Blackhearted opened this issue on Sep 06, 2012 ยท 68 posts
moriador posted Thu, 06 September 2012 at 7:25 PM
I just recently had a local business take one of my photos and use it on his business Facebook page, with no attribution, no credit, no payment. It got shared so extensively after that, that he decided to use it as the cover art.
Let me tell you, Facebook does not mess around with this stuff. I filled out their form, and within 8 hours, the image was removed.
In a way, that's also kind of scary. It's not as though they did any investigation to determine whether my claim was legitimate. If I'd claimed copyright on his entire page, they'd have taken down the whole page while he filed a counterclaim, with what looks like the burden of proof being on the accused to prove his innocence.
It's a problem, however, with DeviantArt -- it and FlickR are like the "go-to" places for art and photo thieves. And big ugly watermarks are the only way to prevent this kind of thing.
Whoever said that sending letters, other than, say, a standard DMCA takedown, can potentially damage your case is absolutely right. I've read of cases where someone threatened to sue over infringment and was then subject to an accusation of extortion. If they hire a lawyer and you don't, you may be in trouble. Best to be very careful in what you say.
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