Stolen Pics

[Curtis]

Check out this action.

http://www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/auction/ ... 1156392163

He is clearly using my picture from the species index and I never even knew about it. Just have to wonder how often this happens.

[Emma Turner]

That's really bad. You should e-mail him to tell him to either credit you with the photo or else remove it.

A couple of months ago, I was sent a fish-list from a new Singapore supplier and found they had used one of my Botia sidthimunki photos from Coppermine. I told them I wasn't happy about it, and they have since stopped using it. I wouldn't have minded if they had asked, and then labelled it up as being one of my pictures.

Emma

[Mark in Vancouver]

Unbelievable. Send him a note, for sure, but do not take no for an answer.

[sully]

couple of thoughts.

First, make sure you embed watermarks and/or copyright symbol in photos.

Second, mess with the guy. Change the link in the profiles section so that your clown is still shown. But the link the guy tagging into shows something really disgusting.

[Mark in Vancouver]

I like this a lot. Good tip, Sully.

[mikev]

Second, mess with the guy. Change the link in the profiles section so that your clown is still shown. But the link the guy tagging into shows something really disgusting.

This would not work if the guy actually copies the picture -- and he did copy it and re-uploaded to aquabid. OTOH, copying the picture may be more illegal than simply linking to it (a copyright violation).

What about his Sid's photo: also "borrowed"?

As for the watermarks -- impractical, unless all LOL pictures are stored in one place and one writes a script to fix them all....

IMHO, the only thing you can do is to complain to Aquabid since they hosted the photo and may be liable.

[midman]

I guess people never think that they should need to copyright a picture of a fish, but obviously in cases like this you need to. Put it somewhere as close to the middle or otherwise people just crop the photo.

[Emma Turner]

The trouble is, some people are very good at using the cloning tools on graphics programmes to erase any trace of the photographer's name, even if the name overlaps a small part of the fish.

[Curtis]

Plus a photograph even online I believe is copyrighted even if you do not explicitly state that it is.

[mamaschild]

That's how I feel too, Curtis...however, I've had one picture (Male A cacatuoides) that was taken and actually signed by someone else. They were using it as their signature on a message board....IDIOT didn't notice it was MY AVATAR on the same site

And just a week or so ago, I found a pic of my Honduran Red Points being used on Aquabid. Another idiot....he was LINKING to it and using Badman's bandwidth.

The first idiot and I got into it on the site, and no admin or ANYONE stepped in When he got nasty, I told him simply to grow up and left the site, never to return.

The second idiot, Badman's changed the link into an advertisement for his site I contacted Aquabid and the seller, and the pic disappeared.

[Curtis]

This unfortunately seems to be a relatively common thing.

[Graeme Robson]

It's nice to see people asking. I've had a few in the past. Far and wide.

http://www.israquarium.co.il/Fish/Botia/BotiaA_B.html

[Mark in Vancouver]

I remember that. It's a flattering and disturbing kind of surprise. Why people don't just ask is beyond me.

[mikev]

It's nice to see people asking. I've had a few in the past. Far and wide.

http://www.israquarium.co.il/Fish/Botia/BotiaA_B.html

Hmm...did you notice that this link lists the mysterious B.Birdi?

The image seems to be an almorhae, however.

[Curtis]

Just shows that a lot of the botia species are very difficult to identify, most of us here are keeping most of the species in question except birdi of course... and we completely miss the mark sometimes... It's a tough thing to identify species.