Stolen pictures - your opinion?

[ArHo]

Interesting: Have you ever had a picture "stolen" from you?

Happened to me - this picture is "mine", basically, I took it and recently sold the original card via Ebay.

I thought it was enough to add something as a copy protection but was wrong. This special seller took my picture (I can prove that it is mine...), cut away most of iit including my copy protection and reproduced it as a postcard. The b*****d.

Of course I told ebay "this is wrong" but - nothing happened, as usual.

Has anyone of you had similar experiences - I would love to hear them!

Cheers

ArHo

 

P.S.: Of course I add this "reproduction" for documentary reasons only - please note that this seller produces ww1 and ww2 repros on paper with these typical ragged sides and usually puts (how ironic) some small stuff on it as "copy protection" himself...

[Great Dane]

And Simius, correct me if I'm wrong...

 

Most people think that if they buy an old photo on ebay, they also own the photos the seller uploaded to ebay to show and sell the old photo, but they don't. 

Those new photos still belong to the seller (or maybe to ebay... I haven't studied the fine print to see if the copyright is transferred to ebay in this case...).

[Great Dane]

But it doesn't change the fact, that the new owner does not own those ebay photos either?

 

Even if the seller did have the right to publish photos of the object, the copyright of those photos is not automatically transferred to the new owner.

 

As an example (like your bikini example):

If I took a photo of medal to sell it on ebay, the new owner of that medal does not own the right to that photo.

 

To the OP:

Yes, I have published my own photos (of medals), that were 'reused' by someone else. 

Since it was done without bad intentions (only for illustrations), I didn't follow up on it...

Edited June 24, 2021 by Great Dane

[Deruelle]

Hi

Very interesting and informative subject. Thank you for the enlightenment.

 

Christophe

[Valter]

Very detailed and accurate presentation by Simius.

 

I'd only like to add some corrections about European laws:

 

- by EU law, copyright expires not after 90 years, but 70 years after the author's death.

 

- there are also a few exceptions (allowances) for reproduction, including:

 

reproductions by public libraries, educational institutions or archives for non-commercial use;

use for illustration for teaching or scientific research, to the extent justified by the non-commercial purpose; (this would cover militaria and other research forums, IMHO)

quotations for the purposes of criticism or review; (mostly for works of literature)

use for the advertisement of the public exhibition or sale of art; (that would apply to ebay-sale pictures)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_European_Union

 

And there's important thing that Simius already stressed (bikini case): copyright protects only works of art, with some artistic/creativity/uniquenss added value. That means, a shopping list is no work of art and hence not protected, but a poem, or aphorism, is. Photography must have some artistic value (in broad sense) to be protected by CR; studio portraits fulfill these requirements, but simple document face photo probably not. The same goes for photos of medals etc.: if you just make a picture for illustarive purposes, it has no artisitc value and hence no CR. I'm not sure about casual soldier's photos made in barracs or on the front (I didn't dig into case-law), but i think they should be CR protected, as thy have at least documentary value, like news photos, which are also protected.

 

One more thing to carry in mind with photos of personalities is personal's rights (as part of human rights) - there's a "right to one's own image", which protects ordinary people from being photographed and published elsewhere. There are several exceptions to this rule, i.e. public figures or persons photographed incidentally in public places (i.e. if you take a pic of historical building, or public rally, and there are random perosns in the photo), and I also believe if someone publicly posted a photo of deceised relative for sale or otherwise, he/she tacitly relinquished claims for such rights.

[paul wood]

One thing that worries me is quite often unscrupulous people of dubious parentage steal photos from auction catalogues and dealers lists of coins and medals and then put them on e-bay claiming to own them. Obviously when the successful bidder pays for his purchase its the last he sees of his money. I noticed a few Russian badges/jetons which had appeared in a certain London auction for sale.

P

 

 

[ArHo]

Hallo to all and thank you all for your input - this has become far more than I expected, a most interesting discussion!

I will not go in depth on the several interesting aspects here but just want to clarify in short my initial idea when I opened this thread: Of course I do know that the question who "owns" an antique picture often is not easy to answer and I consider myself as the curator of my collection, less the "owner". And: I gladly give away copies of the images I have in stock for free for scientific purposes (for projects I have myself profited from other's collections this way). But I was just astonished that someone would simply take the image I had made, reproduce it in bad quality and sell it. That's all because I never expected something like that to happen. So I just wanted to ask if anyone else here had similar experiences. Well, enough of thatm I personally will use more "copy protection" materials in the future and that's that, I guess :-) 

All the best!

[Claudius]

On 24/06/2021 at 12:44, ArHo said:

Interesting: Have you ever had a picture "stolen" from you?

Happened to me - this picture is "mine", basically, I took it and recently sold the original card via Ebay.

I thought it was enough to add something as a copy protection but was wrong. This special seller took my picture (I can prove that it is mine...), cut away most of iit including my copy protection and reproduced it as a postcard. The b*****d.

 

P.S.: Of course I add this "reproduction" for documentary reasons only - please note that this seller produces ww1 and ww2 repros on paper with these typical ragged sides and usually puts (how ironic) some small stuff on it as "copy protection" himself...

 

This isn't much of solution, but it might get the "Special Seller" attention.  For every photo of yours that he stole and is offering for sale on eBay, you post the exact same photo for sale.  Even copy/paste the special seller's language for your description.  The reason?  Most buyers on eBay are searching ALL items in their category.  They are going to find the duplicate posting and wonder what is going on?  Who has the real photo (if either seller)?  This will throw the bogus photos into disrepute and should dampen the sales price.  Second, the Special Seller may contact you and ask why you are stealing his description and photo for your listing.  He may even want to report you to eBay police.  At this point the irony is complete.  Stealing from thieves is not theft.

 

You mentioned in your latest post that you use more copy protection materials in the future and sadly i think this is your most practical and logical next step.  

[Valter]

Going into legal matter discussion, I can add (law is my profession), referring to Pauls and initial ArHo's question that fraudulently presenting thing A as being something else (thing B) is a crime, a fraud. I'm not sure what is the definition of fraud in other legal sistems, but according to Slovenian law, it could roughly translate as:

 

Who intentionally wrongfully presents facts with an aim to deceive other person and get himself an illegal material gain, on the expense of other person's material assets, is punishable with up to 3 years in prison.

 

So, presenting a forged (yesterday made) photo as 100 years old photo (which has substantially higher material value than modern copy), with intention to get the money one should get for 100 y.o. photo, and not just money for new photo, is a crime. Claiming to having for sale some medal or coin, that "seller" actually doesn't own and can't transfer to the buyer after the closed transaction, is even more obviuos fraud. The problem is, such international fraudulent deals are almost impossible to prosecute, as police officers of all countries have no time for such relatively small crimes.

 

Within EU, some protection can be offered by civil law, with european small claims procedure, which can be filed in plaintiffs (buyers) home country. If a seller is a business and a buyer a costumer, a costumer can also file a lawsuit (regardless of the value of the claim) in his/her home country, with use of his own law (EU regulations "Brussels I" and "Rome I"), even if a defendant (business) is from another member state.

[Graf]

On 26/06/2021 at 18:47, paul wood said:

One thing that worries me is quite often unscrupulous people of dubious parentage steal photos from auction catalogues and dealers lists of coins and medals and then put them on e-bay claiming to own them. Obviously when the successful bidder pays for his purchase its the last he sees of his money. I noticed a few Russian badges/jetons which had appeared in a certain London auction for sale.

P

It is a very interesting topic!!!

 

I have seen even worse situations when an item is on sale on one eBay site

a fake seller copies the photos and the text of the Auction and lists them on different eBay site

Usually the claim to be away and the item will be sent later

I have alarmed eBay, although, I was not the potential buyer, on several occasions No Response 

Frauds happen every day
 

 

 

[Ulsterman]

Simeus is totally correct. 
I collect old photos and have since 1969. 

I always reduce the size of the photo when putting it on line.

As Simeus notes, a reworked republican of an owned work is essentially a copyrightable piece of work. People committing fraud by rerepublication thereafter are stealing. 

I reckon I have had about two dozen photos taken and reused- notably from the old WAF forum. One of a China Marine in a corduroy jacket seems especially popular. 

On eBay I once bought an original Freikorps post card of a chap with a dog (complete with mailed message on back to a girl in Darmstadt). Bar-e or Bartko Rehrer (seller) has subsequently resold a reverse blank, cropped version of this image at least 5 times since. The last time was for well over $100. I complained and eBay ignored me.

 

[Chris Boonzaier]

Lets not forget, most of the photos we have are not unique.... I paid top price for the Leib regt Photo.... and a week later the seller had another, went for quite a bit cheaper, then some time later another!!! I mailed and asked what the story was... he said he had the whole group for the guy (not for sale and no photos) and there were a batch of the same photo in the group. 

 

So when we pay top dollar for a photo... be prepared to see it for sale some time later ? ... of course, if it has the same rips or folds... the fish stinks!!

[BlackcowboyBS]

yeah this really sucks! I have bought a nice photo and some weeks later found the exact same but with better quality, so there is much fraud even here.