Monday, January 23, 2012

My most "stolen" photo?

For a more up to date version of this blog, have a look at my web site.
I'm in the process of trying to get yet another copy of one of my photos deleted and thought it might deserve a blog of some sort.
It's all about copyright infringements.
As a photographer who spends a lot of time around horses, I get to see lots of interesting horse behaviour and arguably, one of the most visually interesting behaviours is the Flehmen response, in which a horse will curl back its lips to get better access to an interesting scent. I've photographed this response on a number of occasions and in April 2009 I managed to get this shot.


Flehmen
Clearly spectacular.

It didn't take too long before it started going around the web and was not too long before someone added text : -


copyright infringement
After that, it went viral.

I did a Google image search for the image with text.

The results were alarming : -



The Horror
I'm still trying to get these people to take down my photo.
http://www.hollywood.com/news/Celebrities_And_Their_Animal_Doppelgangers/7769165
The site doesn't answer emails or tweets sent to @Hollywood_com and I tried the writer of the page, @ericsundy, but to no avail.


Postscript 
The Hollywood.com page has been removed after being highlighted on Sites that steal - http://www.facebook.com/sitesthatsteal
If you are ever tempted to "lift" a photo, please don't.
Postscript
I found a few versions of my shot on Flickr and asked the people involved to remove them. In one case I had a short email exchange with the person showing the image, who very nicely agreed to remove the image but replaced it with the one shown here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62205682@N04/6788127097/
It now seems that people trying to protect their copyright in the wrong.
However, the comment made below is from that person and is a well reasoned response, and worth reading. It's the other side of the copyright argument.