Photo Stealers, a website that has investigated and identified people who steal photos for over a decade, has become embroiled in increasingly expensive legal battles and was even brought offline by an alleged photo thief earlier this week.
A pet photographer is in hot water this week after other photographers noticed that many of his photos were actually composites in which animals were digitally inserted into gorgeous landscapes captured by other photographers.
The founder of PhotoStealers, Corey Balazowich, has started a GoFundMe in order to pay for mounting legal fees that she has accumulated defending herself against a photographer she accused of stealing images in January. She also claims multiple instances of harassment against her.
Lisa Saad is considered one of Australia's top photographers and has won numerous prestigious photo contests both in her country and internationally. But Saad has now come under fire with serious accusations of stealing other people's photos without credit for her prize-winning photos.
Wedding photographer Jasmine Star is probably still recovering from the first slew of plagiarism accusations leveled against her in 2013; however, it seems the saga is entering Episode II. The folks at Stop Stealing Photos are accusing Jasmine of another transgression.
Sometimes we, as humans, wrestle with big issues -- large complex questions with no easy answers.
Photographer, photography teacher and Nikon Ambassador Doug Gordon -- the same Doug Gordon who only just began truly recovering from the plagiarism scandal he was caught up in last year -- is being accused of plagiarism yet again by photography wall-of-shame site PhotoStealers.
It was bound to happen eventually, but it still caught us by surprise when it did. Found last night and published earlier today, Photo Stealers' Corey Ann discovered that one of her images had been used by another 'photographer' who is passing off a whole bunch of other photographers' images as her own.
Well this is awkward... We're all for people advocating for copyright law and making sure that people at least understand that it's bad to steal other people's intellectual property, but if you're going to do it, you might want to follow your own rules.
Case in point: Anti-piracy group The Business Software Alliance was called out this weekend for allegedly using a stolen photo in an anti-piracy ad that encouraged people to turn in unlicensed software users.
Dear Photography Thieves,
I’ve always known you were out there, even in the days of film. In a photography world filled with negatives and prints, you crept quietly in the shadows and, let’s face it, it was harder then, wasn’t it? But now, with the digital age and that glorious thing called social media, it’s so much easier. It’s really a boom time for you. It’s like you hit pay dirt. And, after reading a month’s worth of Photo Stealer’s entries, all I can say is: You. Must. Be. Exhausted.
Purloining somebody else's photos to promote your photography business has become depressingly common lately, but occasionally a new cretin comes forward to push the practice to a new level of sadness.
Many of you are familiar with the website PhotoStealers, which acts as "a wall of shame... dedicated to photographers that feel that it's okay to steal others work and post it as their own." Photo theft is expertly weeded out and exposed by the site's creator, who has taken on some big names including Jasmine Star and Doug Gordon.
The most recent PhotoStealers post, however, might reach even more epic proportions than the Star/Gordon shame-fest. It involves one Christopher Jones of CJ Photography and, before long, might involve a defamation lawsuit as well.
It's a shame that the digital age brought with it such widespread copyright infringement and, sometimes, downright theft, but it's a reality we have to live with. Fortunately, there's a new website up on Tumblr that is looking to help expose the people who are taking credit for other's work, and in the process help to cut down on some of the blatant infringement many photographers deal with week in and week out.