pictures stolen from my website...

This seriously pisses me off, and I don't know what to do about it. I got a note on myspace the other day from a girl asking about my dreads/advice for her to dread her hair. Her name on myspace was "hemp jewelry" or something along those lines, so I clicked to look at the profile, thinking I could plug my wholesale glass to her. Turns out, this girl has already saved pics from my website, uploaded to a photobucket account, and is passing off my mushrooms as available on her hemp!

It's not like mushroom pendants are, like, the most artistic thing I do (far from it, in fact). But seriously, in what world does she think this behavior is okay? I mean, she actually contacted ME after having done this, and she's never bought any glass from me, much less a wholesale order, or contacted me in any way until this. And when she does contact me she says nothing about glass at all, like she's trying to diver attention or something. I wrote her back and explained my problem with all this and asked her to take the pictures down and/or buy something from me. I haven't heard back yet.

My problems now... What to do if she refuses to take the pics down? Report her to myspace? Also, I guess I can tell if she deletes that file from her photobucket account, but how can I know that she hasn't just re-uploaded it with another filename to use elsewhere? Part of me wants to set my site to not allow right-clicks now, but I've personally used that function positively from other people's sites before, and it makes me nervous. What are your views on this? (blocking right-clicks would make it so that if someone right-clicks on the site to save a pic or something, a box would pop up that says something to the effect of "don't steal my photos!" and they couldn't do it.)

 

Gee, thanks for that insightful reply! Seriously, you just help so much with my frustration! My hero!

 

It's a copyright violation. Report it to myspace and photobucket.
In the future you should add a watermark to your photos.
The right click scripts are useless and annoying, all one has to do is disable javascript to get by it.

 

Good idea Eeso! I'll edit in a watermark on everything soon. I agree about the problem with the right-click scripts, which was why I was so bothered... it seemed like the only thing I could do would do more harm than good... the watermark idea hadn't even occurred to me!

Update: I just heard back from the girl, and she took the pics down and apologized. So at least I don't have to worry about that much at the moment, and after I fix everything with watermarks I won't have to think about the issue so much...

 

That does suck, hummblebee.... I hope you get things sorted out.

 

All the best!

 

I hope you get things worked out soon too. As an artist, Im afraid to post anything on the web because of stuff like this...I dont want my work passing as someone elses. Im so sorry to hear that you have to deal with this. Watermarks are the best solution for this problem though, and an artist friend of mine even has watermarks that say "stealing is bad" on all of his internet stuff. Its pretty sad that people feel the need to steal images...Good luck with everything!

 

Thanks, ladies! drumminmama, that's just what I was going to do. I can't believe I didn't think of it before ('specially after all those years of school!). I'll watermark "hummblebee.com" over the items.

Thing is, I'm not even overly protective of my ideas or anything. It's my personal belief that to some extent everything's been done already - I developed my own style by taking from existing work all over the place, along with trial and error and fresh thought. I take joy in knowing that I can now pass along my own knowledge and put back into that pool of style and ideas. It's just that in this situation, that wasn't what went on. She just used pics of my work to advertise what she then admitted to me was cheap imported crap!

Oh well, it's over now, and hopefully in a few days I'll have time to watermark everything...

 

Sorry to hear about your frustration. Though I want to thank you for posting this, your experience made me think about my own stuff and how I should watermark it too. I never thought of it before, guess because I would never steal like that, but there are those that will and I work too hard for my stuff to be misrepresented like that. Thanks.

 

sorry to hear about that humble that sucks ....

yeah i think i might need to start watermarking everything

 

I've been there myself Humblebee, and thankfully it was resolved peacefully.
I would like to say that you can also hide a symbol somewhere in the design of your item that you will recognise. I change mine up from time to time. I usually put it at 20-30% so that it's not noticable unless you know what and where to look for. Also I need to finnish up watermarking our items, but I do the same thing (20-30%) with www.paisleydays.com across the image of the item. That way if someone takes the time to edit the web addy off the item, the hidden symbol is still there.

I will also say that I'm up in the air about no right clicking. It's not that I don't want people to protect their images, but it's more the way I surf pages. I use a scroll wheel and when pages are "right-click disabled" it henders me to scroll through the site. A minor inconvenience, that's why I'm not anti about the practice. But if I see it become a problem then I persoanlly would do it. And that brings me to the last thing...

Someone who wants an image can get it just like who ever on the other page mentioned with HTML knowlage. But there is another way to get a graphic who aren't HTML savy. Hitting the print screen button and pasting it into a photo editor is the other way, and as far as I know, there is no way to block that.

 

watermark AND disable right clicks is my theory

 

yeah that disabling right clicking can be annoying sometimes ...has i open links into new browsers tabs

as for it protecting against copying images ...you can still copy the images of a web page simple by clicking the 'save as' button

 

Yeah, I'll probably just watermark everything in a couple days (not today - it's warming up for me to get some glass done!) I can't stand the right-click blocker personally, so I really don't want to put it up there. Not only are there ways around it, and not only can it hinder things like scrolling and opening pages in a new tab (both of which I do also), but I've personally saved images of such things in a good way - for instance, saving an image of an item I bought or wanted to buy, so I could show someone when I knew we wouldn't have web access. I don't want to be bitchy, I just don't want to get ripped off!

 

I agree with the above to watermark... I've known quite a few mamas who've had this happen to them, even having some go as far as trying to pass off entire items of clothing on other websites.

 

just be aware that even if you watermark things, people can photoshop a watermark just like anything else.

Right now there are some artists on etsy who are dealing with theft of images and these were watermarked images.

I honestly, don't have a solution, just wanted to give the heads up on watermarking.

 

I take the Libertarian route: Noone can "own" pictures, it is a matter of public domain. Everyone should have a right to use your images, as you should have the same right to use other people's images. There's some rare cases that would make me think otherwise, but not this one. There's plenty of free code snipets that can help you, you should think about these things BEFORE they happen.

 

crud3w4re, I'd have to disagree with ya there.

We can get into a whole philisophical debate about what one can 'own' and what one cannot, because I suppose to a degree it's more of a grey area than a black and white answer.

If a person creates an item, it's theirs. If they take a picture of it, if they create a logo from it, etc, it's still theirs, whether it's been copyrighted or not. It's a matter, I suppose, of moral ownership if nothing else.

It wouldn't be right, for example, if I took the picture from your sig (which I assume is a pic of you) and pass it off as a picture of myself. It's physically possible for me to take that picture and paste it into my blog, my online store, on my business cards etc and promote that picture as not only being my own but of me.

It's a matter of public domain to a degree - a picture posted online has been posted with the intention of other people to look at, but these pictures shouldn't be taken without consent and used and passed off as someone else's work.