SargentRay
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Upload & Sell: Off
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Hello Lisa, it does suck indeed and i know the feeling quite well since more than 200 sport pics were stolen from my web site and reposted on Facebook 2 years ago after i did a big Football tournament. The shots could not be downloaded from my site, but the sob simply used print screen shots and then posted them on one of the tournaments team Facebook page.
Didn't take me long to identify the culprit which was one of the head coaches. Little inquiry revealed he had joined the team's organization only 2 years before and was already hated by everybody within the said association.
My first reaction was to contact FaceBook admin and they deleted the whole album in question less than 40 minutes after my initial request to them. They advised me that if they did it again they would permanently close the FB page.
It lasted about 6 weeks and then the pictures re appeared on the same page, more than that they had created a private website linked to the FB page where they were using 5 of my shots. Every shot had again been stripped of my copyright logo and text and they even had the gull to put on their own.
So i contacted the same guy at FB since i had saved his contact and he again immediately deleted the album but did not close the team's page like he first said (don't know why). Then i sent an e-mail to the person who had done the web page informing her that the shot she had stolen were mine and that i had contacted a law firm in order to obtain reparation.
Poor woman she freaked out and explained it was her first website and she had done it as volunteer work for the team and had received the pictures with no name on them by the head coach of the said team (my 1st suspect to start with). She sent the reply both to me and this coach revealing his private e-mail. He replied minutes after receiving it, trying to justify his actions saying he had only done it for the kids, and only for his team. Which was a bunch of lies since he had taken shots from every team's games of his association. I also informed him i had been hired by the league's president on the agreement that my only salary would have been the sales of the pictures for 10$ per 8x10 which was a real effort for the kids and kids' parents. I'm telling you the guy freaked out and asked how much it would cost for the pictures he had "used". When i told him i wasn't interested in making any sort of business with him, but he would hear from my lawyer instead he went nuts and sent me more than a dozen e-mails saying he was sorry and wanted to pay, he offered 400$ but in reality i lost over 2,000$ of potential sales.
So i did contact the specialized law firm and they said that i had an excellent case especially with the e-mails where the nut case was admitting his guilt over and over. But they would charge me 150$ for the 1st letter and then it would have been 180$ / hour. And then i'd have to prove to the court i had actually lost money which was next to impossible to prove since you never know how much pictures you're going to sell during such events. Sometimes it's 30% sometimes 50% at best. So i figured if i won in court the only one who would make money would be the lawyer, and stopped everything at that point. But i wrote both the association and league presidents and they were pleased to learn all this, saying it was the proof they needed to fire him. To the best of my knowledge he never coached football after that, and that was enough for me. I also told all my fellow sport shooters colleagues about the incident and also to this day none of them ever shot a frame for them. I see their shots on their webpage and they are all shots taken from parents in the stands. It's a real shame for the kids but around here we're only a handful of sport shooters and none of us needs this kind of crap.
So my advice to you Lisa is to start everything by contacting FB admin, make print screens of your stolen work and have an original before modification on hand to prove it is your work. The problem in your case seems to be to identify the guilty party, the actual physical person. But you might gather proof after you get FB to remove the shots, just like it happened to me. For the law suit i guess it all depends on how much money you actually are loosing. If it is a substantial amount then it might be worth the legal fees. Good luck and for what it's worth i'm certain all of us photographers are behind you 100%
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