Someone is linking Facebook photos without permission

[beelde]

A friend of mine is an accomplished photographer. She has a Facebook business page. A third person is linking my friends photos on the thrid persons business page to promote that third persons business. The third person is disclosing the origin of the photos but still my friend does not want to see her work on that 3rd persons business page. What are the options to prevent that ?

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[TCampbell]

The easiest way is to contact that third person and ask them to stop. Are the images tagged with EXIF data which includes a copyright statement?

There a some websites which naturally block the linking problem. They will not allow an image to be returned to a HTTP GET query unless the HTTP_REFERRER shows the person was viewing a page in the same domain (no cross-domain linking would work). But that requi modification to the hosting web server or hosting the images based on server side code.

[adriannemolin]

That's kinda awful thing to do, linking photos from a social networking site that is not really yours. This thing should be stop at once, kinda scary to think that there are people out there posting pictures of yours without your permission.

[Cameron]

That's kinda awful thing to do, linking photos from a social networking site that is not really yours. This thing should be stop at once, kinda scary to think that there are people out there posting pictures of yours without your permission.

That is actually a very common practice. Some photographers do Internet searches with specialized software for their images and send invoices to anyone who is using their images illegally for 3X what they would normally charge with payment within 30 days. If not they institute copyright infringement chargers in the US. One colleague had his sports postings published in a British sports magazine. He successfully sued for close to a 1/4 million.

Cameron

[bert]

It is a case of rampant copyright breach

Your friend, though, is protected by international civil law

If the 3rd person causing the upset doesn't stop it upon request, then a quick complaint to the 3rd person's ISP should result in a reasonably swift removal of the offending page(s)

Your friend can also litigate, but that involves lawyers

[Cameron]

It is a case of rampant copyright breach

Your friend, though, is protected by international civil law

If the 3rd person causing the upset doesn't stop it upon request, then a quick complaint to the 3rd person's ISP should result in a reasonably swift removal of the offending page(s)

Your friend can also litigate, but that involves lawyers

No such thing as international civil law. Copyright varies a little from country to country and in a few countries it barely exists. Current US law is that the ISP is not responsible for any copyright violation on any website it hosts, so a complaint to the 3rd person ISP that use to result in a swift removal, now, may no longer apply.

Nothing wrong with lawyers by the way, if you have a good one. Mine was worth the six figure bill that I paid him.

Cameron

[Michael79]

They can try to edit their privacy settings, and make sure "friends of those tagged" box is unchecked, and double check if she is sharing with friends only and not public.

[costisefu]

Just send an email to facebook. They will sure help you, even block his account if needed.

[TCampbell]

Current US law is that the ISP is not responsible for any copyright violation on any website it hosts, so a complaint to the 3rd person ISP that use to result in a swift removal, now, may no longer apply.

I am not a lawyer, but as far as I know, the DMCA is still intact. ISPs are only "conditionally" not responsible, but this is based on the section of the DMCA they call the "safe harbor" clause. My understanding is that it's true they cannot be held liable, but they are only immune as long as they follow the rules of the safe harbor clause.

In the rules of that clause, they have to respond to take-down notices. If they don't, then they lose the protection of the safe harbor.

In theory, I could harm your business by notifying your ISP that all of your photos are really mine and that they have to take down your photography site. The ISP would actually have to comply. But as the legit owner, you can protest and tell them to put it back up... and they're supposed to do that. At this point they are now hosting content that someone else claims is infringing their copyright but since the ISP responded to the initial take-down notice they are now fully protected and no longer have to respond to any further take-down notices regarding that same page. The person claiming infringement now has to take the page owner to court directly and they have to leave the ISP out of it.