I've discovered that quite alot of the images from my website has been stolen and made available for download on other sites, without permission. I'm going to try to have the stolen content removed from the sites in question. How do I go about it (most of them will try the "a member posted the images to the site" excuse). I'm thinking of doing the following: 1) Contacting the webmaster of the site, asking to remove the images 2) If they don't comply I'll submit a DMCA complaint to their hosts. 3) Submit a DMCA complaint to Google (will this help getting the de-listed?) 4) Contact a lawyer and send them a letter stating that they have to pay $xxxx.xx for using the copyrighted images. Is this the right procedure or could someone give me some tips on how to go about this?
I have had my best luck going after the host first. The webmasters who stole them may have a "whatch going to do about it attitude." Are they hotlinking or did they copy and move them to their own servers? If hotlinking you can stop it without too much trouble. Good luck. Shannon
They moved them to their own servers. Interestingly my copyright notice I embedded in the file info is showing up... just a pity they didn't care about it.
Get screen shots of their page with the stolen images to send to their host and all with whom you file a complaint. I know iatbm got his copyright infringment issues removed with writing only the infringer but you will find all are not that compliant. Unscrupulous webmasters make hundreds of these sites using other peoples content. Do your research to learn 1. Who hosts the site (name servers can sometimes help here) 2. Owner/contact info for domina name using stolen images I also use Way Back Machine to help back up my claims. In your case since your images carry your copyright it is apparent who stole from whom. Good luck.
In the brief period I've been checking out some other sites, I found 3 other sites that are also stealing my images. The blatant disregard for copyright astounds me...
As said before Smyrl please check i they are hotlinked from your site.. to check this you can follow this step. Right Click on the image and click on properties. if you find the address of your website simply go to control panel of your hosting and disable the hotmink protection. If you are using LINUX server the you may follow these steps as i am not known to windows hosting admin panel. yoursite.com/cpanel >> scroll down after logining in >> there is a link named hotlink protection click on it >> then put the image url of the disabled link redirect URL text box . if you want to see the example simply click on the link below. I have disabled both hotlinks either eembeded in any site other than mine or direct links.. If someone click on this link he/she will visit a png ( I am using png format as my site is using only jpg and gif as image extensions) file which you can see y clicking on it. In real page it will look like this.. hope this info will be helpful Otherwise 1st trying contact the site admin then if you recieve no answer contact the HOST. Chaoo Anurag
Well, I've sorted out the problem with one of the Web sites in question. The Webmaster was hard to reach, but after registering on their forum and PM'ing him it seems that he's willing to remove the images. What bothers me is just that he hid behind the "a member uploaded it, there are thousands of uploads a month and we can't check them all excuse". My site URL is clearly visible in the watermark so how difficult can it be to spot it? Also, even if you allow members to upload images to your site, you are still responsible to make sure it's not copyrighted... at least that's what I do. The second site seems to be a bit of a problem. I'll give them a couple of days more and then take things further.
Did you tried hotlink protection? I am saving my precious 20+GB BW per month with the help of hotlink protection
Yup. Hotlinking was disabled after I found quite a few MySpace users linking directly to my images as backgrounds for their site/pages.