I Am Not Sure How To Handle This.

Sue the pants off them! That's my initial response. Not sure how to do that if they are based in another country but I would definitely go after them. Blatant theft!

Wow Lil! I would go for it. Grab them by the short-hairs, excuse my french!!!

I don't have a clue what to do, Kathleen!! I agree with you but they seem to be a rather large organization in Cairo!!

Advertise in Oasis magazine
Community Services Association (CSA) publishes a monthly magazine entitled Oasis - a premier magazine for the international expatriate community living and working in Greater Cairo. With a distribution of 5000 FREE copies throughout Cairo, we offer exciting opportunities to advertisers wanting to reach a large segment of the international community.

Cover photos on magazines should definitely be paid for and permission should be asked. That's theft and a magazine should know better. Just curious but did you submit the image to them?

Send them an invoice?

We are not lawyers though.

send them a bill. suing is nice if you have money time, and can prove damages. they are in egypt and even collecting may be very hard to do.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Start with a google dmca take down notice and an invoice for the usage. For smaller publications like this 500 to 1000 dollars for a cover shot is a perfectly acceptable payout to ask

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia....home of the publisher. More money than God.

Good luck in trying to get results. But that's what happens when you use high resolution images on the web.

My guess (I am not a lawyer) is that you can do nothing about this. Once printed and distributed it is really a done deal. If you could sue them (unlikely) you could only get damages for what you are out. What? A few hundred dollars? Hmmnn.

However, your next step should be to get a copy if you can, and advertise the heck out of the fact your work is on the cover of a magazine. Lemonade, so to speak.

Well, I printed the webpage so they can't just take it down and pretend like they didn't do it. I think that's a good idea to get a copy but I also like the idea of sending them a bill, ask for a hard copy and say I will not pursue damages.

Andy, I didn't submit the image to them. I was shocked.

Lil

Have you noticed that in 'other' countries it is more often than not where we find our infringed work? They do not "use' their own countrymen's work because they know that they will never get away with that...Cheeky

Did you put a high res file on the net? Not saying that gives anyone the right to steal but I am curious about whether they are using a crappy low-res file like the ones on here or if there is a high res file floating around out there.

i like how they give you a very small image on their site -- to protect themselves from copyright theft... i do wonder what credit they gave you though. because they seem to represent other artists.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Mike, I can't see my name at the bottom. I actually was able to click on it once and get a large image. I'm not sure how I managed that. As to the high-resolution question, I just used my normal resolution I do here.

Lil

Oasis is an expat magazine printed in English...hard copies were out in April of 2014... 5,000 , so there is no way it can be 'taken down.' They put out a new issue monthly.
The most a take down order could take care of would be the online version, that still shows in their archives.
Too little, too late.
Maybe an apology from them,but honestly, the ship on this one has most likely sailed.

I would,
however, add it to your resume...your work graced that cover, with or without their permission.

In a way it is an honor, and then because the stole it and didn't pay you, that sucks. I pray you find a way to get compensated ! I'm wondering.. how did you do a reverse check on that image? I check a few of mine occasionally with google copyright check.

I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all "proper" way to handle something like this. Having said that, here is what I think I would do. Send them a cover letter explaining that you are a professional artist who licenses work for such use and your normal license fee for a usage of this sort is $XXX. (If you've not licensed your work in the past, do some research on the circulation of their magazine and figure out what a fair price for a license would be, then charge them a little more since it is after the fact and permission was not granted.) Keep your letter professional and to the point, without getting nasty, although I know how tempting it can be to rip into them! Attach an invoice for whatever amount you determine to be fair and reasonable. Then wait for a response.

If you are lucky, they will just pay you. If so, consider them a client and thank them for their business. Who knows, they may license from you in the future.

If you get no response, or a negative one, then you have to consider your next move. Having gone through this before, I will tell you that suing them is probably not an option you want to pursue, considering the amount it would cost vs. the amount you are likely to recover, if any. But, there are other options, if you feel like you want to take it further. You can PM me if you like.

oh.. I noticed it said April 2014 !

there is a pdf version, that makes it easier.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

662 × 900 and it's not a photo but a painting ....achieve a sufficient magnification for printing is relatively easy :(
I suggest you contact them cordially pointing out that the publication of this work has not been authorized by the author and by the time you stay waiting for their explanation.
You have not to mention any compensation or other for the moment ... wait their reaction :|
Give them a chance to put a patch...

i didn't see any mention of a name. i'm thinking they will say they don't make money (though they do), and might offer you a tiny spot in their magazine. i'd ask at least for the largest one.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

I'm wondering if everyone wrote at the address on "Contact Us" saying something like.. what a wonderful cover it is and who the artist is and that we are aware that this image was used without permission.. a little pressure from other artists ? http://www.livinginegypt.org/portal/AboutCSA/ContactUs.aspx

Ok, all good responses! I'm still thinking about this one but I've printed out the pdf version too! Sharon, that's what I did - I used Chrome and checked google for the image. Phyllis (Teeny) told me how to do it after our flamingos were found at a less than savory site. Luckily, I think we took care of that.

Marlene, you may be right. We'll see but obviously, I do like that I can add it to my resume. If I don't get compensated, oh well. I'll survive but I do know I am not thinking about some kind of lawsuit in Cairo!!

I'll let you all know what happened!

Lil

Maybe you didn't give them your image. Perhaps you displayed your image on another website who in turn gave/sold it to Oasis. This happens in the art world as often as banks bundle mortgages and sell them to a second party without your knowledge or permission.

Do they give you credit for the cover image? You should definitely take action! Your name is on the image! You should be compensated!

I just filed a copyright infringement with Pinterest and asked a few people to take my image down. It is actually linked back, in several instances, to a particular person on Tumblr and I have yet to find how to contact that person.. but I will ! I don't mind when my link and the watermark is left, but when they crop out the watermark... do not give the artist credit, etc.. that makes me mad. The picture was actually manipulated and used BEFORE I went on Pinterest.. so someone else.. like around 2011 stole the image and started using it. UGH.

2 times, both in the 80's, both were instances of clients reusing images after the original licenses had long expired. Simply sending a copy of the registration and reminding them of the potential consequences brought about a swift resolution.

These days most of my commercial licenses are for longer terms and scope because most clients don't want to keep track of usage and they're willing to pay a bit more to avoid possible mistakes.

I have plenty of friends who have been awarded 10's of thousands of dollars for infringement cases. Google "Peter B Kaplan" copyright infringement for example.

@Michael King...I just figured out how to d/l the image also. Not at all pleased.

https://www.selling-stock.com/Article/kaplan-vs-sports-illustrated

Just started here and have to say this worries me, I have images on other sites but I do check every now and again to see if I can see them anywhere and so far touch wood I haven't. Good luck I hope you can get it sorted Lil.

Times have changed a bit since the 80's. Microstock pretty much destroyed the value of stock photography, although there are a few people who still make decent money in stock, chances of winning the powerball are better than making a killing on copyright infringement. Unless you have deep pockets and tons of time. Copyright laws as they exist are pretty much there to protect the likes of Disney, Universal, Coke, John Deere, etc. For most of us, federal court is pretty inaccessible and even less desirable.

In any case, talk of registered copyrights, suing for punitive damages, and 10's of thousands of dollars isn't really very relevant to an unauthorized use in a limited circulation magazine put out by a non-profit group, is it?

The value of the license isn't an issue.

Read the link I posted.

Peter was offered $40 for CD usage, he countered with $75 as that was the rate being offered by another publisher for the same usage. S.I. balked and he declined to allow them to use the image. He shortly there after found that the CD had been produced already.

S.I. settled with him for $75,000 rather than go to court.

And this was for an image that he originally shot while on freelance assignment for S.I.

And all this applies to Lil's situation in what way?

As soon as someone opens a web page they have all the images on it placed in their computer temporary folders. We have a 'no right click' in place here on the image pages but most browsers now come with that code ignored as standard. People can screenshot the image on any device.

You have to weigh what is more important. Sales or false safety.

We do not show your full res image anywhere. That is safely locked away on a secure server somewhere

We have some great threads in the discussion area about this. Put STEALING, COPYRIGHT or WATERMARKS in the discussion search

this has NOTHING to do with the opening topic so please get it back to that and, if you have nothing to say to help her, stay out of the thread

Lets be clear for those that don't know this. Any image on any website can be saved on just about any device. Its no secret. Right click does little more then let the user think twice before saving a copy. And that is only on some devices. On others there is a button for that and every PC has a print screen button that you should already know how to use. Nothing larger than 900 pixels is available. The FAA watermark can be added on upload and that may discourage some image downloading. Some say that also discourages sales. We have a thread about it once or twice a month.

Having earned many 10s of thousands on internet sales and having never actually lost a dime, I find the rewards worth the risks. Your results may vary. Anyone concerned about misuse should be well versed in using Google reverse image search. There are Google extensions that make it very fast to do using the smaller images on FAA that are not right click protected.

Abbie posted while I was typing. But I will leave this for now.

Loree

The point is that every time someone posts that their work has been used without permission people will line up to tell them that copyright protection is worthless.

It may not help Lil in her current situation, but the advice will help her and others in the future.

If every artist knew and stood up for their rights, infringements would be uncommon.

my complaint is the size of the image that i can download. I've been selling stock for years, i know the risks and how the websites work.
The security of the stock site i sell from does not allow anywhere near the size of picture i'm able to get from here. It's lazy web design period. You seem to think a 900x622 image is unusable or not valuable, i completely disagree. below is a 900x600 image that i just uploaded to my drive for example:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8OMgyP7DWnTV0wwc1JrM1dBdVk/view?usp=sharing

I asked people to discuss this elsewhere.

Keep to the topic now in this thread.

the 900 pixels images are the ones on your profile page. If you want to use a watermark then do so

I never said copyright protection is worthless. I said, in this situation it's not an issue since suing the infringers is less than feasible. And Lil already stated she's not interested in litigation or threat of litigation.

Lil stated she resolved the issue at hand. The issue at large and how her situation got started to begin with is people stealing images, cropping them or removing the watermark and then using them as they wish. I'm finding the thread very helpful and insightful. Its all relevant.

In the USA all artwork / photography is copyrighted to the person who created it, unless there is some other contract or agreement. There are legions of copyright lawyers. They are in violation of USA copyright laws. If the publication is in Egypt there is nothing you can do about it, they don't recognize USA laws. Feel good that your art is out there and people enjoy it.

How did they get your image so easily from FAA?

I've only been on FAA for a few weeks and I'm not getting a warm fuzzy feeling about it. I'm going to ditch this site and stick with the other one I'm on; at least they have very high quality anti-theft protection. The other thing I like about my other art gallery is they require artists to offer original work or editions they create themselves... this cuts out 99% of the riff raff.

Michael King: "There is a way to directly download usable free jpegs of all of our work on here. I've contacted customer support about it and so has Lil. If you would like to do the same I can email you with the information I've got. To me this places our work at unacceptable risk of theft."

And... I'm going to throw this in the ring...... images in your gallery are NOT rt click protected. Granted they are small, but big enough to crop and use in a blog or in a collage. I just found this !

Just curious - would it bother everyone as much if it wasn't an English language publication?

I mean if it's just because it was used without permission, geez I've done actual work for little magazines (and if I do say so myself ir was, ahem, quite excellent), and got paid in a pub lunch and a couple of beers. That was okay, and later found I hadn't been credited because that would've meant actual pay and paperwork.

But I was hungry (and thirsty), and was happy with the deal thus struck. True I probably wouldn't have done it for absolutely nothing, but I've moved on. I can always re-use my work if the opportunity comes up (hasn't yet though)

Great compliment in my view.

Use the heck out of the publicity and see if they might interview you with more art.

Never get in the American suit and lawyer trip as it won't work in Europe.
Those reactionaries who commented thus are not considering how you might make this event work in your favor since the magazine knows they owe you something.

Vince

Don't give up too easily. Send them a business-like letter identifying yourself as the copyright holder, telling them they used the image without authorization and include an invoice for it's use. I have a friend who wins nice settlements for infringements on a regular basis. Some pay her right away and other's take a bit of convincing. If you are famous and have proof your work sells for a lot you can bill more. Some of the stock sites have calculators that you can use to find an initial price and then you can negotiate down from there.

If you don't want to do it yourself there are online companies that will pursue infringements for a fee, ImageRights comes to mind. They will assess your case for free and if they think there is a good chance they'll take it on for you. It may take months but what do you have to lose?

www.imagerights.com

As promised here is the response I got from "technical support". To say the least I am not pleased. I don't think they even understand what they emailed me or how the internet works. Apparently we should take their word that our files are safely locked away on a server... Somewhere.. I asked for my ticket to be elevated so that I might actually get an answer to our questions.

And to miss Abbie Shores, the following link is one of your own works. This is on faa servers, not my computer. Can you still say this is not a problem and that these images are too small to be of concern to us?

http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/little-grey-has-an-itch-isabella-f-abbie-shores.jpg

Hello

As soon as someone opens a web page they have all the images on it placed in their computer temporary folders. We have a 'no right click' in place here on the image pages but most browsers now come with that code ignored as standard. People can screenshot the image on any device.

You have to weigh what is more important. Sales or false safety.

We do not show your full res image anywhere. That is safely locked away on a secure server somewhere

We have some great threads in the discussion area about this. Put STEALING, COPYRIGHT or WATERMARKS in the discussion search

I hope that helps

Abbie Shores
Technical Support

@michael - i'm not sure what your trying to prove. yes, people can get your 900px image. you can't sell without an example. if your don't like your work being taken then delete everything from the web. nothing is ever a 100% safe. but if there was a hack, they would not sift through a ton of images, they would go after credit card stuff. i'm not sure what kind of answer you were expecting to get exactly. nothing is a 100% fool proof.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

I sent that and said the same here.

Your full image is not here. Your preview low res images are

We don't have the credit card stuff stored here, nor the tax stuff

If anyone hacked us they would be sorely upset

Wow. Ok this took off. I have to agree with Sharon here that all of the thoughts here have been relevant. Even if some were slightly off topic, they relate in some way and have contributed. Plus everyone has been very helpful in presenting different views which lead back to the topic. Lynn, I sent them a nice letter doing as you suggested. Vincent, I agree with you 100%. I consider it a great compliment and it is a nice magazine which I'm proud to have the cover. Mark, I don't care if it is in english or swahili as long as it is classy. Stephen, FAA is a wonderful site and it has been very good to me. I love this site and would never leave. I believe there is nowhere better to establish yourself
!. Nothing is perfect but, hands down, it's the best site I know.

LI!

I actually got a response from the magazine to my email, as a fellow artist on Lil T.'s behalf. The response that I got said that a response had been made to Lil.

I hope that their response DID in fact happen, and I hope that it was agreeable.

Robert

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2556342

Thank you to everyone who helped