Photographer Threatened With Legal Action After Asserting His Copyright

New submitter JamieKitson writes "Photographer Jay Lee got more than he bargained for after sending some DMCA takedown notifications out to hosts of sites using one of his pictures. One Candice Shwagger accused him of everything from conspiracy over local sheriff elections to child abuse. Since Candice is now threatening legal action, Jay has said he'll take down the post, so here's a snap shot. After reading the story, I checked for use of my own pictures and found one of them being used on a review site without even a credit."

Comments

Re:Photographer should say "Go ahead"

[Hatta]

He quickly realized that she does seem to do non-profit work for disabled children

That's no excuse. The correct response is "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't realize this was an issue. I do non-profit work for disabled children, is there any way we can work out an accomodation?"

The fact that Shwagger went straight to threats of lawsuits indicates that despite the fact that she works with disabled children, she's still a terrible person.

Re:Photographer should say "Go ahead"

[ZeroSumHappiness]

The DMCA, when implemented properly by the hosting provider, is a minimally troubling procedure. It's basically a form letter version of exactly what you're suggesting. It also provides him and the hosting provider with legal protections as well as formalizing a response procedure by the uploader. GoDaddy's the one that kicked it into overdrive by taking down all sites associated with the user rather than just the one file that was being infringed.

I'm not saying it's perfect and I don't think it should be shotgunned against every file returned by a query of "guns roses" on Google. But it perfectly fits the case where someone doesn't want to go through the trouble of having personal correspondence with the possibly hundreds of people who have infringed upon his copyright.

Re:Photographer should say "Go ahead"

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was a couple of websites that he found using his photo, I'd agree with you. But he found a lot, and rather than trying to track down every single individual, potentially have to fight with them, and ultimatley have to use DMCA notices for half of them anyway, he did what was reasonable - he used a single tool to notify everyone of the issue withing the law. The fact that GoDaddy took the sites down as a result is NOT on him - he didn't request that, that's what GoDaddy's TOS that SHE agreed to says that GoDaddy will do.

As much as I hate the DMCA, in this case I think the copyright holder took reasonable action, especially since he was the actual copyright owner, and not just some shill claiming that anything even closely related to something their employer owns belongs to them. Plus, given her reaction, do you really think she would have responded any more reasonably if he had just contacted her directly? My guess is that she would have disputed his copyright assertion at the very least, if not flat out telling him to shove off because she was "entitled" to use it (see her own words for her flawed logic about that). Something tells me this was the better move anyway (especially since most if not all of the other offenders had perfectly reasonable responses)...

Re:Candice side

[Spectre]

Wow so now we all are lawyers? I mean give me break, what has this world come to when copying a photo causes a deluge of DMCA takedowns. If you want to share, post it on the internet. Otherwise stay off of it and go to law school.

Given that the photo was posted on Flickr and clear marked as a copyrighted photo with "all rights reserved", any adult should know better than to think s/he can appropriate for their own commercial enterprise ... and in this specific case, it wasn't just any random person, but in fact a LAWYER that appropriated the work of another.

Before even considering the unprofessional behavior, this was worth a slap from the state bar association, now it's worthy of several slaps and a couple of kicks as well.

Re:Photographer should say "Go ahead"

[blind biker]

So if I walk up to you and take something that belongs to you, in your world view I should track you down and ask nicely for it back before I call the cops? It's not like she and the others didn't know they were taking someone else's work, without permission or credit, and using it to make money for themselves. And you genuinely want to make out that he's the bad guy here? You believe this? Really...thanks for making sure I'm not getting out of this week without one more reminder how hopelessly fucked up and bankrupt some peoples moral world view can be.

Wait a minute: did you just compare a felony (theft) with copying one file?

And you have the nerve to call the GP's morals as "hopelessly fucked up and bankrupt"? Why don't you go fuck yourself, mate.