I just found out that a member of a Facebook urban exploration group with thousands of viewers took several photos from my Flickr and posted them without permission. Additionally, he somehow dug up the specific information on the locations and added it to the post.

That information includes the real name of the location, it's exact position, and the owner's name. I don't know how he found that information since I omitted anything that could be used to find the locations, including what state they're in, but somehow he figured it out. I also made sure to disable GPS metadata on my Flickr, so that couldn't be it either.

I've already asked him to take them down.

Any suggestions on how to handle this from those of you who've dealt with this kind of situation before?

EDIT: The person responsible for posting them has agreed to take them down, and after talking to him a bit, it sounds like he simply was an ethusiastic rookie who didn't know any better. I erronously assumed that he knew and didn't care, which was not the case. He's apologized and removed the photos without further issue.

Glad he was so understanding, but it's a topic I'm interested in hearing more opinions on. I believe several users here have dealt with this situation before.

post the link to the group? maybe he ripped off other UER members also?

Posted by RescueMe1060 post the link to the group? maybe he ripped off other UER members also?

I don't think he did, he was new member and I'm fairly certain it 2s his first post. I don't want to doxx somebody for a sinple mistake, not when he's apologized and tried to fix it.

I had a kid ask me once if he could use my photo in a documentary he was making. I told him no, since we had prior issues, and he went and did it anyway. Pissed me right off. And I never care when people use my photos for stuff.

I discovered a year or two there was a new YouTube channel that would poach images of abandonments from various places online and share them in videos. I reported one that had my images of an abandoned amusement park, and the guy tried to challenge me over it, claiming he got them over another site that posted them without my permission. Ultimately I think I told him they were my pictures and it displeased me he was sharing them, and he stopped seeing the motivation to keep it going. I don't think the channel still exists.

Photo theft is an unavoidable fact of life, you can mitigate it to some extent with watermarks & actively enforcing your digital rights. You can copyright your images, frequently do reverse image searches and monitor popular image or video sharing sites, social networks, forums, etc., and issuing C&Ds and DMCA takedown notices.

I typically release my images under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike and only enforce at all if the violation is particularly egregious. If you aren't familiar with the Creative Commons licensing structure you should check it out: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

As far as releasing additional information about the location you also may want to scrub your EXIF data before uploading. Norton Antivirus https://us.norton....s-from-photos.html has a good run down and there are some tools that will remove it all in batches.

I've had work stolen by everyone from random Instashammers/Facebook groups to broadcast TV stations and the City of Gary (the latter continues to be used after I gave them a version watermarked with my logo). Call 'em out at any chance, and send 'em a bill if you're business savvy and they're worth pursuing. Most comply with removal or credit requests, but I'm currently dealing with one stubborn website owner that may warrant a DMCA form submitted to his ISP.

I'm seeing this a lot in Facebook groups I follow. I call the people out when possible, though as I'm not the owner in the cases I have seen so far, the bark has no bite. So far it has just opened me up to retaliation. Int he end it's simply theft, though sometimes the person is just ignorant of the rules. Glad you had some resolution.

Oh man, I remember in the old days (maybe pre-2006) when stealing photos meant hotlinking someone else's photos on your site. It meant the photo owner would possibly be able to detect it, and then they could modify the image at its source, displaying whatever they wanted the thieves to be showing.

Let them eat low res images... and maybe a copyright suit latter.

https://www.conten...nalties-are-scary/