Yet another dishonest use of stolen photos...

[Jock Scot]

lame... think its time for a nice watermark. At least on anything larger than thumbnail size.
large but tasteful, make it to hard for them to steal.
Attachment 12884

Even I had one of my pictures stolen, I am not sure whether I should be flattered, or, annoyed! Well its too late now its happened, nevertheless we are talking about theft , so out of interest how does one place a watermark on a picture that might end up on the internet? Do you watermark everything just in case you might post it sometime, or do you watermark them as needed? Please, I am a technodunce so can we go steady on the technojargon.

[RockyR]

lame... think its time for a nice watermark. At least on anything larger than thumbnail size.
large but tasteful, make it to hard for them to steal.
Attachment 12884

The problem I've run into is that they just blur your watermark and put their own over top of it. Our watermark is a translucent text of our website address. On another recent thread where this was discussed, a Pakistani company stole a pic and just used a tool to blur our whole watermark and put their name in yellow over the whole blur. Smart way to deal with watermarked pics, but a scumbag move nevertheless.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Hopefully some of this will spark a bit of conscience. I do not believe all Pakistani merchants are unscrupulous nor all merchants in Scotland pillars of virtue. Nonetheless I have seen many threads over time showing people giving their custom to these less than stellar merchants. My wardrobe has increased slowly over time but I feel reasonably confident that their are no items whose pedigree would bring me shame. I try to frequent merchants who are members here as much as possible.

To be fair, I did have one American merchant use a stolen picture of mine on his web site. When I called him about it, he flat out refused that he stole the image and claimed it was his own. When I emailed him the unedited original images I took as proof that they were my photos, and threatened to get a lawyer involved, the images were off his site within a few hours.

And there is one Scottish merchant I am aware of who is using my photography without credit to advertise his products, as well - a merchant very well respected by members of this forum, I might add. I have decided not to make a big stink out of it in this case.

I must also say that with the above two instances, the products being sold by the merchant were in fact the self-same product as in the picture. The foul was in their using my photography without permission.

Aside from those two isolated incidents, however, every other case I have been involved in or heard about involving stolen photos being used to falsely advertise products has been from Pakistan. While I agree with you that not all Pakistani business people are unscrupulous, when it comes to the Highland Dress manufacture and retail sector, the cases of using stolen images have piled up to the extent that when I see a website from a Pakistani supplier, my assumption is that most of the images will have been stolen from other sources, and that the product I would receive (were I to order) would NOT be the same product as in the photo.

To use my doublet as an example, does anyone really expect that this company will provide them with a genuine Harris Tweed doublet made-to-measure by Glasgow tailors? Because that is what they picture.

I'm not disparaging all Pakistanis. But it is rather like when you get an email out of the blue with a business offer from Lagos, Nigeria. One does not have to have disparaging views of all Nigerians to have a healthy level of skepticism about this sort of thing. I'm saying people should develop that same level of healthy skepticism about any offers they receive from Pakistani Highland Dress suppliers.

The best we can do is to help spread the word among our circles that when one buys from these companies you almost certainly will not receive the product as advertised. The smart thing to do is to shop elsewhere.

[English Bloke]

I'd love to know who the Scottish supplier is and why it is OK for them to use misappropriated imagery but not the American or the Pakistanis...

I don't follow that reasoning Matt. It's either OK or it's not OK.

[English Bloke]

I'd never buy that doublet from them on the strength of their butchered picture anyway. Those buttons are like a ghostly apparition.

[Hopper250]

Even I had one of my pictures stolen, I am not sure whether I should be flattered, or, annoyed! Well its too late now its happened, nevertheless we are talking about theft , so out of interest how does one place a watermark on a picture that might end up on the internet? Do you watermark everything just in case you might post it sometime, or do you watermark them as needed? Please, I am a technodunce so can we go steady on the technojargon.

Jock,

I watermark as needed when using original photos. Most of the time I do not bother with watermarking as I am merely sharing a photo with family. My Facebook is set fairly tight on restrictions. However when I put up a picture on a public site that I wish to make sure stays mine I watermark.

I use a free program called Gimp. It works just like Photoshop and has a watermark tool that will automatically make your text or image look like the the ones on Rocky's site.

[Jock Scot]

There you go, you have taught me something, thank you.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

I'd love to know who the Scottish supplier is and why it is OK for them to use misappropriated imagery but not the American or the Pakistanis...

I don't follow that reasoning Matt. It's either OK or it's not OK.

I did not say it was OK for them to use the photos. I merely said that in that case I decided not to make a big stink out of it.

A bit more information. In both cases the photographs were ones I took of products supplied by Scottish companies. They were photographs that I took specifically for the Scottish Tartans Museum gift shop pages.

The American retailer was the first business I discovered was using my photo. In this case it was an array of tartan scarves. They were using my photo to sell the same scarves from the same Scottish supplier. The shop owner, when I questioned him about it, was very belligerent, insisted that the photo was supplied to them from the manufacturer in Scotland, and they were well within their rights to use it. I assured him it was my own photo taken specifically for our web catalog, that I felt certain the manufacturer would have supplied him with one of their many stock photos rather than swipe my own (which was of lesser quality anyway!). He continued to berate me and call me a liar, insisting that the photos were given to him by the Scottish company. In the end, it was an email containing my uncropped and unedited originals with the threat of legal action that got him to remove the photo.

In the second case, the one from the Scottish company, it again was the case of photographs I took of a Scottish-made product specifically for use on the Scottish Tartans Museum gift shop pages. I found those same images later being used by a Scottish retailer to advertise those same products, again without my permission. I decided it was not worth the time and aggravation for me to pursue any action in that instance because by the time I discovered it, the museum was no longer using those photos. I had since taken better photographs of the same products, which the museum was using instead. So I just decided to let it go. (The retailer is still using many of those old images, by the way).

So it is not an instance of one offense being OK and the other not. It is simply a matter of me not having the motivation to do anything about the latter, whereas I did in the former.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

To give an update: I received an email moments ago from Waseem, the owner of D. Z. W. Music Co., with his express apologies. He called me "friend" no less than three times, claimed he had no idea images from other places were used on his web site, and blamed his web master for everything. He said the image would be taken down, and then offered his company's services as a supplier and invited me to place a trial order with them..... hmmm.... should I? :-)

[artificer]

To give an update: I received an email moments ago from Waseem, the owner of D. Z. W. Music Co., with his express apologies. He called me "friend" no less than three times, claimed he had no idea images from other places were used on his web site, and blamed his web master for everything. He said the image would be taken down, and then offered his company's services as a supplier and invited me to place a trial order with them..... hmmm.... should I? :-)

LOL, haven't we heard the "My webmaster did it" claim multiple times before?

If this guy doesn't even know that the images used on HIS website aren't of HIS product, what sort of quality control do you think he has over his ACTUAL product.

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