Jason Lanier recently posted a video on what photographers should do when companies steal and use their images without permission from them of their clients. How does he know how to handle this? Because it happened to him, and he fears it’s going to be happening to more and more photographers in the coming future.
Image Theft in the World of Facebook Advertising
The company Jason is referring to in the video is called Rory Lights. Back in 2017, Jason did a shoot for the Rotolight AEOS. Rory Lights, unwisely thinking enough time had passed, decided it would be a good idea to take the photos Jason took for Rotolight and use them for their own sponsored Instagram ads. They even went as far as to use a shot of Jason in front of the model he was shooting, and make it look like he was using Rory Lights in the shoot.
Naturally, this didn’t sit well with Jason.
The Rory Lights ads attracted thousands of views, but Jason received no credit for his image, no compensation, and the images shouldn’t have even been used in the first place. And get this, one of the shots Rory Lights used was actually from a photo session that landed Jason on the cover of British Photography Magazine.
All in all, photo theft is a pretty big deal—always has been. And when the photos in question are used to actually bring in income to the thieves, it adds on another level of disrespect to the photographer and the photographer’s clients.
In the video above, Jason tells photographers what he is doing about this, and what they should do if something like this ever happens to them.
Has image theft ever happened to you? Let us know how you handled it in the comments below!
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To ENFORCE your copyrights against infringers, they very much need to be timely registered with the US Copyright Office!
I searched the US Copyright Office’s on-line Public Catalog database, but didn’t see any photographs registered under Jason Lanier’s name. Please tell me if I’m mistaken.
The best plan is to affix a watermark logo to all posted images AND to *TIMELY* register them with the US Copyright Office. If a party *knowingly* removes, changes, or covers up a watermark, metadata, licensing information, and other “Copyright Management Information” (*CMI* per the DMCA–17 USC 17 §§ 1202 -1203) to hide their copyright
infringements (or to induce other to infringe your photographs), infringers can be liable from $2,500 to $25,000 in statutory money damages + your attorney fees + your legal costs (at the court’s discretion). The good news here is that a timely registered copyright is NOT required to pursue CMI violators (however, get a copyright attorney litigator to help you!).
See the following two attorney links:
https://www.photoattorney.com/7-reasons-add-watermark-photos/ and
https://www.photoattorney.com/options-recovering-infringement-damages/
A few years back, a billion dollar corporate publisher reused my stock images without an updated license. Having my images timely registered, I was able to push this copyright infringer to settle out of court, where I received a *LARGE* settlement.
Watch the first 20-seconds of this Washington, DC copyright trial attorney comments to understand why timely registering your photo copyright claims are critical: https://youtu.be/cBOKkrleY3Y
If you choose *NOT* to timely register your photo copyrights with the US Copyright Office, at the very least affix them with robust CMI to reserve some of your legal options against copyright infringers.