Tropicals & Tender Perennials: What to do when someone steals your photos for ebay use, 0 by

wrote:
I will try to view this from another angle. Theft of pictures is quite normal on the Internet. I know that it can be frustrating, and that when it happens it will make you angry - maybe for several hours per day, untill the matter is resolved.

There are two good ways to go about it.

1. You can have your picture copyrighted by paying a fee to a photographers rights mannagement association. They will deal with theft issues on your behalf, and determine, if the thief should be sanctioned to remove the photo from the website, or keep the photo and send you an annual fee in royalty.

2. If you sell anything on the Internet there is another way to go about it, and it can sometimes be very rewarding. I use this myself and it give me a lot of visitors. What you can do is to watermark all the pictures that you upload on the Internet with the URL that you are selling from. It is like fishing and the photos are the bait. When someone then steal your photos and use them on their own web site they will automatically make their visitors aware of your web site, and if your picture is beautiful enough, then the visitors will search for your web site, because they want to see more. It will of course be up to your commercial skills to convert these visitors to customers, but I think that you have got my point.

Both 1. and 2. is a way to turn the inavoidable into your advantage, but it is also good anger management, as it is not healthy to go around steaming for a longer period every day.