Posted by Mia McPherson on October 3, 2013 at 7:33 AM
While doing some reverse image searches on my photos on September 20th I came across one of my American Badger images being used without my permission on Google Play in a wallpaper app. The developer/thief had placed a screen shot on the Google Play page with my image in it and the search engine picked it up.
I also did a search for Mouse Wallpapers and right away found an image a friend of mine had taken of one of her pet rats with a tiny flute in its hands.
They don't need high quality, high resolution images for these phone apps. They can just grab them off of the net and put them in these apps. They are stealing all kinds of images including landscapes, nature, wildlife, birds, flowers and much more.
Some of the apps are free and some are not.
Image theft is at an all time high and now they can be used in these apps and unless we download the apps we will not know.
I filed a DMCA on each of the three apps using my American Badger image and it took Google 11 days to do anything about removing the apps.
Posted by Richard Ditch on October 3, 2013 at 11:45 AM
Is there a way for the rest of us search within these apps?
Posted by Kurt Bowman on October 3, 2013 at 12:12 PM
I am wondering the same thing as Richard. I have done regular Google searches on my images and found people reusing them without my permission quite a few times. Not happy to hear it is getting worse. I haven't done a search in some time.
Posted by Mia McPherson on October 3, 2013 at 4:02 PM
Rich and Kurt, I can't think of a way for use to search inside these apps without downloading them. I got lucky; or unlucky, because the developer/thief used my image in the screen shot for this app. The same with my friend whose pet rat was in the screen shot. This is why I think Google has to do something about them.
I had a guy write on my blog that he only uses Creative Commons images, but I have found my images on Flickr (I don't post there) on someone else's account marked Creative Commons when they aren't.
Posted by Mia McPherson on October 3, 2013 at 4:03 PM
Sorry for my slow replies, I am not getting emails from NPN when someone comments on this thread even thugh I have it marked to get them.
Discussion
4 repliesI did a blog post on it this morning: Photographers Beware – Another Way Our Images are Being Stolen
I also did a search for Mouse Wallpapers and right away found an image a friend of mine had taken of one of her pet rats with a tiny flute in its hands.
They don't need high quality, high resolution images for these phone apps. They can just grab them off of the net and put them in these apps. They are stealing all kinds of images including landscapes, nature, wildlife, birds, flowers and much more.
Some of the apps are free and some are not.
Image theft is at an all time high and now they can be used in these apps and unless we download the apps we will not know.
I filed a DMCA on each of the three apps using my American Badger image and it took Google 11 days to do anything about removing the apps.
I had a guy write on my blog that he only uses Creative Commons images, but I have found my images on Flickr (I don't post there) on someone else's account marked Creative Commons when they aren't.