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I’m sure I’d have plenty of money for my studio fund if all the media outlets who stole this photo (and even use it without attribution) actually paid me for my work.
This photo is so popular.
It originally appeared on my website here. Do you know how patient, patient, patient you have to be to get three bucks to line up like that for your camera? Yeah, so why bother when I already did the work.
If you go to this article here….
….and scroll down….
….there it is! (Thank you to reader Karen Burgess who sent me the link.)
Remember Dave Belanger?
I don’t even think they copped that photo off the Dairy Goat Journal site because what DGJ ran in their magazine was a black-and-white version (and they couldn’t lift a digital copy off the magazine anyway), and what they ran concurrently on their website was a quite small color copy. The copy of the photo running on the Informed Farmers website is a larger copy in decent quality, so they probably scooped it right off Chickens in the Road.
People just love free stuff, don’t they? I mean, WHY PAY FOR ART WHEN YOU CAN STEAL IT?
Posted by Suzanne McMinn on January 25, 2012
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Just because you’re overseas and away from U.S. laws does NOT mean you’re out of the reach of being… oh, I don’t know… ETHICAL HUMAN BEINGS. Shame on you for stealing other people’s photographs. (See “Three Wise Goats”)
Your website says you have a “friendly staff” at Informed Farmers. Apparently someone on your staff is not only NOT friendly, but are thieves.
How would you like it if someone stole information from articles you posted on your website, and posted it to another site as their own work? It would suck, right?
Do the right thing please. Either pay Suzanne McMinn for her work, or take it off of your site.
And try to learn a little bit about copyright and journalistic integrity for future use. Buying stock photos or using royalty-free art is so cheap and easy, there is really NO excuse for just stealing.
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I agree, you should put something on your photos, a watermark, or copyright Chickens in the Road.
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I think there are 2 types out there: Those who really don’t know there’s a problem using other folk’s photos (not thinking, but inocent at least); and those who know but want to try to get away with it.
Not sure if you already have a copyright notice with a statement that photos need to be used with permission only? Might be worth taking a look at “http://creativecommons.org/”…
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editor@informedfarmers.com
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Not sure I said everything right, but hopefully they’ll get the message! I did notice that the site slowed down noticeable, do you suppose there’s enough of us to do that? Yeah, me either. Still a nice thought. Not that I’d do something like that on purpose, I’d just like to think there’s enough of us who love Suzanne and CitR to affect a web page that way!!!
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Gingergoat
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Contact their webhost here: http://www.webcity.com.au/contact.php
Report copyright infringement by one of their customers, and include links to the original photos on your website and the infringement on the Informed Farmers website. Reputable webhosts will almost always “disconnect” a website for copyright infringement. Once the photos are removed or you have notified the webhost that the issue has been resolved to your satisfaction, Informed Farmers website will go live again.
I’ve had to do this myself when someone “borrowed” my photos and ignored my communications. You can bet they started paying attention once their website went dark.
Good luck! And stick to your guns – you don’t have to allow anyone to use your photos without payment (or a link to your site, if that’s your preference) just because you want to be nice. Clearly, THEY haven’t been very nice in this instance.
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Like learn-as-you-go farming, your website has brought some painful lessons to bear. Glad you watermark the photos now. While it’s no guarantee…it does give pause. Sorry, but I no longer believe any of these photo ‘lifts’ are innocent. Certainly not when the perp os a business rather than an individual.
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Keep us posted!
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Even though it’s not pretty maybe you should start water marking all your photos?
“I hate to say it but I think sometimes folks in Australia just think they are so far off the grid that no one notices what they do.”
:( I’m in Australia and I certainly don’t feel that way
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I wouldn’t trust this webpage for anything! If they steal and can’t spell, they’re probably WORSE than useless for anything else!
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Here’s a link to the blog form where the pic was stolen:
http://bachersblog.com/2007/10/03/rwanda/goats-for-child-headed-households/
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I emailed the Austrialian folks too.
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The best thing that bloggers/writers/photographers can do to protect their copyright is to formally register with the U.S. Copyright Office. It could also be helpful to watermark photos, EVEN if the watermark is easy to crop out or remove. Being able to prove that an infringer KNOWINGLY infringed your copyright (for example, by having taken the time to remove your watermark), according to the law, might matter in court.
Here is what the law says about “statutory damages,” which assume that the work is registered:
“In a case where…the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000. In a case where…the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court…may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200.” (From http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html/)
Why not watermark “Copyright 2012 YourName [or however you've registered]” onto your images, to help “awareness”?
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Two things I would recommend. As you make money on clicks to your site, I found your site through pinterest and have been obsessively pinning from it, many things I’ve liked. I would encourage you to find some way to link some of your more popular entries to pinterest. Since I started pinning your blog, just over two days, I’ve had an increase in followers (of people I don’t know) and many, many repins of the items of yours that I have pinned. Unless, for some reason, you don’t get revenue from those, I would recommend bulking up your pinterest site.
Secondly, I don’t know if you use google adwords, and especially may not want to because it’s additional advertising dollars going out, but they have occasional promotional emails where they offer someone $100 google adwords credit to try it out. It might be good for one of your retreats or if there is a specific thing you want to advertise.
Again, any help I can give, I’d be happy to. Unfortunately being a single income family with one kid and another on the way doesn’t allow for me to make financial donations, but am happy to make intellectual ones.
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