Say hello to Piwigo…
16 minute read
July 27, 2024, 3:45 PM
Beginning on Friday, July 26, you might have noticed that the website looks ever so slightly different. There is a new camera icon in the header, and a new link at the bottom of the pages called “Photography Portfolio“. This is for a new photography site that I recently launched:
Continue reading…Categories: Copyright infringement, Photography, Schumin Web meta
When your photo of Giant becomes popular, and you don’t quite understand why…
3 minute read
February 6, 2024, 9:54 AM
Recently, when skimming around the Internet, I found a large number of YouTube videos using this image:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Giant Food, YouTube
If you want me to take you seriously, do your research, and don’t play the victim card…
12 minute read
November 17, 2023, 2:10 PM
Recently, while I was checking for copyright violations, I turned up a tweet by Twitter user @alx. The tweet, from this past September, showed my photo from 2004 of a Simplex fire alarm at Taylor Hall with the caption, “Any idea what this does?” I assumed, based on the date, that it was supposed to be commentary on the recent incident where Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building. Yes, Bowman is an idiot for doing that, but that’s beside the point. Looking the tweet over, I did not see the attribution that is required per the terms of the Creative Commons license under which that particular image is offered, so, per my usual practice, I submitted a DMCA takedown request to have that unauthorized usage removed. Then the folks who process these things at Twitter removed the image about twelve hours later. That speed is typical for Twitter, since they’re usually really good about processing DMCA notices, even following Elon Musk‘s acquisition of the platform. In other words, for as much of a cesspool as the Twitter has become these days, if there’s one thing that they still do right, it’s copyright enforcement. So as far as I was concerned, our transaction was complete. The image was removed, and we all went on with things.
Then the next day, I got an email from the folks at Twitter, telling me that Alexander Joseph Lorusso of Worcester, Massachusetts had submitted a DMCA counter-notice against the tweet that I had reported earlier, and that, as per the usual process, they would restore the content in ten business days unless they receive notice that I’ve filed an action seeking a court order on it. Here is what Lorusso said in his counter-notice when prompted for a reason:
This picture is a picture of a fire alarm and is on WikiCommons stating it is free “to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work”
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simplex_pull_station.jpg#mw-jump-to-license
This person is weaponizing DMCA against me
Categories: Copyright infringement, Social media
Educating people about copyright…
12 minute read
February 27, 2023, 1:24 PM
Sometimes it’s interesting what happens when you discuss copyright infringement amongst your friends. I recently made a post on Facebook about a company that routinely uses my photos in their work, that I have not had any success in pursuing. It led to very positive discussion, and I think that I helped a few folks learn something new about intellectual property that they may not have known before.
Unlike most occasions when I will go online and grouse about unauthorized usages of my photography, this one turned up some new discussion besides the standard responses like, “You should sue them,” and the like. For the record, while taking someone to court over copyright infringement is definitely a possible remedy, it is by no means the only remedy, nor is it something that one takes lightly. This is not a case of, “When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.” A lawsuit is really only a viable option in a small subset of usage cases, and while there have been lawsuits filed on my behalf regarding unauthorized usages, they are exceedingly rare. Also, note “filed on my behalf” in that last sentence. I do not file lawsuits myself. People that I have designated as my agents who know more about these things than I do are the ones who file the suits. I know my own limits. Also, people forget that the instances of copyright infringement that I grouse about online are just the ones that really irk me, and also are ones that got away. Most of my copyright infringement cases are resolved amicably, and you never hear about those.
A few points came up in this discussion that are worth mentioning here. First was a suggestion that I watermark my images. This is a perennial suggestion, and, truth be told, it’s something that I’ve tested and implemented in the past, and later had to undo. Back in the early 2000s, I started some early forays into photo licensing, under a brand called “StratoSearch”. When I was getting ready to implement that, I started putting watermarks on my photos on Schumin Web in order to prevent clean copies of the larger photos from going out willy-nilly, i.e. reserve the clean versions for paying clients. With that, I put Schumin Web’s logo in the corner of the full-size images, i.e. the ones that you click through to see. That was a bit of extra work on my part, but I did it, using a template to apply the logo. I eventually dropped the licensing effort there after a rebranding and redesign in 2003 failed to drum up any business. I now understand that my work back then was not to the level of quality that I thought it was, and that my marketing efforts were terrible. But nonetheless, the watermarks remained. If you want to see what the watermark looked like in practice, go look on College Life, where the watermark has been retained, and where there are no plans to remove it for historical reasons.
Categories: Copyright infringement, Social media
You made your bed, and now you have to lie in it…
14 minute read
December 9, 2022, 12:56 PM
Lately, a lot of the DMCA takedown notices that I’ve filed have been for “nostalgia” pages on Facebook. In other words, those pages where people find photos around the Internet of stuff from a given period and then repost them with no permission, no attribution, or anything else. I don’t typically frequent these types of pages myself, but others who are familiar with my work will usually let me know when they spot one of my photos being used in an unauthorized manner. When I’m notified, I will go in and locate it, and then I’ll get all of my ducks in a row before I complete the DMCA form and submit it. And then, unsurprisingly, the people who get nailed get a little salty about it, while never considering for a moment that they may have had a lapse in judgment somewhere.
Two recent instances of this stand out in my mind. The first was for a nostalgia group that focused on the 2000s. In that case, I found a number of photos from my Journal entry about the 2005 remodel of the Walmart in Lexington, Virginia. For that, I had to submit multiple takedown notices in order to cover the various photos that were included, but I got it done. Two days later, I received confirmation from Facebook that the photos were removed. A few hours later, I heard back from the infringer, a woman named Darla Griffin, who was clearly unhappy about the situation that they now found themselves in. Like many infringers, they wrote me to complain, while attempting to verbally lick their own wounds after they got caught.
Categories: Copyright infringement, Social media
Still clueless, and not getting any better…
6 minute read
August 5, 2022, 10:37 AM
Do you remember that Journal entry that I did a few months ago about David Pinson, the guy who had no clue about why I was filing a copyright claim against his video that used my photo of the old Giant Food store on O Street NW? As it turned out, he didn’t learn a thing. Recently, while I was nailing another YouTube user for a copyright infringement issue, I ran into Pinson’s channel, Earl of Baltimore, in my list of past copyright infringement claims. So while I was in there, considering our history, I gave it a quick look over to make sure that my image was still gone. I went in expecting to find nothing, so I was surprised that I actually had a hit. I found this:
Categories: Copyright infringement
A little awareness goes a long way…
12 minute read
April 11, 2022, 9:53 AM
Sometimes, it surprises me about how much some people lack awareness about their situation when they get caught in a copyright infringement case. In this case, I sent a takedown notice for a photo of the old Giant Food store on O Street NW in Washington, DC, i.e. this photo:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Middle school, YouTube
Let me play a sad song for you on the world’s smallest violin…
7 minute read
October 29, 2021, 9:36 AM
Do you remember about a month or so ago, when I made that Journal entry about Jeremy Jones, the guy who used several of my photos in an infringing manner, and lost his Twitter account for it? He recently came back to badger me via Messenger one more time, and this time, unlike the silence that I had been giving him after my first response where I said that the matter was already resolved, I let him have it. I told him that his losing his Twitter account was not my problem, that calling my parents in search of me was completely out of line, and I included the link to the earlier Journal entry.
I got a rather long-winded response to that message, and the sense that I got was that he had no real argument, and this was mostly an attempt to verbally lick his wounds in order to make himself feel better after being told in a definitive manner that I wasn’t playing:
Hey Ben,
Appreciate the response. I respect your decision, didn’t really know that you felt that way but I understand now. If you’re open to it, I’d like to explain how I feel about this situation now.
I think in the future you should try to be more compassionate and really understand what’s going on before writing me off because the way that you describe some of these things in the article are simply not true. For instance, this happens to be my first rodeo because the claims that people made would goto a specific email and those emails have all been deleted. So because of that I wasn’t able to be notified about any claims made against my account nor have the proper way to get in contact. On top of that I had ZERO KNOWLEDGE that using other people images was even an issue and I’m sure that’s hard for you to believe because you’re in the photography industry but it’s 100% true and is also 100% my fault for not knowing. Secondly, it does mean this much to me.. it took me time to get in contact with you because I don’t have the emails associated with the claims, I found yours on a site called lumendatabase.org and that’s how I reached out. I’m sure you don’t care about this stuff but in no way was I malicious in my intent to use your photos if anything I used your photos because they were a great way to represent what we were posting about at the time. I would normally read a story, goto google, save a picture and post it not even knowing what I was doing. Thirdly, I can’t believe that you would assume that me offering to help you in return isn’t genuine. I’m not even sure how you’d come to that conclusion. I was always taught to bring something to the table when asking and I was simply doing that in a very genuine way. I had plans and ways that I could help for the mishap. But that’s neither here no there, I respect your decision and I will no longer contact you. Thanks for your time.
Categories: Copyright infringement, Some people
When I say no, I actually do mean no…
8 minute read
September 14, 2021, 2:32 PM
We’ve all been taught the meaning of “no” before, as well as the idea of “no means no”, i.e. someone has declined, and that’s the end of it. “No” doesn’t mean “yes, if I am persistent enough.” When I say “no”, I mean it. In the case of Jeremy Jones, who ran the @DMVFollowers Twitter account, I feel like he just couldn’t grasp this concept.
For some background information on this case, DMVFollowers was a Twitter account that posted news about things happening in the Washington, DC area. They typically posted links to news articles, and included a photo with their posts. Their feed looked like this according to an Internet Archive snapshot from January 2018:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Some people
Some people just don’t learn…
9 minute read
February 7, 2021, 10:20 PM
Do you remember Marilyn Armstrong, whom I wrote about a few weeks ago regarding a case of copyright infringement? She came back for a second round. Apparently, she found my Journal entry, and just couldn’t leave well enough alone, going on another rant in the comments:
First of all, NO ONE intentionally took anything. This appeared in a pile of pictures listed by Google as “free for public use.” No name or other information was attached. I didn’t write the piece, I didn’t post the picture and if I want a picture, I use my own since I am also a photographer. One of the people who writes on this blog was just looking for a picture of a building with an orange roof and it came up in that Google collection. I don’t know how ANYONE can figure out whose picture it is when there’s no attached information AND it did not come from your site. I already said I was sorry, that it was accidental, unintentional, non-commercial. Beyond that, you really might consider embedding copyright information in your pictures so people have some way of knowing that the picture is NOT — as Google said — free for public use.
Since I didn’t select OR use the picture personally, and since GOOGLE was the organization that pulled it off your blog and stuck it in a pile of “free for public use” pictures, maybe you should consider going after them. Someone ought to, but they have a lot of money and a lot of lawyers and if the U.S. government can’t get them, I’m pretty sure you can’t and I can’t, so they’ll just keep doing what they do and people like me will get blamed for assuming that they aren’t lying.
Categories: Copyright infringement, Some people
A lot of “teachable moments” in one email…
15 minute read
December 18, 2020, 6:20 PM
Recently, I submitted a takedown notice for content in a post called “Preaching to the Choir” which, among other things, discusses the seventh and ninth commandments in the Bible (conveniently skipping over #8, i.e. “thou shalt not steal”), on a blog called Serendipity Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth. The post contained a photo that I took of the former Howard Johnson’s on Afton Mountain. Specifically, they used this shot:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Some people
The more they talk, the more irresponsible they sound…
8 minute read
April 23, 2020, 10:45 AM
So I have a new story about my experience enforcing copyrights, this one involving materials posted to YouTube. First of all, though, for those not familiar with how YouTube handles DMCA copyright takedowns, it is worth noting that their takedown form is a bit lackluster, though they’re usually pretty quick to respond. The problem is that YouTube doesn’t allow a claimant (i.e. me) to fully make my claim to ownership of a piece of video content, which has led to problems in the past. Here’s the relevant section of YouTube’s copyright form:
Categories: Copyright infringement
Yes, about that historic French cemetery…
7 minute read
July 9, 2017, 11:55 PM
Sometimes, you really have to give someone the proverbial “smackdown”. Such was the case of a recent copyright infringement issue that I had with a death metal band called Barbiturate. As you may know, I periodically skim the Internet looking for unauthorized usages of my photography, which I then submit to Pixsy, a company that goes after these copyright infringers for royalties, therefore making the illegal usages legal. I really don’t care when people use my work elsewhere. I actually find it somewhat flattering. However, if you are making money (and by that, I mean taking in revenue, regardless of whether you turn a profit) with my photo, you can afford to pay me for that usage (i.e. “F— You, Pay Me“), either by licensing it up front, or by having me chase you down via Pixsy. Or at the very least, you can ask me for permission, because I do occasionally authorize use of my work for free. But generally speaking, I don’t work for free, or for some vague notion of “exposure”. I have a Flickr account and other outlets that give me plenty of exposure, thank you very much. I don’t need anyone’s help getting exposure for my work.
In the Barbiturate case, I found this photo in Pixsy’s image search:
Categories: Copyright infringement
So, about that whole “thou shalt not steal” thing…
6 minute read
May 7, 2017, 11:50 AM
Sometimes the level of hypocrisy shown by those in organized religion just makes me stand back in awe. They preach Christian values, and then don’t follow them in real life. In this instance, it involves the church that I used to attend from 1992 until 2003, and where I am still technically a member, albeit inactive. Through a recent interaction, I learned quite a bit more than I expected as far as where things stand with them.
For those who aren’t familiar, I work with a company called Pixsy to recover royalties for cases where my photographs are used without permission. I routinely search for and submit cases where my photos are used without permission in hopes of recovering license fees for that usage. Basically, I have no problem with downstream usages of my photos. But I am a professional who deserves to be paid for those usages in a professional setting. Basically, if you expect to take in revenue based on materials that contain my work, then you need to pay me for the usage. My take on it is that if you were going to hire a photographer to do a shoot for you, there’s no question that you would pay them. But by using photos of mine that I have already created, you’ve essentially hired me as your photographer, and as such, I should be paid. Using my work for commercial purposes without even so much as asking me is a major no-no as far as I’m concerned.
In this case, I was skimming through the Internet looking for potential infringement cases, I found this:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Religion
“Wait, isn’t that…?”
4 minute read
May 12, 2016, 1:01 PM
Imagine my surprise to sit down at my computer this morning to check Facebook, and be greeted by this image from ABC affiliate WJLA:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Weather, Wikipedia