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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
stolen photo on myspace.com!
Ben Burgeson, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Vista | CA | USA | Posted: 7:53 PM on 01.31.06 |
->> A member of the myspace.com community has used one of my images on their website. Does anyone have contact info to the "higher ups" of myspace? I need to get this thing stomped out.
thanks |
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Jon Austria, Photographer
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Roseburg | OR | USA | Posted: 8:05 PM on 01.31.06 |
| ->> you should just contact the guy and ask him to take it down, instead of going off guns blazing |
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Ben Burgeson, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Vista | CA | USA | Posted: 9:17 PM on 01.31.06 |
->> I have been to the "contact us" section, and have already contacted her...... Does anyone have contact info to the "higher ups" of myspace? I need to get this stomped out.
thanks |
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Joe Nicola, Photographer
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Fort Worth | TX | USA | Posted: 9:38 PM on 01.31.06 |
->> Ben, it takes a day or so, but contacting them through the "inappropriate content" link works. I saw a couple of guys who used my photos on their sites that were obviously lifted right from my printroom.com site...complete with the "proof" watermark right across the photo. I went back a couple days later and the photos were gone.
Hang in there. |
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Jason Orth, Photographer
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Lincoln | NE | USA | Posted: 9:46 PM on 01.31.06 |
->> Find their blog or better yet a picture hosted on their site, hotlink it into a post in the bi-annual State of the Union flamewar on Fark.com. DO IT NOW, their bandwidth will get crushed.
And no, I'M NOT SERIOUS ABOUT THAT!!!
Seriously, It's only been an hour and a half between your posts.
How about cracking open a cold one and waiting for the MySpace folks to get back to you? Give 'em till tomorrow morning. Hell, if you registered your images you can sue for damages... |
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Landon Finch, Photographer, Assistant
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Colorado Springs | CO | USA | Posted: 10:11 PM on 01.31.06 |
->> I contacted MySpace about my pictures being used and people pretending to be one of my relatives...those users were off the site within 24 hours.
Use this email: copyrightagent@myspace.com
Be sure to include as much info about the MySpace profile/user and images. |
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Jenn Jedynak, Photographer
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Cache Bay | ON | Canada | Posted: 10:35 PM on 01.31.06 |
->> This brings up something I've wanted to mention about myspace. There are thousands and thousands of photos, graphics etc. that I'm sure are copywritten, and if that isn't bad enough, the most incredulous thing I've noticed is identities. Do a search for your favourite celebrity on myspace and you'll likely get several (sometimes hundreds) of members each claiming to be the real "insert name here," accompanied by photos of the celebrity. Most look like portraits, movie promos etc. For those of you who have celebrity photos on the web, it might be worth searching them in myspace.
How are people getting away with this and why isn't anything being done to prevent or stop it? Not that I would, but I can go on there right now and set up an account as the real "current hot star," post whatever I like, including false information and stolen photos and there is absolutely nothing to stop me?
In fact it's quite an advertising ploy - some claiming to be celebrities have 10,000 people listed as their "friends." Everytime they post a message to their bulletin board it shows up on the front page of 10,000 myspace profiles and just imagine how many more people see each one of those pages. Hundreds of thousands of people will see the "ad" and it didn't cost a cent. In the process, a celebrity's identity and possibly "your" photos have been stolen.
Tell me I'm missing something and there are safeguards/penalties in place even if they're not being pursued by the myspace powers that be, because from what I've seen it's a rampant problem.
Good Luck to you Ben, let us know how your dealings with the "higher ups" go. |
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Mark Scheuern, Photographer
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Grand Blanc | MI | USA | Posted: 11:10 PM on 01.31.06 |
->> Myspace.com is a real mess. Blatant, massive copyright violations are the norm there. I was going through my web server logs a few days ago and saw quite a few instances of their users linking to my images, thus stealing bandwidth as well as of course violating copyright. Since these guys are directly using the images on my server rather than copying them, I wrote an Apache server mod_rewrite rule to substitute another image for the one they think they're getting whenver the domain is myspace.com. It just says "Photo Copyright Mark Scheuern and may not be used without permission". It's not hard to think of more amusing things one could do... .
If your server supports mod_rewrite and allows you to write your own htaccess file, instructions on how to do this are at http://bignosebird.com/apache/a13.shtml
The problem, of course, is this does nothing for those who simply right click and make their own copy of pictures rather than steal server bandwidth by linking. I have no idea who might have made copies that since it's not obvious from the server logs and, even if it were, I don't have access to the logs on most of the sites that host my images like, for example, Printroom.com. It's just a matter of being lucky enough to catch someone.
Mark |
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Caleb Simpson, Photographer, Assistant
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Dallas | TX | USA | Posted: 11:19 PM on 01.31.06 |
| ->> Ben is the guy linking to the image from your site? If so replace that image so that it contains a nice little message so that everybody going to his site knows what he is doing :) I have had friends do this before, it is quite effective. |
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Caleb Simpson, Photographer, Assistant
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Dallas | TX | USA | Posted: 11:20 PM on 01.31.06 |
| ->> p.s. from what I know MySpace is pretty much run by one guy. |
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Mark Scheuern, Photographer
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Grand Blanc | MI | USA | Posted: 11:29 PM on 01.31.06 |
->> Right, Caleb's idea is essentially what I'm doing except that I'm substituting the image only if the referring domain is myspace.com. If they're linking to you and if it doesn't matter that everyone will see the substituted image, just replacing the image is an easy way to do it.
Mark |
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Mike Isler, Photographer
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Santa Barbara | CA | US | Posted: 11:34 PM on 01.31.06 |
->> Caleb, MySpace tries to give the illusion that it's run by one guy, "Tom". However, they sold to NewsCorp for $580 million, and have over 30 million users. It is a large service that is run by many people, like any other corporation.
Also, I have a .htaccess file on my site that uses mod_rewrite to prevent hotlinking of images from MySpace and other sites, to save bandwidth. E-mail me if you're interested in that. |
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Joe Kaleita, Photographer
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Orlando | FL | USA | Posted: 11:35 PM on 01.31.06 |
->> "from what I know MySpace is pretty much run by one guy."
"Tom" might be the face you see, but Rupert Murdoch is the man behind the curtain.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4695495.stm |
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Joe Kaleita, Photographer
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Orlando | FL | USA | Posted: 11:37 PM on 01.31.06 |
| ->> sorry, Mike beat me to it |
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Gary Vasquez, Photographer
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Covina | CA | USA | Posted: 3:31 AM on 02.01.06 |
->> I have seen this ongoing lately. I photographed for my old high school's football team, and I have seen a lot of the kids have football shots on their pages from a few well known ss.com shooters here. Unfortunate but true on the copyright infringement.
...Gary |
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Gabriel Hernandez, Photographer
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Harlingen | TX | USA | Posted: 3:36 AM on 02.01.06 |
| ->> OFF WITH THEIR HEADS |
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Landon Finch, Photographer, Assistant
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Colorado Springs | CO | USA | Posted: 11:03 AM on 02.01.06 |
->> Whoever marked most of these posts as "Off Topic", go find something else to do. My first post gave a specific email address to get copyrighted images removed from MySpace. How is that off topic?
...yeah yeah, be funny too and mark this post off topic while you're at it (at least this post is actually off topic). |
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Clark Brooks, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Urbana | IL | USA | Posted: 2:31 PM on 02.01.06 |
->> What is up with the seven consecutive off topic marks . . . did I miss something in the translation. Thanks for tip on the HT access guys, I'll have to try that out.
Bugger! Now, I'll get one, too. |
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Jody Gomez, Photographer
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Murrieta | CA | USA | Posted: 11:27 PM on 02.01.06 |
->> Um, actually I have a friend who works for MySpace. Even though MySpace was purchased by Newscorp (or whoever), Tom and Chris are still running it...apparently that was part of the deal...
:~) |
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Greg Ferguson, Photographer
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Scottsdale | Az | USA | Posted: 11:41 PM on 02.01.06 |
| ->> Just a note for anyone who thinks it's safe to frivolously mark messages as "Off Topic" or "Inappropriate" - the system tracks who sets them and misuse of the feature will flag their account. |
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Seh Suan Ngoh, Photographer
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Singapore | SG | Singapore | Posted: 1:03 AM on 02.02.06 |
| ->> Kind of reminds me of this local (Singaporean) site that does something even more despicable. Members of that site grab photos of females, any females, and upload to that site to "share" the images. The website however can make an earning for people to send those images as MMS messages to their mobile phones. Now THAT'S really despicable. |
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