I got an email from a stranger a few days ago telling me one of my photos posted online might have been stolen and being sold. It was posted on another photo site I belong to and sure enough it was on a fine art America site for sale by jfantasma. I did a reverse search using google right click on image and found several more stolen from other members of that web site of which jfantasma was a member. I also found one stole from a flickr member and another online photographer. I contacted the others and they found their stolen images on his site and also on his FB page. he had one of mine on his FB page also. I filled out a DMCA form and submitted it to Fine art America and my photo was removed. of course all hell broke loose and the other victims searched and found even more stolen photos. this guy jfantasma had numerous web sites with stolen pics and a few FB pages as well. he was even a featured photographer on others sites along with his bio claiming to be a disabled vet and donating some of his profits to Wounded Warriors. of course this is all BS. when confronted he said he had no receipts to prove his donations which is more bull as most charities have to give you a receipt. it is the law. Do yourselves a favor and check to see if you have anything stolen. The most I could do was fill out the DMCA form and have my images removed. unless you register them with the copywrite office you cannot sue here is his response when confronted by me on FB. he also uses the same lame excuse to other members of the photo forum I belong to. stealing photos and claiming to be a wounded vet. what a turd here is his BS response I can certainly understand the concern. I did have about 11-12 images in my gallery that were found on drop box free to use. I HAVE been trying to find links to the source in which ingot them from to justify the situation. I assure you I mean no disrespect to yourself or others. I am a wounded warrior I served ten years as a combat sniper. I do not believe in stolen valor. I received injuries in 2007. I focused on art and photography as a healing tool for me. I truly appoligize to you or anyone else. I removed all stock images and I will no longer use any type of them whatsoever. I actually even disabled my facebook page until I can sort all of this out and only have my very own work posted. there may be some images floating around that I am working on finding and removing so please allow me a few days to sort this mess out. The good thing is, the only sales I made were my own images. I truly understand you all being upset but I assure you I am not the source of your stolen images. I will keep this message as I am seeking out my sources for them and I will keep you posted if that is ok. I HAVE deleted all acounts. I am a photographer and I am also an artist. I spend most of my days promoting other artists throughout the world. Once again I really do apologize from the bottom of my heart. I rarely visit this site at all. I am still searching for these images so I can give you all the source. Please accept my sincere apologies. Jim SGT, U.S. Army Retired a lot of the photos were stolen from that forum and not a 3rd party. he has since been banned from that site and his FB pages are gone as is 99% of his web pages I am going to search now and then for this scumbag as I am sure he will continue his thievery as do most of his kind
That sucks Howie. You can sue without filing a copyright but you are limited to actual damages, which would be minimal.
This is where technology really stinks-sorry this has happened to you- glad you found out about it- and are fighting the good fight.
he only had one of mine for sale and I think I found out about it before he sold any. outing him sure was fun I must say. he kept lying and lying and finally everyone realized it was all horse pucky. I knew right away. he even told one of the people from fine art America he was getting the pics from drop box ; LOL. I believe that is for sharing files. those morons were buying his BS he had thousands of photos and drawings on his sites
Sorry that happened to you. I'd also suggest contacting that charity and possibly the Army to see if impersonating a retired soldier breaks any laws. Even if not I'm sure they'd want to know this guy is using them as part of his scams. Unless he gets in serious trouble he'll just keep,ripping other people off. Who knows what other schemes he's using to get money ostensibly for,that charity. Erich
The stolen valor act was deemed unconstitutional. ; It sucks, but the First Amendment gives a lot of leeway for people to lie about their background.
That may be true, but claiming part of the money goes to the charity when it isn't is certainly fraud, and I'm sure they'd want to know about it. Erich
You know I get the occasional complaints or comments on message boards because my photos are posted too small - I don't exceed 1024x on the longest side. ; But this is PRECISELY the reason I stick to smaller posted images online, even in my gallery...there's really not much a person can do to profit from a 1024x photo...they can post it on a site, but it doesn't meet stock standards, it doesn't meet publication standards, and it wouldn't print very nice for anything bigger than wallet size, so it protects me. ; And yes, I've had photos stolen in the past which precipitated my methods. ; It hasn't seemed to have hurt my ability to sell or publish shots, as I just get a request from the procurement office or periodical for a larger copy, and I send it to them by e-mail or flash drive. Sorry it happened to you Howie. ; Glad you found out quickly though.
that is my plan now Justin. nothing over 1000xwhatever. the way I found out was amazing really. I emailed a Philly news station a pic I had of a snowy owl for them to use in a story they were running about them and when I sent it I accidently used my email as my name for credit. that ended up working to my advantage as a woman I don't know saw the same pic on the thiefs page and she asked some questions about it and the answers she got made her suspicious so she did the google image search and it came back a hit to the pic on the Philly news web site and my email was under the pic for credit so she emailed me and told me about it. at first I thought he stole it from flickr but after doing some google searches of what he had on his site they mostly came back to another forum I post in that he also belonged to and then the doo doo hit the fan
BTW I found through tumblr a link to a photo attorney. Apparently there is a provision of the DMCA that states that removal of a copyright notice allows for damages starting at 2500 per violation and attorney's fees paid by the violator. So there may be some benefit to continue watermarking images. You don't have to register your images for this law to take effect.
