Copyright

I know this is off subject and may get edited and possibly removed but I thought I ought to bring to attention a site called Pixdaus.com
It is purported to be a nature image bookmarking site .However, the posters there have no qualms in copying your hard work and posting as their own or at best giving you some credit.( but 90% of the cases this isn't so .)
Whilst I appreciate there isn't a lot that can be done with a 720 pixel image ,there still is an aweful lot of enquiries to the posters for a copy ( at a fee ) of the image .
So far I have managed to get a dozen of my ( uncredited )images removed and lately a request for one that has been credited .
The site details are
Chris Ingham Brooke
72-75 Red Lion Street, Holborn
Lion House
London WC1R 4NA
United Kingdom

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: PIXDAUS.COM
Created on: 26-Feb-08
Expires on: 26-Feb-19
Last Updated on: 13-Jul-09

Administrative Contact:
Ingham Brooke, Chris chris@environmentalgraffiti.com
72-75 Red Lion Street, Holborn
Lion House
London WC1R 4NA
United Kingdom
+44.0845880039

Technical Contact:
Ingham Brooke, Chris chris@environmentalgraffiti.com
72-75 Red Lion Street, Holborn
Lion House
London WC1R 4NA
United Kingdom
+44.0845880039

Domain servers in listed order:
NS51.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS52.DOMAINCONTROL.COM


There are some top photographers there with and without credit .
The images are not bookmarked as far as I can tell but copied direct from here ( and a few other sites around the world ) and reposted.
Writing to them gets no reply.A request to have an image removed is done so promptly I'll grant them that.
Have a gander if you wish ...a couple of examples.
http://www.pixdaus.com/single.php?id=220209
http://www.pixdaus.com/single.php?id=220849

There are tons more and I mean hundreds upon thousands.


Ideas anybody ?

Not off-topic at all - we take a dim view of any copyright breaches, and I'd suggest that everyone takes a look at the site for any stolen images and takes appropriate action.

Sadly this sort of thing is becoming very common. Until you can manage to contact the site you can post comments underneath the images stating that they are stolen and posted without the copyright holders consent. I'd also flag the image content as being inappropriate.

For each image that you find that has been stolen, try and get a screen capture as evidence - before it's removed. That way, if you can ever take it to court, you at least have some sort of evidence, and can also show the extent to which the images are being stolen (ie if it's not an 'accidental' one-off-case and is deliberate and systematic...)

It's one reason why I always advocate putting a copyright notice on the image and in the metadata - if it is removed, then it also shows deliberate intent to pass something off. I think if you have a logo or emblem that is trademarked and it's on the image, then they may also be guilty of trademark infringements... but you'd have to check with a specialist on that.

Hmm, I wonder - godaddy is a US based site, so the US digital millennium act may work on them - you could notify godaddy of a breach of copyright and request that the site is taken down until the copyright breach photos are removed... I'm not too sure how our US buddies are working with take-downs under the DCMA at the moment, may be worth trawling the general forum to see what's been mentioned there recently - you may also want to post this up on the general forum too as no-doubt there'll be a few of our US buddies in there too.... and they can be very vociferous ;).

Hi Mark, I have just seen an image done by a friend of mine and have sent her the link. Thank you for making us aware if this disgraceful situation.

Hi all , I've monitoring this site for some time( months) and there are one or two issues .
Some images are credited to the photographer , by name. ( Mostly not.) Some may be happy with this and allow free advertising for their images.
In the main undcredited images ( and amended to remove copyright logos's, names , watermarks etc) are posted here that cannot be tracked down with an intensive crawl through the pages in search of a certain picture ,,, say Barn owl .
There is a private area where only paid up members can view .
If like me you become a pain in the ass to the site you are excluded from commenting or adding copyright notice against the image or poster .
All you can do is email them at pixdaus@environmentalgraffiti.com <pixdaus@environmentalgraffiti.com> and ask that images be removed ( if you hold the copyright .)
I have sent a number of emails to them to get images removed ( mine ) each time no question has been asked but next day the image is gone . The poster on the other hand who committed the crime is still there repeating the process with some other poor sods image .
watermarking, labelling , exif embedding is a waste of time this is just ignored and either cropped out or posted as is.
I don't know what sort of buzz these people or its contributors get out of this sort of thing but I think they should get out more.
Some of the photographers you will find there are Danny . Edwin, Miguel Lasa , Guy Rogers ,G R Guy to name a few .
As I said some may be happy with a credited image reposted there , a little more exposure wouldn't go amiss .
But in the main most are not and remember at 72 dpi an 800pixel image makes for a half decent A4 print .

Thanks Jules for the offer we'll see if its got any legs or interest first...

FWIW, as a paid membership of the site allows access to 'banned' images, I'd make sure when you contact them that the site explicitly states that they have removed and deleted the images in their entirety.... and not just made them unavailable to non-paid members.

Thanks for that Nick ..

FWIW the DMCA does work, I've used it successfully, and quickly, against a US-based site using my work without permission. Google and ISP's take this all VERY seriously because they can be held liable.

This is one of Guy Rogers images..

http://www.pixdaus.com/single.php?id=98657

Another victim who might want to check things out..

Hi Brett ,
as I said above, some may have no problem at all with the exposure and accept the repost, that's for the author to decide . ( Guy in fact has 6 credited images there , but I dont know how many uncredited or in the banned section .)
A search for me revealed about 6 uncredited of mine with anything from hare to sea eagle along with 8 credited and a further one in the last day or so, now removed .
As Julian suggests there needs to be a collated effort as well as photographers who want them removed to find their images and report back . Be aware uncredited images are hard to find and need some trawling through .
These image aren't as the site suggests slipping through the net .They are blatant acceptance of this fraud.

As an example of an uncredited image .This plonker has already had this image removed once and according to the email I recieved back , banned from the site , but here he is posting again .
http://www.pixdaus.com/single.php?id=219192
Yep its one of mine .
I'll leave it for a bit....its got 76 votes LOL,,,,

Evening folks

This seems a no brainer to me; your work is being displayed FOC on a site and users are doing all the hard work for you!! It sounds like a new version of Alamy but with other people who think they are stealing your work and copyright placing work up. Surely this is just another channel to sell your work and show the diversity of nature - the only thing we need to do is to make sure the website understands the copyright belong to us and to leave it intact (guessing this is the hard bit). I'm guessing a lot of photographers may ask for their work to be removed - all fair and good but there could be unique opportunity is this for us all. Maybe as a grouping of photographer we could agree that any work they sell is split between them and ourselves - would this be a cheaper alternative to stock art galleries. Would it be possible to get our work tagged with 'UK nature photographer' where we can identify our work. What could we do with the additional ££ created - could be use it to help out various projects which help nature directly - would it help improve the image of photography. Im guessing what Im asking is could we turn this around into some sort of positive which benefit all parties; photographers need to sell images, this photo website and other need content and the ability to attract users...Just a thought! Im guessing some of the more market savvy photographers may have already thought of this...just trying to turn a negative into a positive...as you can be sure where one website has images taken from it, then it will be down to another website to continue to infringe your copyright. Agreeement could be made with several websites that pursue this infringement and it beats searching through the websites on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Mods - please feel free to delete or amend this if the content is unsuitable.

Ian

I could be a bit upset really. They don't seem to have nicked anything of mine !!!!
JohnR

Same as John here - I feel snubbed and somewhat derelict

Hello.

I think from what I have noticed that the images in question are being taken from the main NPN site and not the UKNP side. So I wouldnt feel to bad John and Andy.

As the images that have been taken are ones that were posted on the main NPN site.

I am quite happy to leave the ones that have been credited to me but will make efforts to get the one that are not removed.

Thanks to Mark and Brett for pointing out the images in question.

The owner of the site has sent me an email .I will telephone him monday in an attempt to get this site shut down /sorted. The email basically blaims spammers .It is quite evident that this aint so and the posts are all copyright images.
I sympathise with those that have credited images on the site and wish to leave them there but this company / site obviously gets some serious advertising revenue from some big players.
I'll see what he has to say.

Sorry guys if you feel you have been snubbed .Andy ....derelict? Aint a bad description that.LOL

Update...
an apparant result... it looks like all images have been deleted from Pixdaus (except for todays postings .5 number) .I will monitor the site and report back once I have spoken to the site owner.

Scrub that...10000 have just reappeared including this one

http://www.pixdaus.com/single.php?id=221530
posted by poppy

Great whooper shot Craig!

I just tried searching for Mark Davies and was surprised by this notice:

"Showing now search results for "mark davies"
these search results don't include banned images.
only premium members can view banned images"

So what's that all about then? Pay to view stolen images??

Tim

This is a sad fact of life today! I tend to put my name and website address on most images I upload to the internet these days as these people don't tend to remove them, so at least people will know who owns the image!