose all control of where it ends up.
Watermarking it like Jim has done may solve the issue, but it spoils the image.
You can prevent hotlinking by adding the protection code to your .htaccess file.
But nothing prevents screengrabs.