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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."
How do I find out who uses my pictures on the internet?
-- Cheers!
"Go ahead and sue me." The infringing person would likely never follow through, or if he did, lose the case and a lot of money. ----- Just like that Oregon Newspaper editor who tried to steal an article from an online reporter. He too threatened to sue but backed down (and paid $500 to the reporter), because he knew he was guilty-guilty-guilty. Downloading something for personal enjoyment is one thing; earning wealth off the back of a worker's labor w/o paying them is entirely different (and evil).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Jay Lee also hosts a technology radio show out of Houston called Technology Bytes.
http://www.freezepage.com/1337899756JULEMRWMMO
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Being a semi-pro photographer myself (and facing the same problem), I find the woman in the original article ludicrous.
There's a lot of problems with trying to share your photos with the world (under copyright) and people using them w/o permission. I know my own photos are being used (and quite often abused) all over the place.
The photos aren't very pleasing to look at if they have watermarks all over them obscuring detail:(
Not that I don't freely allow many non-profits (including zoos) to use my photos all over the world and that I have certainly been paid for legal use of some few.
Elrond: We cannot use the DCMA. That we now know too well. It belongs to Sauron and was made by him alone, and is altogether evil.
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
Wow. That is what is like when you cross paths with someone that is truly unhinged. If I were Jay, I'd be checking to see if there are any bunnies in boiling pots on my stove.
Practical advice for the guy in TFA? If you're going to post your photos on-line, put a great big watermark on it that says something to the effect of, "If you want to use this photo, YOU NEED TO PAY ME! Email whatever@ whatever.com for details!"
Here's some additional practical advice:
- Find out the website / phone number / office of the bar agency in your state; such as Wisconsin
- Research there to find out attorneys that specialize in intellectual property law, specifically copyright law
- Meet with these attorneys and find out what their rates are
- Pay your preferred attorney a retainer
- Find your copyrighted photographs being used for commercial gain with permission (note: this is potentially *criminal* copyright infringement)
- Have your attorney sue the copyright infringer (up to $150,000 per photograph infringed)
- Win in court; get paid (aka: PROFIT!!)
Your attorney can also give you helpful hints on what to include in the watermark (as suggested by parent).
The right stuff in the watermark can make the difference in court, especially if the infringer tries to remove/obfuscate the watermark instead of paying.
Candice Shwagger now that her antics have made the front page of /.
Its well knows that the weenies on /. have issues with cyberbullies, and a very long memory.
Its a good thing that nobody here would print that page to PDF and keep it archived and continue to remind the world of her shennigannis for a very long time.
I think Houston's best marketing attorny is going to be having problems since future clients will call her site into question because she's pladgerizing other peoples work. The Texas Bar association should really know about this, perhaps they will take action and actually end her career.
..is a crazy system that allows a site to be taken down with no prior warning, negotiation or appeal beforehand, surely.
Smivs on the intertubes!
Candice Schwager's blog post is still up at http://chicksandpolitics.com/ and it is hilarious.
Oh, god, she has YouTube channel, and has a ladyboner for Newt Gingrich: http://www.youtube.com/user/candilaw99
It is my professional opinion as a programmer that this woman is mentally ill and should be disbarred.
"... Doesn't look like she's missing too many meals" http://www.examiner.com/slideshow/candice-schwager?slide=37962031
She eats the babies she can't save.
Her Blogspot site ...
http://attorney4specialneeds.blogspot.com/
Has the same logo as ...
http://activesportfitness.co.uk/
Someone seems to have copied it from the other.
Thanks to Google Goggles for that quick research!
The DMCA, when properly used, is a pretty good process:
1. File DMCA to hosting provider
2. Hosting provider removes access to offensive file and informs uploader
3. Uploader can respond
4. Purported owner and uploader resolve situation if necessary
The key here is that you have to be sure you have the right file before starting at step 1, which Jay Lee did. This all went tits-up when GoDaddy decided to shut down all of the related sites instead of just that one resource, but that's not the DMCA or Jay Lee's fault.
Now the big problem with the DMCA is that it's very easy to abuse. But that's not what Mr. Lee was doing with it since he only targeted exactly what belonged to him.
As for RICO, if an individual qualified as a "criminal organization" then hell yes I'd want RICO used against him.
He put a picture on the internet to share it with others who might want to *SEE* it. He did want to share his picture, he simply didn't want someone else claiming it as their own without compensation. Seems fair enough to me.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The Answer is a Lot of light watermarks across the image.
Sorry but it's a fact of the internet. If you dont want your image lifted, only power Low res (1024X768 or less) and watermarked.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Reading just bits and pieces of this lady's blog it is quite apparent that she is full-on batshit, tea-party, paranoid-about-liberal-media crazy. Ignoring the fact that most of her wrath should be directed toward the insane policies of GoDaddy who are the ones who decided to shut down ALL her sites over a single photograph, she needs to have someone with backbone sue her dumb ass for slander and defamation so she can see how the law actually works. She needs a massive mental slap upside the head to rattle her brain back into place. She's pulling conspiracies out of thin air left and right, making all kinds of accusations without a shred of evidence. Oh, her evidence is, "I don't believe in coincidences."
I love the cognitive dissonance of these people. She quotes a supposed conservative psychologist expounding on some sort of horribly obvious but also incredibly nebulous psychological "problem" with Obama: "His externalizing all blame to conservatives, George W. Bush, or the “racist” bogeyman hints at persecutory delusions." Funny, I thought that's what conservatives were doing all day long, in the other direction. Externalizing all blame for literally EVERYTHING to liberals and Obama. Pot, kettle, carbon motherfuckin' black.
Wow. Just wow. Reading that blog is scary. She should apply for a job at Fox News. I'm sure she'd fit in perfectly. Now excuse me while I go scrub the crazy out of my brain with some Dragonball.
Its a story about some nobody who got upset because he published his photograph on the internet and someone else used it. boo fucking hoo.
This is right!
/. story did not read the article. I was thinking oh, he was probably selling some photos online and someone stole them, and he tried to email them and ask them to remove the photo but websites were being douches.
/. because I quoted his blog.
Clearly whoever posted this
Nothing could be further from the truth:
"setup my camera gear and took this photo. And as I tend to do, I posted it to my blog to show it off. No big deal. I liked the photo I took of the city I love and I wanted to share it."
This is NOT a photo he was selling and making money off of or paid models/actors to be in, he just took photo of the city and put it on his blog. That's great... took a photo, put on blog... that's nice....
"I tried searching to see if this photo might be being used without my permission and was pretty stunned to learn the results.... this did not sit with me too well so I contemplated my options. I decided to file a formal Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down notice with the providers of any site I found using my image without permission..... in less than a day, the site was down."
W......T..............F.............. "I found a mouse in my house so i contemplated my options. I decided to nuke it from orbit, only way to be sure."
How crazy do you have to be to file DMCA take-down notices with the website providers over your blog photo as your FIRST option? No attempt to email, no attempt to resolve situation or extort money, just pull down their website! This photographer is clearly a nut case!
I hope he doesn't issue a DMCA to
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Should you be surprised when you come back and your wallet is gone? No.
But when I find the guy that took it, I can't take back my wallet because I left it on my dashboard? Or call the cops on the guy that took my wallet? I'm constantly amazed at the shit posts that get modded insightful some days...
He mentions how she's throwing "Think of the children" down his throat but he seems to have seriously caved to it. Why is he cowering in fear at this woman's insane lawsuit threats?
I've got the feeling Jay Lee said or did something that he isn't mentioning in the article. It just doesn't make sense since he's the actual victim here, having his copywritten material used without permission, but he was gonna take the blog entry down that talks about this? What leg does this woman even have to stand on to sue him?
You are depriving him of his commercial rights. Yes, these rights are imaginary, in that they're a social convention to enrich him despite the physical cost of copying is low, but they're there for a reason. They give him incentive to produce and compensate him for the time and effort he puts into crafting and utilizing his skill.
For example, if you have a blog that you don't pay for beyond your time and effort and write a scathing article critiquing Litware for their horrible human rights practices in Elbonia you have no problem with others reading your blog for personal use or personal edification. However, if the Times Picayune Daily copies your article without payment or attribution and puts it on their front page you, technically, have not been deprived of anything, right? But then that article causes hundreds of thousands of people to start purchasing the Times Picayune Daily daily. They continue to rip off your blog and make a hefty profit from your articles. Yet they've not deprived you of anything. Except that now when you want to sell, for example, a hardcover book version of your blog the Times Picayune Daily puts out their "Greatest Hits" book at the same time, undercutting your price. You still haven't lost a thing of value, right?
Or, put another way, turning a lump of steel into a car only costs time and effort, so why should the auto worker be compensated beyond the cost of the steel that went into it, right? Producing that picture took time, effort and skill, so why shouldn't Jay Lee be compensated beyond the material cost of transferring the bits from one place to another?
(I'm trying to keep this as grounded a theory as possible while minimally invoking imaginary property rights. If you wish to continue this line I would suggest we first work out how his time, effort and skill should be compensated since I doubt you will argue that he spent none of that on his photograph and, if you're copying it instead of doing it yourself, you find value in the fact that he did it first.)
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.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
I think this is a text book example of copyright at work. DMCA and copyright works here as intended and DMCA is helping the little guy in his battle with the pirates, copycats, thieves, aggregators and other parasites.
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.
Does that include free software like Linux, Firefox, etc? So Microsoft should be able to download that software and do whatever they want with it? If you disagree with that statement, what's the difference between Linux, Firefox, and this guy's photograph? What makes the first two copyrightable and the last one not?
Watermarking is only good when you control the source. However, when a customer buys the non-watermarked image and uses it, it can then be lifted by anyone else.
Thought we hate DMCA notices, and really hated people that abused the system.
We do, as soon as he abuses the system you be sure to let us know.
Use is not abuse. It was a little strong, but it's not out of line. If he started mass sending DMCA notices without checking to see if it was his image, that is abuse. If he used DMCA notices to shut down a site for the sole purpose of shutting down a site, that is abuse. He filed a notice using the tools given to him, GoDaddy are the ones that overreact to DMCA notices.
Would you rather he went straight to a copyright infringement lawsuit? He could have done that. Then the first notice she would have gotten was, 'hi, I'm suing you for using my pictures commercially, see you in court'.
One can rail against the RIAA/MPAA and still feel for this photographer. He did not threaten to sue, he did not start a court case to uncover her IP address, he did not try to extort a multi-thousand dollar settlement out of her to avoid a court case that could bankrupt her, he did not bribe political figures to pass scary new laws giving him government like power to shut her down. He filed a takedown notice asking her not to use his copyrighted work.
One can both respect copyright while still deploring powerful groups that abuse those same rules to crush people who can't defend themselves.
No, fair game is if he marks it as creative commons or public domain. He retained copyright. Just because isn't making money off of it doesn't mean other people have permission to use it for their own profit.
He sends DMCA notices, then he gets threated to be sued over crap and he gets scared?
Why the fuck did he sent the DMCA notices to begin with, if he wasn't prepared to stand his ground? All he's doing is giving this other person ammo and basicly permission to be a cunt with other peoples properties.
Candice Shwagger is a bully, you stand up to bullies.
Ya, bitch, sue me, stupid cunt.
Be seeing you...
He used the DMCA as it was designed to be used - specific targeting of websites who are infringing on your copyright. He even did it himself (rather than farming the job out to a lawfirm).
He did exactly what you're meant to do - and as he said, the vast majority of those he contacted either took the image down or asked him about licensing it. It only went wrong when Tea Party Crazy Fucker decided to go on an assblasting entitlement rant and threatened to sue him because she was doing something illegal.
How else would you have suggested he go about it? He contacted the owners of the site via DNS lookup or via a provided DMCA form for those hosts who have one.
I have a very hard time how he's "abusing" the system when he is:
a) actually has a valid claim for every single DMCA notice he sent out
b) only sent them to sites that were actually infringing
c) made an effort to reconcile with the party in question rather than suing them (ie, stop using the picture or pay a small amount to license it)
If that's "abuse" then I really don't know what the MPAA/RIAA's blanket "oh just send them to everyone, via our lawyers, I don't care if there's actual infringement - just assume they are and send a notice" could be described as.