Copyright Shame - You Are So Busted

I take a lot of pictures. I expect that inevitably my photos will start getting snagged for various things. Between my garden and my dogs there are a lot of pics out there for people to lift and use in some fashion without my permission. So when I learned today that someone had indeed lifted one of my pictures and used it as their own photo without my permission, I wasn't really all that shocked. What DID surprise me is the fact that it was a company (vs an individual) that lifted it and that company then went on to put a picture of my dogs on the front of their product packaging to sell said product.

I am pretty well networked in the online world. The person who brought it to my attention was not a neighbor. Far from it. Cathy is from Ontario, Canada. Her husband went to the store and picked up one of those screen doors you tack on to your door and is held together by magnets. When she looked at the package she sent me a message basically stating: Hey, I bought this product and the picture on it looks a LOT like your girls.

I was a little doubtful. Maybe a weird coincidence but would a company really lift my picture off the internet and slap it on the front of their product? Short answer - yes. Because that's exactly what they did.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

If that picture looks familiar, it should. I made a post on this very blog last August talking about Magic Mesh that we purchased. I took a picture that the Miracle Mesh Company really seemed to like.

Exhibit C:

This certainly isn't the first time the internet has come in handy for finding instances of copyright infringement involving someone's photography. This article was posted just a month ago about a photographer named Meagan Kunert who used another photographer's wedding photos and claimed them as her own as a way to advertise her photography skills on her website. The social media then proceeded to hunt her down and in the end the photos were taken down and her name is now forever associated with shamed in the photography world.

The moral of the story? Yeah, the internet is a place where photos get stolen left and right but the internet is also a fickle creature. When you have friends all over the world, you have eyes all over the world. And sometimes those eyes can lead you to a lawsuit.