Competitor using my pictures

[luckyg]

One of my competitors is using pictures from my site and worse still, they are stored on my site...i.e. right click properties and my url is on it. What an idiot!

If i notify google unde the digital millenium act, will they take his site down?

He is no 2 on 1st page of google, I am below no 5.

Any advice on how to screw him up as much as possible in terms of rankings?

 

[downsouth]

a little bit nasty but change the image to something 'more adult' looking or create an image which says 'i nicked this image from a competitor'

hehehehehe

he'll have the shock when he looks at his website then!!!

 

[luckyg]

thats a very good idea.hehe

but it could be a gift, if he were punished by google for stealing them. I know if i reported him under digital millenium act and her was using adwords, they woudl ban him from adwords for 10 days. but im not so sure what happens re his organic listing.

i'm trying to find out if its possible............

 

[luckyg]

i wonder is it considered as a link from his site to my site? and therefore boost my rankings?

 

[Steve2507]

This is what I would do:

Copy theimages into a new folder and rename them. Thenset my site to the new images.

With the old images I would replace them with an image of an offer at your site. Say 10% off with XXX code.

That way you get some free advertising without the hassle of going to G.

 

[Steve2507]

thats a very good idea.hehe

but it could be a gift, if he were punished by google for stealing them. I know if i reported him under digital millenium act and her was using adwords, they woudl ban him from adwords for 10 days. but im not so sure what happens re his organic listing.

i'm trying to find out if its possible............

He could just say you said he could use them. Your word against his.

 

[Peter1982]

We have had the exact same problem a few times now. First we contacted the person who'd taken the images and they removed them straight away. The it happened again with someone else so we asked them to remove them as well and they were more reluctant. We had to explain in great detail how the images had been created and how we'd taken lots of our time, used our software etc etc and eventually they agreed to remove them.

This is very annoying when you work so hard to get things looking right and then some one just right clicks on your work

Just thought I'd get that out of my system.

 

[DreamLifestyle]

This is what I would do:

Copy theimages into a new folder and rename them. Thenset my site to the new images.

With the old images I would replace them with an image of an offer at your site. Say 10% off with XXX code.

That way you get some free advertising without the hassle of going to G.

Good idea. If they rank higher change your images they are copying to advertise your site. It's free advertising and double advertising for your keywords on page 1 of Google.

 

[Peter1982]

what is the offending website?

without giving them a link!

 

[stugster]

Charge him for using your copyrighted images.

Send him an invoice for them... if he doesn't like that, tell him you're going after him for the theft.

 

[Steve2507]

Charge him for using your copyrighted images.

Send him an invoice for them... if he doesn't like that, tell him you're going after him for the theft.

Legally that is the correct thing to do, but my way means he/she loses all images, you get free advertising and you will probably find it affects their business far harder than if you ask them to remove the images.

 

[Subbynet]

I like Steve's idea.

Nothing illegal in you changing your own images, far more effective and, free advertising.

I don't see how you can lose out.

 

[luckyg]

I like Steve's idea.
.

yup, its the thing to do alright. It would be nice to inform google and have him removed, but i guess that is too goo to be true.

im making up the new images now. will be interesting to see how long it takes him to notice.

 

[luckyg]

on another note.

if the images are giving me good seo linkage, it would be better to keep the stolen images on there.

am i right? would this give me an seo benefit.

his source code will be showing urls of my site where images are.

i would be grateful if anyone knew before i go posting the new images.

 

[Steve2507]

on another note.

if the images are giving me good seo linkage, it would be better to keep the stolen images on there.

am i right? would this give me an seo benefit.

his source code will be showing urls of my site where images are.

i would be grateful if anyone knew before i go posting the new images.

Ignore the serps (I don't think there is any benefit anyway).

Take a step back and think about it.

They have better position than you. So they may get hits? This is not always true, but if they do then the visitor sees your 'advert' and instead of buying from the site they are on (there are no images anyway) they move to your site and buy from you. Alternatively they click on your site from the serps and buy from you. The third alternative is that they click on another site that is nothing to do with you or this other guy and don't buy from either of you (this would have happened anyway).

A lot is made of serps, but it doesn't mean that just because you are higher in the serps you get more business. It's conversion and the bottom line that count not how high you are in serps.

You also have to take into account all the results from every search term your site comes up on. To give you an example we have recently dropped from 11th to 18th for one of our main phrases. Thing is though, it hasn't affected our overall takings. The drop there has been countered by rises elsewhere. Especially rises in phrases that aren't searched as often, but have far higher conversion rates (some as much as 100%).

An added benefit of my method is you don't know if they have other sites using your images. You may be getting more advertising from sites you don't know about.

 

[Edward Moss]

Who owns the copyright of the images? If they are yours, then under the 1988 copyright act your competitor is in breach of copyright. Take screen grabs of the offending pages as evidence. You are well within your rights to invoice them for use of your pictures.

If you have licensed them from a photographer, then look at his/her terms and inform the photographer, it will still be covered in the 1988 copyright act.

Don't let them get away with it, it is theft at the end of the day.

 

I had this happen to my IT Support Blog once, where a guy nicked my pic and linked back to it.

I simply changed the pic, and put a post on my humour blog about him..... I actually notice the clown still has it up

No real benefit to me, but I did kind of enjoy it.

 

[davidshaw89]

some good funny ideas here!

Since it does actually waste your bandwidth, for future, it might be useful to enable "hotlink protection" - you should be able to do this through your websites control panel.

 

[GBMaps]

I may be wrong but doesn't google cache images from our websites all the time - making copies of them and storing them on it's own servers ? This is much worse than simply linking the images into a webpage, and no one complains. I think that as long as the other site isn't passing off their products as yours by way of using your brand name or attempting to mislead the viewing public into believing their product is actually yours, you can't do much really apart from do as others have said - put advertisements in their place or save some 10mb blank images there instead ;-) If your lucky it may make their site take so long to load it makes people click away. I think it's a pain and you do right to get annoyed but, you either have to accept it or stamp copyright info across all your images.

We get people knicking our maps all the time !! P.s. If your images are so popular you want to start selling them on istockphoto ;-)

 

[movietub]

Yeah this happens to us all the time! People just pinch the images from Google image search normally, its nothing specific about you or your site.

Sending an invoice with a request to pay or remove the images with 14 days is totally enforcable in principal - the problem is you can't charge more than a reasonable rate to 'borrow' the images and the only other way to make a worthwhile amount of cash is to prove his actions damaged your business or benfitted his. So all a lot of hassle which is why he won't give a monkeys no matter what you threaten!

So do whats been suggested and do what we do. Create a replacement image that either promotes your site or slanders his site and customers to hell.

There are endless possibilities for hilarity so go and enjoy yourself. If you can't think of anything good this sort of thing brightens up most sites:

http://rapspot.dk/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/Hairy-ass.jpg

(I wouldn't click on that if you are thin skinned )

 

[bluecm]

You could simply put a watermark on all of your images with your web address this way they couldn't just go and copy your images to their local server. You can get software that will do this automatically to all your existing images.

A quick Google search came up with http://www.winwatermark.com/

 

[Daniel Slade]

If you are unsure about who copies your images you could try a digital tracking watermark. There are a few companies providing this service now. Very basicly the tracking comapny scans the internet for your images and if they are found on a different server to your own you are notified. This is all well and good BUT it does not help you now.

As a pro photographer I would be looking at the copyright issue here, I would not even think of invoicing as you are then giving your permission for the use.

My wicked side says slay them by changing the pictures to something that WILL do serious damage to their reputation, maybe hyperlinking the images to a statement on your website telling the customer they have stolen your images. However be sure you do not affect your sites images.

 

[Edward Moss]

Yeah this happens to us all the time! People just pinch the images from Google image search normally, its nothing specific about you or your site.

Sending an invoice with a request to pay or remove the images with 14 days is totally enforcable in principal - the problem is you can't charge more than a reasonable rate to 'borrow' the images and the only other way to make a worthwhile amount of cash is to prove his actions damaged your business or benfitted his. So all a lot of hassle which is why he won't give a monkeys no matter what you threaten!

So do whats been suggested and do what we do. Create a replacement image that either promotes your site or slanders his site and customers to hell.

There are endless possibilities for hilarity so go and enjoy yourself. If you can't think of anything good this sort of thing brightens up most sites:

http://rapspot.dk/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/Hairy-ass.jpg

(I wouldn't click on that if you are thin skinned )

You can charge your going rate for the stolen images, the going rate is set by the copyright holder.
This is no better than walking into a shop and helping yourself the a few goods off the shelf and walking out without paying for them.

 

[movietub]

You can charge your going rate for the stolen images, the going rate is set by the copyright holder.
This is no better than walking into a shop and helping yourself the a few goods off the shelf and walking out without paying for them.

Quite right in principal. Although in practice there are several issues the type of person willing to steal photos could throw up to confuse the court. It should be clean cut but if they do anything to complicate the situation (such as lie through their teeth about an 'original' agreement etc) these things often come down to the courts interpretation of consequential loss. If you charge a high rate for optional use of your images they may see it as you trying to extort an already unlawful situation rather than resolve it through the official channels the moment you became aware of the theft. It's slim possibility but they may disregard your invoice from the case altogether if they feel it was unrealistic.

And the courts understand this type of theft a lot less then someone being nicked for pinching things off a shelf. The guys you rely on to make the final decision rightly in your favour are not of the Google generation sadly.

This could be a big, big, debate of course but I feel most would agree the quickest and most effective method to reverse the situation to one that works in your favour is to swap the images and drive traffic away from their site and better still back to your own.

 

[stugster]

It is a big big debate, and there was a recent one here:
http://www.scottishbusinessforums.c...l/966-taking-photos-brands-copyright-etc.html

Which was highly amusing! If you can be bothered to read through it

Some very interesting and informative information.

 

[stugster]

A good summary quote from a post there:

"If you STEAL what's mine I'll give you the opportunity to buy it at full price. Which is FAR more reasonable a position than most shops would take if you steal from them. Otherwise we forget about the bill and I go after you for the theft; NOT the bill, FOR THE THEFT... And THAT'S going to cost you more than the £30,000 ...."

 

[movietub]

A good summary quote from a post there:

"If you STEAL what's mine I'll give you the opportunity to buy it at full price. Which is FAR more reasonable a position than most shops would take if you steal from them. Otherwise we forget about the bill and I go after you for the theft; NOT the bill, FOR THE THEFT... And THAT'S going to cost you more than the £30,000 ...."

I may be wrong but isn't there a mechanism which deters people from turning a recognised theft in an opportunity for a sale - then back into a report of theft if they don't get the sale?

I'm not sure but I have a nagging suspicion there is an exploitable loophole here.

 

[greenfingers]

Im an ex professional photographer-yes you can easily sue him for copyright infringement.
Its usually better to try to appear friendly with competition (especially now ) you might end up at some point wanting to merge, share tools or do a job together-
A polite letter telling them of the potential cost ie a fee per week it's been on eg £5 per week-plus a flat first fee for the photography EG between £70.&£170 plus copyright infringement fine I guess £150.00 plus legal fees perhaps-£300-£1,300 -plus Court costs of around £150 plus interest from the date of your invoice if they dont pay up-
Bill, them let them ignore the bill for say a year or three-then take them to court for the fees plus interest over three years!!It amounts to being a bit like a credit card company for all the huge interest he'll end up owing you.
Happy hunting

 

[luckyg]

Im an ex professional photographer-yes you can easily sue him for copyright infringement.
Its usually better to try to appear friendly with competition (especially now ) you might end up at some point wanting to merge, share tools or do a job together-
A polite letter telling them of the potential cost ie a fee per week it's been on eg £5 per week-plus a flat first fee for the photography EG between £70.&£170 plus copyright infringement fine I guess £150.00 plus legal fees perhaps-£300-£1,300 -plus Court costs of around £150 plus interest from the date of your invoice if they dont pay up-
Bill, them let them ignore the bill for say a year or three-then take them to court for the fees plus interest over three years!!It amounts to being a bit like a credit card company for all the huge interest he'll end up owing you.
Happy hunting

Thansk for your reply, but that sounds like a lot of stress!

Getting back to base.

I have two options:
1) Put up different images as steve suggested above. Very good idea.
2) Leave him have them and take the seo benefits.


I am still trying to find out if no 2 is possible.

He can have the images if there are seo benefits. His page source is riddled with my url now. Wish I knew if that had seo benefits.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Do the damage

Replace the image with a new one stating that the image previously located here was stolen from your site (hyperlink)www.xxx.co.uk, please follow this link for a more honest company to deal with. regards xxx md www.xxx.co.uk

 

[movietub]

I agree - come on!

Swap the images and the problem is instantly gone and the fun begins! It was their choice to be stupid enough in the first place...

Make it happen right away and then post the link. We can all email the other shop and pretend to be outraged customers


If you get a picture of your own ass on his website I'll buy you a beer anytime your near Peterborough

 

[luckyg]

I agree - come on

If you get a picture of your own ass on his website I'll buy you a beer anytime your near Peterborough

forum quote of the year!

 

[Megahertz]

If you publish information or images on a website it is automatically copyrighted to you - you are within your rights to ask your competitor to stop.

I would suggest you get your solicitor to write a 'cease and desist' letter requiring them to remove the website immediately, and then reinstate it once your images have been removed. But first (if you haven't already) take a copy of their entire site (save each page in turn)

Print out the pages and post them with the letter to the registered office of the company (addressed to the company secretary if it's limited.)

That way you will at least spoil the MD's morning....

The other tactics suggested on here sound like fun, but if the worst happens a court might feel that you had resorted to the same tactics as them. At least if you do things by the book you stand to win if you do end up suing them.

 

[movietub]

But this solicitor talk is all a bit academic surely? The letter won't be free and the best that can happen is the pictures get removed straight away.

By swapping the pictures and renaming the copies for your own site the effect is free, instant, damaging to them, potentially helpful to the OP and as mentioned its the idael time to get a photo of your own backside on a competitors site.

You could even write a messsage across it

 

[Steve2507]

Everyone is advising to tell the other company when the images have been changed. Personally I wouldn't tell them. The longer your advert stays on their site the better.

 

[movietub]

Everyone is advising to tell the other company when the images have been changed. Personally I wouldn't tell them. The longer your advert stays on their site the better.

Absolutely no need to tell the other company the images change! They are your images on hosted by you. You can swap your product images for adverts any time you wish and it is no one elses business.

There is no reason that you 'expect' a competitor to be using you advertising material so why on erath would you talk to them about swapping images?

 

[Steve2507]

Absolutely no need to tell the other company the images change! They are your images on hosted by you. You can swap your product images for adverts any time you wish and it is no one elses business.

There is no reason that you 'expect' a competitor to be using you advertising material so why on erath would you talk to them about swapping images?

Exactly - all's fair in love and business (or something like that).

 

[groovyjon]

I have two options:
1) Put up different images as steve suggested above. Very good idea.
2) Leave him have them and take the seo benefits.

Surely if you go for option 1, then you're still getting the benefits of option 2 as he's still linking to the same image files on the same site, even though the visual content has changed.

Do it! Do it! Do it!

 

[Steve2507]

Surely if you go for option 1, then you're still getting the benefits of option 2 as he's still linking to the same image files on the same site, even though the visual content has changed.

Do it! Do it! Do it!

Good point.

By the way, when you've done it can we have the urls so we can all have a laugh.

 

[Brian McIntosh]

If you publish information or images on a website it is automatically copyrighted to you - you are within your rights to ask your competitor to stop.

Absolutely not the case. If they're your pictures, ask them to take them down or you will take the matter further. They are using your pictures without your permission. They are in the wrong.