Last night I was trying to track down some fact or another about my web traffic, so I made a rare visit to the server-side web stats page, which lists all the activity on the website: failed loads, most common referrers, browser share, viewer screen resolution, and countless other useless statistics, each presented in a little pie chart or bar graph. In the top referrers section, I saw a bunch of MySpace profiles linking to this site, as well as some other sites I didn’t recognize. So I went on a little tour.

It turns out that some of the photos from my various travel destinations are popular to post as comments on people’s MySpace profiles. And I guess a lot of people know enough HTML to hotlink straight to Strange Proportion when they post comments. Annoying, I suppose, but a minor infraction. This is what you get for posting your personal life on the web. However, one of the hotlinkers turned out to be a commercial website, some sort of inside sales site for insurance brokers [link removed]. On that page, at the lower right, was a picture I took during my trip to the Croatian coast in 2004.

This is not okay. I do not bother to copyright any of my pictures or text (except through the implicit copyright that comes from it being posted on this site by me), and I do not think much about intellectual property rights when it comes to my stuff. I post songs I’ve written, knowing that anyone can download them and play them and laugh at them. I post photos I’ve taken. I post all sorts of text (or at least I used to) without protecting it in any way.* If someone wants to share, be my guest. If it’s something I want to keep private or proprietary, I don’t post it on the web.

But this is different. This was a commercial site using a photo I took, to sell life insurance. Not that there’s anything wrong with life insurance. Many people find it useful. But that’s not the point. It just felt wrong to know that my photo was being used in this way. So I clicked around until I found an email address and wrote to whoever was on the other end. A transcript of our conversation is posted below. He seemed like a really nice guy at first, and by the end of the night I thought we’d solved the problem.

Begin transcript

Hi. You’ve hotlinked to a picture on my website from yours. That’s not okay.

This page:
     [URL removed]
steals this picture:
     http://www.strangeproportion.com/images/IMG_2339.jpg
from my website. Please copy it to your server and give me photo credit (as strangeproportion.com), or remove it promptly.

Thank you,
Paul

Pardon me,
I surely am not hotlinked to any of your pictures.
I think there is a mistake.
How can you be so sure?

[name redacted]

Because my site statistics show that your website repeatedly pulls that photo from my website.

Here’s the HTML code from your page:
<div style="display:block" ><div style="display:block" ><p align="left"><span class="body_text"><img style="WIDTH: 360px; HEIGHT: 265px" height="513" src="http://www.strangeproportion.com/images/IMG_2339.jpg" width="800" /></span></p></div><div style="display:block" ></div></div></td>

That means that your website directly loads that picture from my website. This (1) uses my bandwidth and (2) does not give me proper credit as the photographer.

Thanks,
Paul

Oh I see.
Let me get to the bottom of this with my designers and I shall fix this issue immediately.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

How do you check if someone is using your web pictures?

[name redacted]

Hi, thanks for being so responsive. I appreciate it.

Your webhosting company must have some sort of site statistics feature that you can visit. In that, you will see the top referrals to your website, the hosts that request the most data, search queries, etc. When you see a website listed as a referrer, you know that there is something on that website that links to yours. If it’s not a text link, they’re probably using a photo or movie or some other media file without permission.

-Paul

Paul,
Do you design websites?
[name redacted]

No, I’m afraid not. I’m just an amateur.

Well you do have a good website, why dont you start?
You are going to college and can make some extra cash doing this.

Pause transcript

This all happened within a hour or so. The guy was apparently sitting at his computer, and I was at mine, so it passed back and forth in real time. By this point, however, I had finished setting up my .htaccess file so that a hotlinked request to any file on Strange Proportion instead served up this photo on the other website:

I figured this would give the guy an added incentive to fix the problem quickly, and would give a surprise to the several girls who stole a picture of cute fuzzy kittens cuddling as a background for their MySpace pages.

Having solved the problem, I puttered off to bed. This morning, I realized that it would be funny to get a screen shot of his site with my substitute picture on it. But when I pulled it up, the original Croatia picture appeared. Was my .htaccess not working right? Or had he copied my photo to his server?

Turns out it was the latter. I checked his code, and he had just copied it and renamed it. Same photo. I dropped him a note.

Resume transcript

[name redacted],

I see your designers have copied my picture to your server. While that solves one problem, it doesn’t solve the other. That is still my picture, and I didn’t intend it to be used on commercial websites, especially without proper credit. Can you please find another picture of some beautiful place?

Thanks, Paul

Paul,
I appreciate ur concern and I was assured that is a differnt picture which at first looks the same. You did not want ur website being bogged dowb with traffic and it won’t because this new picture is no way connected to ur picture at all. I myself compared it and it is a different picture similar Looking to urs.
U pointed to me an issue u had and I immediately took Care of it now u are asking for too much.

[name redacted]

It’s very interesting that the exact same boats are parked in the harbor and exactly the same wave patterns are visible in the water. Someone must have been standing right next to me taking that picture at the exact same moment I took mine.

Find another picture. There are 10,000 pictures of Croatia on the web.

End transcript

Now, the funny thing is this: If you look closely (below), you’ll see that, rather than finding some other photo to put in that spot, he (or his “designers”) took the same photo, stretched it vertically, and painstakingly photoshopped several copies of the same boat into the harbor. But if you look at the wave patterns in the water, and every other boat in the harbor, you'll see that it's the same photo.

Is this photo really so remarkable that it’s so worth keeping? Surely not.

The original picture from Strange Proportion: Croatian Adventure III.

The copy from [URL removed].

So consider this post what you will. Revenge, you might say, and you’d be right to a degree, since I took some pleasure in linking to his website with the phrase "life insurance spam site" [links now removed] three separate times. I hope certain web crawlers find that one soon. But consider that it could be a public service announcement to guard your personal life on the web a bit more closely. Not only could there be stalkers out there, lurking in the shadows to steal your identity; worse, there could be shysters out there stealing bits of your life for their own personal gain.

* Actually, I do protect some of my text. This paper on The Scarlet Letter from the Writer Droppings section of Strange Proportion contains a sentence at the end of a paragraph about two-thirds of the way to the end: “Attention educator: If you are reading this as fulfillment of an academic assignment, you should know that it was lifted straight from the internet.” If you're going to plagiarize from the internet, you should at least read it very carefully before you hand it in. One of Mrs. Erickson’s high school students in Lincoln, NE wasn’t quite careful enough, apparently.

Resume transcript, because it just keeps getting weirder

Paul,
What's the matter with you? We were talking this morning and now I see a whole blog of our conversation. Look you want credit for a picture that my designer's used, I can give you that but you can not go around defaming my character. Defamation is a serious crime.
I was in a meeting the whole day and when I saw your email and checked your blog I felt very upset. If you like I can give you credit for the picture on my website. You must send me an email stating that you will not defame my name and will remove anything negative from your website.

[name redacted]

Hi [name redacted],

Nothing is the matter with me, and there is nothing defamatory about my blog post. I am expressing my opinions, not claiming anything to be fact. I happen to believe that my opinions are valid, and accurately describe the events as they occurred. You did hotlink to my website. You did copy the photo to your own server, and you did alter it. You did refuse to remove it from your website. I believe it would be difficult to claim that posting our email correspondence verbatim is defamatory, given that I am simply publishing an exchange of words without addition or deletion.

If you feel upset, imagine how I felt when I discovered that you stole my photo and used it for profit without asking permission. Then when I asked you to remove it, you simply copied it to your server, altered it in Photoshop, and then insulted my intelligence by claiming that this was a different picture that just happened to look like mine.

To be clear: You do not have my permission to use that photo.

However, I have become attached to my blog post. I think it makes an interesting story. So I will make you an offer:

If you want to use that photo on your website, you can accept either of the following:

(1) Pay me $200 in exchange for unlimited use of that photo. In this case, you do not have to credit me. In return, I will delete the blog post.
(2) You may have unlimited use of that photo, but in exchange, I will leave my blog post in place with some edits to remove negative comments. Specifically, I will remove "blowhard" from the title, and I will remove all "spam" references and the part about "luring suckers into some life insurance scam". But I will leave the correspondence in place.

If the photo is important enough to you, you may accept either of those options. Otherwise, I'll expect it to be removed before Tuesday morning 4/17/2007. When the photo is removed from your website, or when I receive your $200, I will delete the blog post. I reserve the right to refer to the incident later, but I will not refer to you by name or by company name, website, or any other identifying information, and I will not link to your site.

Please let me know what you decide.

Thanks,
Paul

This is extortion. Now you have not only used defamation you are extorting.
Do you really want to extort money out of me even though you don't care about the credit to the picture?
Let me know what you feel about that. I am asking you politely to remove unnecessary and defaming references from your blog about a legitimate business.

No it's not extortion. You stole my property. Pay for it or don't use it. It's that simple. I'm not stopping you from choosing any other photo on the entire internet. Just don't use mine. As soon as you remove the photo from your website, I will remove the blog post.

Do you see what I'm saying? To me it's clear.

I don't want my photo on your website. However, if you really want to use it, I suppose I am willing to sell it to you. I named my price. If you pay me that amount, I'll give you the right to use it. If you do not want to pay for the photo, then you can't use it.

If you walk into a grocery store and then try to leave with a dozen eggs, they will stop you on your way out. You either have to pay them for the eggs, or leave the eggs in the store. You cannot have the eggs for free. The eggs don't belong to you until you compensate the store for them. Similarly, you can't use my picture unless you compensate me for it.

Instead of cash, you could also compensate me for my picture by allowing me to tell the story of how I found my photo on someone else's website. To me, that's worth something, so I'm willing to give up the cash for the right to tell that story. However, that story involves talking about your website, so I'm giving you the choice to compensate me in whatever way you like. If you want, you can give me cash. Otherwise, you can let me tell the story. Those are two forms of payment I'll accept.

Of course, you can also take my photo off your website. In that case, you obviously owe me nothing, since then you won't be using my property. This choice is like leaving the eggs in the store. You don't have to pay for the eggs if you don't take them home.

I do not understand why this is so difficult. I'm offering you several choices, and I'll be perfectly happy to accept whatever choice you make. Personally, I'd just take the picture down and replace it with some generic picture of a beach, or a sunset, or anything else, as long as it doesn't belong to me.

-Paul

What did you do to my website?
Its all screwed up
Did you hack into the site?

Fix my website immediately and remove the defaming blog otherwise I will take legal actions against you.

I didn't do anything to your website. I don't know how.

See the attached picture. It looks fine to me, as of 2:52 on Saturday afternoon. Except for the fact that my picture is still there.

Stop talking about this like I'm the aggressor. Remove my picture from your website, and we will have a happy resolution to our disagreement.

So on day 4 of the adventure, I wrote a letter to his web hosting company

Hello,

I am writing to report that this website [URL redacted] has used, without permission, an image for which I own the copyright. Under the terms of the DMCA, I'd like to request that you remove the photograph from his site if he will not comply with your request to do so. If I have sent this request to the wrong email address, can you please forward it to the appropriate party?

The offending photograph is on the lower right of this page: [link removed]

The image on my website is this one:
http://www.strangeproportion.com/images/IMG_2339_tn.jpg
which appears on this page:
http://www.strangeproportion.com/archives/2004/07/croatian_advent.html.

It was originally hotlinked directly from my website, but when I contacted the owner and asked him to remove it, he copied it to his own server and altered it slightly, claiming that this was actually a different picture that just looked similar. He has since been uncooperative.

You can see a transcript of our entire conversation here:
http://www.strangeproportion.com

Thanks for your help, [my name]

You haven't fixed my website or removed your blog.
I am getting very irritated with this childish behaviour.
Once again I am asking you kindly to fix my website and remove any negative and defaming comments from your blog or any blog.

This must be handled carefully and immediately.

Thanks
[name redacted]

Hi [name redacted],

How are you today? I had a long day at work, and I have a lot of homework to do, so I'm afraid I don't have much time to talk this evening.

You still haven't removed my picture. I thought that was going to be the first step.

I'm sorry, I really don't know what you're talking about when you say your website doesn't work. I honestly didn't do anything, nor could I have done anything, since I am not a "hacker." It seems to work fine in my browser. What exactly is broken about it?

As for my blog, I don't intend to make any changes until you remove my picture from your website. Once you remove my picture, I am sure you will happy with my edits.

FYI, I sent a request to your web hosting company today asking them to delete my picture from your server, per the terms of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). I'm sure they'll be in touch shortly. You can refer to this document (DMCA) if you have questions. On page 11, you'll find the relevant text:

Limitation for Information Residing on Systems or Networks at the Direction of Users. Section 512(c) limits the liability of service providers for infringing material on websites (or other information repositories) hosted on their systems. It applies to storage at the direction of a user. In order to be eligible for the limitation, the following conditions must be met:

• The provider must not have the requisite level of knowledge of the infringing activity, as described below.
• If the provider has the right and ability to control the infringing activity, it must not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity.
• Upon receiving proper notification of claimed infringement, the provider must expeditiously take down or block access to the material.

Have a nice evening,
Paul

Look Paul I don't have time to go back and forth with you on this.
I had my web designer readjust the site, Now remove any and all negative comments immediately from your blog.
I have spent too much and time and effort going back and forth on this and it isnt worth the headache.

Thanks
[name redacted]

End transcript, finally

So that was my adventure with copyright infringement. If you happen to have visited before I removed all the links and references to the offending website (part of our agreement), you can go there and see that, in fact, the picture has been replaced by a lovely picture of a beach. I actually prefer that one. Since it was taken by a professional photographer, the lighting is striking, the focus is crisp, and the composition is second to none. I'm sure the gentleman will be much happier in the long run with that photo.

So what's the moral of my story? I’d like to say it’s something about the little guy and his victory over the machinations of the behemoth of corporate America, a kind of Paul Brockovich moment or something. But the other guy was a little guy too, just a bit of an unscrupulous little guy. That said, I bet if you troll through the archives of Strange Proportion, you might find a hotlinked photo somewhere. But the difference is that, upon request from the copyright owner, I will gladly remove any image or text that I have wrongly usurped. Luckily The Economist is pretty cool with fair use.

So here’s to the DMCA, and how it, or at least the threat of its use, helped me, the little guy, to win a pivotal battle in the uncharted seas of intellectual property rights against, well, another little guy. Not really much of ring to that one, eh? But at least we do have a happy ending:

The post has been removed. Thanks for finding a new picture.

Can you please send me the post? I want to show that to my web designers. Thanks

Something makes me think I shouldn't, but here you go. I don't have the original anymore, only the edited version.

Don't worry you kept your word and I am fine with that.