illegally "borrowed" photographs

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Michele gh
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Joined: Tue Sep 21, 2004 11:10 pm
Location: Massachusetts
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illegally "borrowed" photographs

Post by Michele gh »

Someone alerted me to a website from New Delhi, India, where they saw my work. HV Art N Glass... Their web site has every type of glass imaginable, from fused picture frames to cleaning sky scrapers. I did a reverse image search (tineye.com), on just a few of their images, and found they were using images of work from artists in the US, UK, Australia, Israel, and South India. I wrote to these other artists, and we are all telling HV Art N Glass not to use photographs of our work. See if your work is on their web site! I can not give this any more time, but it does make me very angry.

Here is my first letter to them:
___
You have some beautiful glass on your web site, http://hvartnglass.com.

Unfortunately for you, I recognize the work, and it is the work of other artists, and I know that you do not have permission to be using their work and claiming it is yours. I personally know four of the artists in four different countries. Since I know that several of the pieces of art on your web site were illegally "borrowed" from these artists, I just assume that there are other artists whose work you illegally "borrowed" as well. You are violating international copyright laws.

Take all the work, which is not yours or the work of artists you are legally representing off of your website immediately.

Sincerely,
___
Morganica
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Re: illegally "borrowed" photographs

Post by Morganica »

Good luck with that; I know publishers who won't sell their products in India because of the widespread copyright violations.

Clearly, hvartnglass.com doesn't really understand the techniques involved; they list fused glass, kilnformed glass, slumped glass, and bend glass as separate products.
Cynthia Morgan
Marketeer, Webbist, Glassist
http://www.morganica.com/bloggery
http://www.cynthiamorgan.com

"I wrote, therefore I was." (me)
Michele gh
Posts: 71
Joined: Tue Sep 21, 2004 11:10 pm
Location: Massachusetts
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Re: illegally "borrowed" photographs

Post by Michele gh »

It is not just this web site, there have been several. I posted about the Art N Glass web site here, because it seemed likely that others on this board would see images of their own work there.

There was a teacher using photographs of my glass in a community college course catalog for her fused glass class. In the course description, she claimed that if they took her course she would show them how to make my piece. It has since been removed.

Perhaps one of the most outrageous instances was the 35 year old "artist" in the UK, who had posted four of my son's photographs, including two self portraits (from when he was 13) on his web site, and claimed it was his own photographic art. It only took one email for him to remove them, we do have an archived record of his web site, and we check back occasionally to make certain that he does not put them back on again.
Morganica
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Joined: Mon May 19, 2003 6:19 pm
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Re: illegally "borrowed" photographs

Post by Morganica »

Oh I know. Photos from my blog occasionally show up somewhere online and I go through the whole takedown notice thing. There seems to be this sense that any photo placed on the web is (a) up for grabs and (b) will never be found out. Obviously they aren't familiar with Google image search or TinEye.

Interestingly enough, I've found that artists can be some of the worst offenders. I get a lot of jaundiced looks when I suggest that posting (or reposting) someone else's photograph/video without permission is a bad idea. Ironic that people who are so vulnerable to (and outraged by) having their own artwork copied think that the same applies to those other media.
Cynthia Morgan
Marketeer, Webbist, Glassist
http://www.morganica.com/bloggery
http://www.cynthiamorgan.com

"I wrote, therefore I was." (me)
Brad Walker
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Re: illegally "borrowed" photographs

Post by Brad Walker »

Morganica wrote:I get a lot of jaundiced looks when I suggest that posting (or reposting) someone else's photograph/video without permission is a bad idea.
So how does Pinterest get away with it? Their whole website is nothing but "borrowed" photographs and such.
Morganica
Posts: 1079
Joined: Mon May 19, 2003 6:19 pm
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Re: illegally "borrowed" photographs

Post by Morganica »

Pinterest has a different model--it's supposed to be a scrapbook of illustrated weblinks that are supposed to drive traffic back to the owner's website. And they have a lot of different remedies for the infringement potential:
-All pinned images are supposed to link back to the owner (although this doesn't always happen, especially if someone else stole the image)
-Anyone who doesn't want individual images on Pinterest can use a "nopin" in the image HTML
-Anyone who wants ALL images on their site to stay off Pinterest can use a site-wide "nopin" in their metadata
-Big social media sites such as Facebook prevent pinning
-If you find your images on Pinterest and don't want them there, they've got a pretty strong takedown policy if you complain

Even so, Pinterest has come in for a lot of criticism on this topic. Certainly there are ways to get around the restrictions if you really want to post somebody's image on Pinterest.
Cynthia Morgan
Marketeer, Webbist, Glassist
http://www.morganica.com/bloggery
http://www.cynthiamorgan.com

"I wrote, therefore I was." (me)
Michele gh
Posts: 71
Joined: Tue Sep 21, 2004 11:10 pm
Location: Massachusetts
Contact:

Re: illegally "borrowed" photographs

Post by Michele gh »

The commercial web sites, where the person claims credit authorship of the work of others, that that is infuriating. A college teacher? C'mon!

Seeing references to other people's artwork on various blogs as well as Pinterest does not irk me.
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