Monday, March 9, 2009

Internet robbery!

It appears that some troll has been visiting this blog and stealing the photos I post to sell on ebay. A seller going by the name of SDA Star Photos has been clipping the pictures here and making their own prints.

Here's some examples (click on the names to take you to the auctions):

Joan Blondell from this blog

Janet Gaynor
Mary Duncan, (who they list as being Janet Gaynor) both from this blog

Glenda Farrell
Glenda Farrell both from this blog

Joan Blondell
Joan Blondell both from this blog

Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford both from this blog (and the only two Pickford pictures they are selling)

Joan Blondell, again, from this blog

Joan Crawford and Dorothy Sebastain
from this blog

Joan Blondell
Joan Blondell from this blog

I MAY be able to say it was all a coincidence, were it not for the uniqueness of some of the photos I post here. I know the internet is a wide open market for some people who want to do these things but I can't help but feel ripped off in some way. Has anyone else had experience with this type of crap??

8 comments:

Amy R. said...

I can't ever say I've had this happen because I just e-collect my photos and give shout-outs if I steal them from a cool source. But I do hate it when someone hotlinks my photos.

One time a gal hotlinked a photo of Robert Taylor and posted "Isn't he so adorable!!" under it. As soon as I was tipped off I changed the picture that of Hitler! I think I laughed for 20 minutes straight! It was more hysterical when he friends started commenting "Is that Hitler?" LOL.

I have a whole stash of WTF pictures to replace when I get hotlinked. Nothing graphic or anything -- just stupid pictures!!

Anonymous said...

The internet food chain is shocking sometimes, but at the same time, I'm thinking it's a coincidence. Check the scan of Blondell on the desk. If you're like me, you're going to have trouble taking your eyes off Blondell, but once you do, you'll notice that there are a couple of prominent dust spots on your scan that are not showing on the eBay copy. Also, although your scans are really nice, I don't think the resolution is good enough to make an 8 x 10 that doesn't look like junk. You need 300 dpi.

I bet that's a lucrative gig though. You wouldn't even have to print anything until somebody ordered one. Except the eBay fees would kill you.

Hmmmmmmmm...

Louie said...

Yes, but you can also look at the photo of her on the haystack and it appears that the numbers have been photoshopped off.

Stacia said...

The pic of Blondell on the desk may be from the recent Profiles in History auction (that Amy Jeanne tipped me to back in December.) Those photos were a really high resolution and I'm sure someone could make a "career" of selling reprints of all those pictures.

What gets me is that these people take high res scans from others, print them for their own profit, and then even put watermarks on their listings so no one steals from them - even though they stole them first.

I have had people copy entire pages of my blog and paste them into their own blog, usually for spamming reasons. It is a huge pain to file a DMCA complaint against them. Only LiveJournal lets you send an anonymous complaint via email, places like Blogger make you send a signed, written request.

Jonas Nordin said...

Louie,
I have seen my colorized photos for sale on Ebay. I asked the seller how much I would get on the deal but for some reason the seller didn't answer... Hmmm...

elena-lu said...

sorry to hear this is happening, it's good you can warn others about it

addie said...

I do what Amy Jeanne does about crediting pictures I take, but I don't actually know what hot linking is and I have seen my own pictures pop up here and there which I don't care about, but this person making money on pics you are sharing for nothing is pretty slimy and maybe not legal.
It is very slimy actually, I am sorry it is happening. karma might bite this person on the butt for you. We can hope.

Amy Jeanne--That Hitler thing is hysterical. I am stealing that story and passing it along, but I will give you credit and say what site it comes from. lol

addie

Operator_99 said...

Yup, been there. 90 percent of what I put in my blog comes from my personal collection and though I have no problem with folks taking down the images, I do make them small enough that they wouldn't stand up to printing. I usually scan and clean up everything at 300 dpi, but what goes up is much smaller. Also, for what its worth I have a creative commons license on the site. The few times I have seen my images on other sites, I have made contact and they ended up giving proper sourcing credit.

Since it not an income source, my situation is very different, but its really a drag to have be a detective to rout out the slugs that rip you off to profit for themselves.