Copyright infringment. How to act

[Milo]

Hi all,
sure this has been covered before. The usual issue of competitors copying images and text. I have followed this up as far as I could go, and basically, the bottom line is, suing for damages will generally cost a lot more than it actually worth. I accept this, even though my competitor has stolen over 150 images and a large amount of text from us. What I would like to know is I've heard hosting companies and search engines don't take too kindly to this kind of behaviour. I have the websites IP address, so how would I track down their host, will they ban them if I contact them, and will the major search engines boot them off if I contact them.
We're not talking alleged copying here, its very blatant. I have backups of the images from years ago 2004 and they have only been operating since 2005. The kind of money to drag this through the courts would cripple my business, so I want to take the more affordable approach by doing the hard work myself.

[bj]

Tracking down the host is a simple matter of IP lookup. Writing to their host and explaining the situation may result in them getting booted or being asked to remove the offending images.

Of course, this doesn't stop them from just switching hosts, but . . .

Now, if they've hotlinked you can have some fun with them. :)

[Milo]

Thank for the info bj,
unfortunately no hotlinking, just copying the images and hosting them as their own. Do you know if its worthwhile contacting Google over this with all my proof, or am I just wasting my own time.
Thanks Miles

[quark]

The search engines will back you at first blink and think later. it generally is up to the jerk stealing your copy to prove otherwise. use www.copyscape.com and you will throw up when you see all the REST that have copied you. Here is where you write your complaint to AFTER you have read their requirements for the DMCA complaint:

Google, Inc.
User Support, DMCA complaints
1600 Amphitheater Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043


Daniel Dougherty
c/o Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089

J.K. Weston
Microsoft Corporation;
The Microsoft Network, LLC
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052

in fact here is the form they require:

Sirs;

I am the webmaster for ------- I require your immediate help concerning websites that have stolen page copy from our site. The offenders are:



They have stolen copy from the --- page: ------ and in one case our entire site and have copied it almost verbatim on their pages above. I have further written them on multiple occasions, asking them to delete our copy and they have failed to comply, including sending each of them a legal notice.

I have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright or intellectual property owner, myself as webmaster, its agent, or the law.

I swear under penalty of perjury, consistent with U.S. Code Title 17, 512, that the above information in this Notice is accurate and that I am the copyright or intellectual property owner of the copy on my website.

Please kindly look into this at once and I am asking that you ban them from your site permanently.

Thank you



go kick ass
ira

[Milo]

Thanks Ira, very much appreciated. My last question on this is, should I contact the company who has infringed on us and ask/tell them to remove the material (do I have to). I have held off doing so as I was uncertain that anything could be done after the material was removed. As the infringment was so big, I wanted to do more than merely get the material removed, like get them banned and teach them a lesson.
Thanks again.
Miles

[graphyx]

I have found recently that smany of the pages at MySpace.com are using images from my website as background images on their pages with text and pictures pasted in covering pieces of my images. I have written to mMySpace several times about this and have recieved no replyies. Who can I go to or what actions can I take in this matter. These images are a part of my professional porfolio and are all copywrited.

My website is at www.graphyx.com

Thanks, David Griffith

[robertconnolly]

Hi,

Okay, my comments are based upon UK law, but I think that US law is quite similar here.

And this is a bit long winded, but stay with me here!

The first thing to keep in mind is that copyright theft is both a criminal and civil matter.

Now the criminal aspect is the bit to keep in mind!

When somebody steals your copyrighted images - that is to say images that you have created, they are committing a criminal offence.

In the first instance, never go down the civil law route! (I'll explain later).

Go criminal. Why? Well for a civil matter you need lawyers and lots of money and you have to spend ages getting a case together.

A criminal matter on the other hand....

You can involve the police, it is after all theft!

Also as it's a criminal offence there is no protection of limited liability. So a director of a company can't just say, "you can't charge me, because it's a limited company".

In addition, anybody who is involved further down the line in "handling" stolen goods, is by association also guilty of a crime.

This second point is important.

So...

First, you need to be able to prove that you are the copyright owner of the images stolen.

If you can prove this, you have (unless you have signed your rights away) the absolute right to say what happens to your images, and where required recieve payment for use of the same images.

If somebody has "stolen" your images, placed them on a website, then put them online.

You have two key options...

Sue the buggers for some money - via the police in their area - report it as copyright theft.

So you don't actually sue them. They are charged by the police for the copyright offence. After which you have the burden of proof to also sue them!

Or the easy route to getting the images removed, contact the ISP or similar, tell that you are the copyright holder and state that whilst you understand they may not be aware of it, they are party to the distribution of images (or creations) that are in breach of your copyrights, and that this is a criminial offence.

Request that they remove the offending items immediately or you will report the matter to their local law enforcement agency.

If they do not do this, they are then party to a criminal offence - believe me, they will not want to go there!

I have done this with photographs.

I used to be a professional photographer.

To cut a long story short, a company went out of business owing me just £170 for some photos.

Months later the very same images appeared in a brochure for a new company. I contacted the company to tell them that I was the copyright holder and that I had not been paid, so they would have to pay me for the use of the images for their brochure.

They said that the old company had gone bust, and to get lost.

I found out who their local police office was and reported copyright theft under the Design and Patents Act 1988. Yes the local police were confused, but they checked the law, then went to the new company and charged every director of the business with breach of copyright.

I got a very quick call from the managing director, they paid me my £170, plus £500 for unauthorised use and the guy who told me to get lost was sacked - Result!

If you are in the UK you might find it better to start by going through your local trading standards as they are more up to speed on copyright.

The cost - nothing!

A couple of years later a similar thing happened and I made the mistake of approaching a lawyer.

Result - the police would not get involved as it would now be treated as a civil matter.

Please note, if you go down the criminal route, it costs you nothing, and if it does not work, you can still go civil. But you can't do it the other way around.

As a wee guidance, look at the end of any film and you will see a copyright notice. It normally states that it is both a criminal and civil offence to copy the film.

It's the same law, but in your area.


Good luck,

Robert

[kjohnson5576]

As far as MySpace goes, I have lots of hotlinked pics being used on Myspace. The way I deal with it is to change the position of my pictures around so my logo and web address show up in place of the hotlinked picture. It's like free banner advertising, expecially, if the blog is popular.

I've done this same trick to a competitor in ebay that stole one of my images...they didn't find out about it for weeks. The ebayer was actually paying a fee to host my logo.

I spend a lot of time working on pictures for detail, compression, etc and it really irks me if a competitor steals them. I now place a small picture of my logo on each picture in an area that would be difficult to paint over.

[RegDCP]

I have been in the same position myself and usually a quick email to the offending website owner does the trick.
Let them know in no uncertain terms that you will escalate this by bringing it to the attention of their ISP. Do so if they do not respond by removing the images.

I took a look at your site. Why don't you watermark the images with your URL? This would probably save you a lot of problems and even if they don't remove the images, you would get free advertising.

Reg

[mserovey]

I am a published amateur photographer. I submitted several pictures to picture.com and still retain the copyrights to them. IF they have sold my pictures to someone else I have YET to receive a dime from it! I no longer worry if the pictures have been stolen or not.

I have a chess site that I paid GoDaddy $30 to review and prepare documentation so that I can submit it to the US Copyright Office. The fee to submit the site is also $30 in addition to what I already paid GoDaddy. OR, I can pay GoDaddy $40 to submit it for me. That $40 includes the Copyright Office's $30 fee. So, I would only spend and extra $10 to have GoDaddy help me to have the site officially copyrighted. The reason that I have yet to do this is mainly because I keep updating the site. If I submit the site today for copyrighting and then update it next week, will the update be included in the copyrighted material? Or, will only PART of my site be protected from theft?

[pavelhlavsa]

Originally Posted by RegDCP

Exactly my sentiment, suing is messy thing and brings not peace to situation. Right click protection of your web and watermarking you images is far better. You can go and spend fortune on lawyers if you like, but do you actually win?
Paul
Reg

[Tim]

An aside

To robertconnolly,

Thank you for your fascinating and illuminating post. One to remember!

Cheers.

[bj]

Right click protection of your web and watermarking you images is far better

That is about as wrong as you can possibly be. If someone steals the image via rightclick the image file name stays the same in most cases, since these folks aren't the brightest apples in the basket. That gives me a way to find stolen images.

Now, as to Right click and watermarking being protection-- I can screenshot and photoshop anything that is right click protected and watermarked and you would never be able to tell. Guaranteed. Where's your protection now? If it's on the web it can be stolen. Those methods just plain don't work.

[Keimos]

Hi Milo,

if its your stuff, do not be afraid to send a friendly email asking them to remove your content from there site.

Depending on there reaction, will dictate what you do. The cheapest way is to report them to the various search engines as suggested above, then go back and image wise you can put a watermark in your images etc.

Play it cool and steady, if they are taking customers it is a concern, on the other side it is a compliment to you, for the work that you have produced.

My simple advice is try to get in contact and and then come back with there reaction.

Keimos

[Grinler]

If your not going to sue, which in the majority of cases it is not worth doing, then the easier solution is to contact the company.

For all you know the company themselves do not even know they are violating copyrights but it is a designer scraping you. I have contacted numerous companies and for the most part they remove the material if asked.

If that does not work, start filing DMCA violations if you can prove that the content is yours. Issue DMCA requests to the company, the search engines, and the isp.

I have been successful in getting copyrighted material removed from peoples sites and search engine results for copyrighted material.

[kjohnson5576]

Mserovy, the way the copyright law reads is that anything you do that is original, pictures, words, program code, etc is copyrighted whether you submit it to the copyright office or not. It's your work. If you have any proof at all, dated, that shows it is your work before being displayed on anothers site, it's covered. No need to send into the copyright office for a fee.

Enforcing the copyright, as this post is about, is the tougher thing, whether it's been sent to the copyright office or not.

The UK it appears seems to have criminal codes that police in the UK will enforce. In my neck of the woods here in California, it's hard to get the police to look into a stolen auto, so I doubt they would be to eager to pester a word or picture stealer.

[Tim]

Originally Posted by bj

Now, as to Right click and watermarking being protection-- I can screenshot and photoshop anything that is right click protected and watermarked and you would never be able to tell. Guaranteed. Where's your protection now? If it's on the web it can be stolen. Those methods just plain don't work.

That's true for the web images but it wouldn't necessarily be the case if the originals, say PSDs, were watermarked and written to CD. Better still post the CD to yourself.

Good luck Milo

[RegDCP]

I have always held that it is useless to try to police what cannot be controlled, such as people using your images without your permission.

Since Google Images makes it so easy to find images, it strikes me that a better method is to announce that use of images is allowed with a link back to your site.

A watermark with your URL along the bottom of the image can give you a lot of free advertising.
Look at http://www.phensler.com for an example.
After all, isnt the idea to get your site and products noticed?

Reg
PS. Right click prevention does not work. All one has to do is to take a screen shot.

[Milo]

Thanks guys,
obviously a subject thats very common for obvious reasons. I totally understand the ways of preventing copying (like javascrips to prevent right click, etc). Furthermore, I am very confident that a letter or even a simple phone call will get the images removed promptly as this person will undoubtedly be aware of their actions. What I am trying to do here is teach this person a lesson they will never forget and put the word out in my industry (wedding stationery). I'm hesitant in contacting the person prior to getting the process of penalising them (banned from search engines, hosts, etc) under way. If they remove my content that they've used for over a year now, then how will I prove to (example) Google that they did actually copy the images and they will then be able to carry on trading. Might sound spitefull, but I've put over 5 tedious years on my website and most of the day is spent on making my images perfect. We get copied constantly on a very small scale (under 10 images) and I always write an email and get the images removed instantly. I just walk away form these circumstances and take them on board as unhealthy competition. In this case, the infringement is in the 100's and feel that, even though I won't gain financially, that this person should not be allowed to do business. I am going to contact the big G and see their response, but am wary because I have not given this website the chance of removing the infringements. Why should I, they should cop the full force of whatever I can conjure up. I'll let you all know the outcome and progrees, but thanks for all the input. If anything, I am learning heaps and will walk away with the knowledge of how to act in future when I am copied.
Miles

[graphyx]

Thank you all for your great responses. One of the things that most disturbs me is that on all of the images used at MySpace is that the copyright notice has been clipped off all of the images.

I was thinking about contacting a lawyer but now I plan to pursue this in a different direction. Thanks again for all the great feedback.

[Jeff Colburn]

Hi,

The article in my newsletter this month is titled "Stop Thief!!! What You Can Do If Someone Steals Your Website's Contents." I will post this article on my site in about three weeks, or you can subscribe to my newsletter (it's free) and have the article in about a day. Just go to http://www.creativecauldron.com/WebsiteDesign.shtml and put your e-mail address in the form at the bottom of the page.

Have Fun,
Jeff

[Orion]

if it wasn't for spyware detectors we could all just install spyware on our domains so that when a visitor comes by it will record their keystokes while they're at the site. catch them red-handed eh!

great insite on the criminal vs civil angle I'll have to check into that next time it happens to me.

bj is right when she said that right click protection is wrong and that it doesn't work. one thing it does do is make your site more inaccessible to your visitors.

most times I've simply had to contact the site owner, cc the host provider (whois lookup, get nameservers, trace those to IP then IP look up to see who actually owns the IPs)with a lovely little cease and desist letter. It's worked about 90% of the time for me.

great topic!

[RegDCP]

I have seen a program advertised that will strip the visitor's email address out of their email programs, not that I would ever use it tho.

If you use a live contact system you can see what pages the user is visiting and most of them give you the option to initiate contact.

I could just imagine the expression on the person's face as he gets a "HEY>> STOP STEALING MY GRAPHICS" popup. <grin>

[mserovey]

Anything that can be browsed can be stolen! I would persue criminal action first and then civil as suggested above.

Mike Chen developed a program that encrypts web pages and is supposed to make it impossible to copy images or even to do a screen capture. I cracked his encryption on his web site and stole a copy of this program in about 4 minutes! I just did it to prove that I could. Dale Woodland bought the rights to this program and is still selling it. He recently asked me for an endorsement and I had to decline. Even so, the program WILL stop most amateur thieves! It is called Weblock Pro and you can get it here: www.weblockpro.com. He sells it for $49. That is a fair price to stop someone from stealing your pictures. Again, this will NOT stop a professional thief!

I DID manage to get a screen capture of Mike's "protected" site with Snag It 6. I MAY post a copy of this screen capture just to prove that I did and that this program does NOT stop all screen captures!

I just found some code that can slow down image thieves. It will not completely stop it, but it can help!

Code Description: Use this JavaScript code to replace any image tags
you currently have on your web site. This will disable the user's
ability to right click or drag these images. Please note that this is
NOT the same as disabling the right click function for an entire page.
This will disable the user's ability to right click and drag specific
images.

Now, before some of you computer programming hot-shots out there come to
me and tell me that even with this code in place there is still a way
to steal your images, let me ask you this: I lock my car every day. Does
this mean thieves can't steal it? Of course not. But it certainly makes
things much harder for them, so I lock it anyway. Get what I'm saying?

Do everything you can to protect your web site from thieves and you will
see the benefits.

So here's the code:

------
<span oncontextmenu="return false;" ondragstart="return false";>[img]picture.jpg[/img]</span>
------

What's all this mean? Basically, find every single occurance of the
following regular image tag on your web site:

------
[img]picture.jpg[/img]
------

And replace it with the above "locked" code. Then go ahead and try to
right click or drag that image. Neat, isn't it?

Please note that this little piece of sample code is by no means very secure.
It won't work in Netscape for example, and it has some pretty simple
workarounds. It should get you started on securing your site, however.

[Grinler]

Couldnt this be circumvented by just disabling javascript?

[weegillis]

Clearly, the copyright angle does not work for anyone with pockets too shallow to bring down a thieving monster. And the criminal aspect is one that comes with a bundle of personal responsibilities in tow. There is the rather nefarious side of things to consider if the culprit decides that their reputation is worth more than your well being.

We cross a whole new line when we bring in law enforcement--they are bound to serve the public, and they cannot fudge on their job; their work is scrutinized at every level and they must therefore do a thorough job of every investigation. What this boils down to is that we better be darn sure of both our position and the public's interest before we send the police to someone else's door.

It might even reduce to harrassment and criminal mischief on our part, which would certainly put the shoe on the other foot and the sod in our own souffle.

It really comes down to whether or not people identify you with the images. If not, there is nothing lost. If they do, though, you have a valid concern.

Now in general terms, if people actually do identify you with the image, it won't matter where they see it, they will think of you, not the top banner, and may even turn away from the site on their own discretion at the afront of such blatant plagiarism. On this basis, again, there is no damage.

If the pictures are yours, and they are on your site, and you don't want people to lift them, then don't put them there. I'm not suggesting that it is right or wrong to lift images, this is not my point. It's done all the time. Does that make it right? (don't answer)

If they are high quality images then their intrinsic value increases. Reduce the quality and the size and the lifters will go away empty handed.

Put your high quality images in a protected PDF or Flash if they are that important to you. Or better yet, in a book. People don't lift pictures from books because the color separation, registration and dot percentages are a dead giveaway.

Who can't tell a four-color image from a photograph or a jpeg?

Now when we cross over into commercial value, the waters get pretty muddy, but you certainly have a much stronger leg to stand on. The fact that something has marketable value has some bearing, but copyright also looks at whom is doing the real job of marketing. Just because it is yours doesn't mean it's yours to market. Whoa! Did I say that? This is the gray area we move into when considering copyrights more closely. Remember, 'copy' implies distribution or re-use. It also implies a consumer base. The consumer is the public, and if it is for the public good then nobody has the right to suppress it. In other words, just because it is yours that doesn't make it 'yours.'

I'm not going to go into this as if I have any true understanding of the complexities of copyright law, I don't. It goes without saying, though, that any person who really begins to wrap their head around the notion of protecting copyrights is going to run into the labyrinth of contradictions that must surely surface upon close consideration.

From a really tame standpoint, you might just think of everyone's site as just a big scrapbook that they keep online. Have the papers ever tried to stop Mom and Pop from clipping their son's hockey stories or Jane and Johnny from clipping the comic strips? How many collages have been in art galleries, their full extent clipped from magazines?

It can be seen as harmful when others steal your content, or it can be seen as their way of sharing. If people know it's yours, all the better. If they think it's the next guys then it really is 'their' problem, not yours. They are mislead. But have a little faith in people--nobody can be mislead all the time. And the truth has a funny way of being shouted from the rooftops. Metaphysically, the phrase, "Vengeance is mine...," really does have poignancy, this case in point.

If you really want to protect your images, then Trademark them.

If people identify you with the images and vice-versa, then they are your trademark, plain and simple. Let anyone trample on trademarks and you have them by all the short hairs, and plenty of the long ones, too.

For 'the little guy' this always comes down to money. What's the front end and what's the back end? Where is the money going to come from? Is it worth it?

Big players have no problem with these questions--they make things work (even if for only long enough to justify their being on the investors' books). They are positioned to flood the audience and market with their recognizable marks and gain mass acceptance almost immediately. Brand loyalty is built on this premise.

When you have something big in your hands and no way to give yourself a leg up then it falls to you to bring in a big player. Better to have 1% of something than a 100% of nothing--the old 1% of what 100 people can do over 100% of what one person can do.

If you are marketing something that the public will benefit from, then the web is only one thin slice of your marketing plan pie. The more you spread into other media and forms of advertising the more people will recognize your product and marketing image. Through this means others who are knock-offs and copy-cats will be easily identified, and knocked off the wagon in their own time. This is how you win.

[davestarr]

[quote="...As the infringment was so big, I wanted to do more than merely get the material removed, like get them banned and teach them a lesson.
Thanks again.
Miles[/quote]

Irritating and dead wrong though they may be, this is just an attitude/wistfulness that will frustrate you the rest of your life. Let's assume one of two things happened: A., they didn't realize they were doing wrong. In this case your 'lesson teaching' will fall on deaf ears. Ever hear any of the sayings about the futility of teaching a pig to sing? It wastes your time and annoys the pig. Remember when I say they didn't know wrong from right ... they new they were taking your property but they may well have been operating in the zone of ignorance that many still subscribe to ... if it's on the 'net, it's free.
Now, of course Supposition B: They did indeed fully realize they were doing something wrong. Since they cared nothing for the laws or morals when they did the deed, just what 'lesson' do you think would possibly cause them to take notice of you. They consider you a nobody ... or they wouldn't have stolen your property. Right or wrong, people don't respect 'nobody’s', so why frustrate yourself. Get the infringement to cease, and then forget it. To do otherwise just leads to ulcer city and a depleted bank account and they don't care what you do anyway.

My $0.02 - worth, anyway.

[Milo]

Hi Guys,
lets not lose sight of what the infringment was and my intention to proceed in an attempt to help myself and other small businesses for future breaches.

Images and text were stolen on a large scale and used to profit the other business ( the images are swatches of paper that many of my competitors cannot get right. These are made in-house and the theft would have saved these people many months of work). As we can see here, there are many ways to try and prevent these infringements and the majority of websites act by trying to get these type of infringments removed, which, for the majority, seem to work.

My intention here is to try my best to get this website banned from its host and search engines. I'm not sure if they (Google, MSN, Yahoo) require me to contact the business prior to submitting my complaints to their DMCA dept's, which I am currently trying to find out. Obviously, once the images are removed, they will undoubtably see no infringment and a ban will not be possible. So, no warning to the competitor as yet, hopefully I will not be required to do so. If so, the proof will be shown to the relative host, search engines, and this site will be removed for a breach of copyright. Ignorance is not an issue here either, especially since their new images carry their logo on it to prevent others from copying them.

A great outcome would be for the ban to happen, but at the very worst, the images will be removed. So nothing more can be lost here. If I don't follow this as far as possible, nothing further is learned. It always comes down to money when decisions are made for small businesses. In my case, my investigations are on my time and cost me nothing, so this is all free. I look forward to getting a final result, so I can have a future game plan. I will also find it very satisfying for others to gain from my experience and have a more fruitfull result when being copied, other than simply getting infringments removed.

I can bet that if I am successfull in getting this site banned from their actions, others will be able to do the same. Better than asking politely and getting no further than where you were before something was stolen, wouldn't it be nice for it to become a standard action (not copying from other website) once a few people have been made an example of and we can carry on with more productive projects in our business. Naive? Maybe? But nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Will keep you posted.
Miles

[weegillis]

But how can anyone know of this if it is not made public? Google isn't about to tell everyone that they just banned a site, or the reasons why, and neither will the ISP.

You could out the web site, via the web, which would at least bring it to the public's attention. Again, not very many people will see this, though. The downside would be that outing them you may expose yourself to a counterattack, which would put you on the defensive. Apart from the fact that you are acting on the real truth, which you, and probably the culprit full know, the deniability factor in the public eye will always bring YOU into question, not the culprit. The public, generally speaking, does not make a very good jury, en masse.

The only real way to let the public know is to go public through the court record, and consequently through the press who will pick up on it and probably seek you out for an interview if they see this as newsworthy. The public record is 'without prejudice' and the courts act according to statute, not the sway of public opinion.

While you may succeed in having the site banned, you still have not let the public know. While you may succeed in having the images removed, you still have not let the public know. In either case, you have done nothing to prevent it happening again.

Your copyrights are clearly being infringed upon. You have a legitimate case and possibly provable damages. Under the law in many cases, damages are assessed on a 'per incident' basis; in this case there would be 150+ incidents, and whether or not they generated revenue for your competitor would only be a small part of the question. The fact there WAS revenue from any one of the images is all that needs to be shown.

The infringement evidence is prima facia: They put their name and logo on your pictures; that makes it pretty clear to anyone.

Typically, damages may range in the tens of thousands of dollars PER incident. You would effectively wipe out your competitor, financially, and possibly for good. The public would see this, and so would other would-be culprits intent on the same approach to their internet marketing plan.

So you do have a case for litigation, and probably should pursue it. If there is evidence that the police should act upon, any good lawyer would inform the authorities and things would follow their course independent of you and the civil courts. Also, evidence from a civil litigation can be used to support criminal prosecution. I repeat, you do have a good case, and you should pursue it. Then let your lawyer provide the documents necessary to have the SE's and the ISP ban the site.

[mserovey]

Yes, the code above is very easy to work around. Still, it will slow down those who don't know how to disable JavaScript.

[Milo]

Just a bit of feedback for anyone who may have followed this topic. Also, thanks to all of you who contributed.

Basically, Google did not respond at all to the reported infringement. It was followed properly and as per their instructions. No surprise really. I also contacted the host who said he would advise his client to remove the images, although I ended up finding out that he basically help to set the website up. Of course, he did nothing and was very amusing at how shocked he could pretend to be.
Eventually, I contacted the offender and used the information gathered in this post and my research to state what I could do as well as mentioning a few of the acts and clauses involved. Surprise, surprise. Her excuse was both "I did not know" and "isn't everything on the internet free for all". The images were removed the same day though.

Anyway, this goes on all the time and it was very interesting as I did learn quite a lot. The bottom line (IMO). Not much can be done other than threatening the offender other than a few preventative method (disable right click, logo on the images,etc). I have used the threatening method before and its worked for me 100% of the time. My advise is to stay on top of the game and check your competitors constantly. In an ideal world, I would love to setup a registry of offenders, but of course, I would be open to being sued over and over again. The law is a fascinating beast.

Anyway, the final outcome was always known to me. That the images would be removed. At least now I can get back to more productive activities.
Thanks again everyone.
Regards.
Miles

[Tim]

Well done Milo, a satisfying conclusion.