Sunday, March 02, 2008

REMAX: when realtors steal

now, its pretty irksome, not to mention illegal, when someone steals your pictures for monetary gain, but its just preposterous that they add a copyright to your own snapshot.


here is my photo:


webpage



here is my stolen photo:


a copyright on MY PICTURE!



here is the page i found it

oh. and here



now, i dont really mind my snapshots being used in a way that promotes the neighborhood, but if you're going to be making money off of that usage, please have the common decency to ask. and definitely dont claim you hold copyright.

3 comments:

John W DC said...

Clearly you're in the right. The only defense I can think of for the realtor is she probably didn't intentionally add that watermark claiming copyright.

I'm pretty sure any photo uploaded into MLS bears that watermark. Regardless she did use your photo without permission.

IMGoph said...

it's funny...one of those pages says this "elegant" (god, i hate the over- and mis-use of that word) condo is in the heart of ledroit park, shaw and bloomingdale. so, which one is it?!? you sure as hell can't be in the heart of all three of those at once.

it's not just your photos that they're abusing. they're reusing photos from the washington post (of windows cafe) and other sources too, slapping their copyright on everything. i think you should politely tell them to bugger off, and remind them that the post, with a cadre of lawyers, is something else they wouldn't want on their tail for infringement...

Anonymous said...

that's outrageous! almost as bad as (in a work context) an Australian organization stealing one of my articles and reproducing word for word as their press release. but that's another matter entirely.

i hope you contacted them to complain. the links don't seem to work now, so i'm guessing you did.