What Would You Do If You Found Illegal Content In A Members Area...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by basschick

btw, chad - i know of at least 2 court cases where i believe $100 per image was awarded for use of unlicensed content. one was falconfoto vs. ounique, which might have been in 1999 or thereabouts.

---

That is true -- but those were not the result of one company saying "Give me $100 per image" there were significant expenditures of time, money and anguish [always when lawyers are involved there is anguish]. ESPECIALLY in this case that southernexposur mentioned where it dealt with ONE photo. If a producer-client came to me and wanted me to help him recover $100 for ONE image I would probably (1) laugh at him/her (2) bill him/her $50 for explaining the value of $100, the filing fees alone in small claims court being more than $100 and (3) fire the client

There have been some negotiated settlements in the past, but those are very few and far between and always involving large numbers of images. Sending a domain owner a bill for $100 for ONE image is a bluff.

Quote:

---

How did you feel about being told you stuff was being stolen?

Were you glad that you were told?

---

yes i would be glad that someone gave me a heads up so I can go check it out and take whatever action I fellt appropriate, this is my livelihood

If I see stolen content in a member's area I will notify the copyright holder. Plain and simple.

That is of course if they have an easy way of notifying them.

It's a damn shame that companies can spend tons of money on affiliate tools, press releases, ads in magazines, RSS feeds, and all the bandwith for hosted galleries but has to steal content.

Seriously, I as an affiliate, would like to know who it is. I am just not the type of guy that wants to market a site and make money off from stolen content. It's not good for the industry.

Chip, I don't think it's who you think it is. I don't think his site is either well known or even has dvds.

If you are sure, or very nearly sure, then there is only one right answer to this, and that's to take screen caps and rat them out to whoever you think the victim is.

If there's a chance it was non-exclusive content bought from the same broker or that they are legitimately promoting the site that created the content then of course those are different situations, not theft.

I don't understand why there are two pages of posts in this thread and not one advising us of who this person and company are.

He must be a very powerful man with a very powerful company for all of you who know to be beating round the bush here ;)

If any of my content is on this mystery site someone please at least pm me and let me know. Thanks

I think you have a duty to contact the owner at the very least.

I had a similar thing when I found a massive list of hacked passwords, this was before I posted on the boards. I emailed every site I could that was on the list. Not one replied, but thats their look out. If you have warned them youve done all you can imo.

From experience I've stopped reporting stolen content to owners. I used to do it whenever I stumbled over stolen content on my journeys on the internet. Response or reaction from site owners: ZERO! So I simply stopped wasting my time.

I feel that in most cases there is generally little to no interest in going after content thieves. Actually I'm inclined to think that not all stolen content is really stolen, but adopted by some side deals from the content owner. Like: I sell you a number of sets/pictures under the condition that it's kept inside your members area and not used for promotion.