[Mike Packwood]

I had a call the other day from a copyright solicitor. He told me that he had found 4 examples where pictures from my website were being used without permission on other peoples websites. He sent me a screen shot of one website page (with its address and phone number blacked out) and sure enough, there was one of my photos of a job I did last year...and very nice it looked too. The solicitor told me that if I wished to employ them I could probably get around £700 for each photo used without my permission. Naturally I thought this was a scam and told him Id think about it.

So I had a bit of a rootle around on google and eventually found the company responsible, had a look at their website and there's my pic in all its glory being used to demonstarte how wonderful they are. I rang the company. The bloke was in his van, so conversation was a bit difficult. I offered him £1million if he could tell me where the house was and didn't it make him look like a cowboy, not being able to post pics of his own jobs and would he like to take it down, so that I didn't have to set the solicitors on him. Anyway, he promised to remove it and as we speak his website is down so I guess hes taking the picture off it.

So now I'm going to spend an hour or two watermarking all of my web pics to prevent it happening again

[Smurf]

Copyright solicitor now that's a new one on me.
How many millions of websites are live on the tinternet and he just happend to pic yours. lol
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/copyright/the-internet-filesharing-and-copyright/speculative-invoicing-and-pay-up-or-else-schemes-for-copyright-infringement/

[Mike Packwood]

Like Ambulance chasing and PPi solicitors I guess! Trawling the web all day looking for people who use words and pictures that they shouldn't be. And how did he know that the other bloke had nicked the picture and not me?

[Smurf]

I would be very interested to see a copy of the email that was sent to you including any attachments/screen shots.
It also would not suprise me at all if you get a bill for the cost of that so say copyright solicitor for sending you that email. lol

[Mike Halliday]

I always though once anything was published on the internet it became part of the public domain so copyright was not possible, I would  guess I'm  the most plagiarised carpet cleaner in the world!! I've lost count of how many times I've seen my photos and videos on other peoples website

[David Deer]

I always though once anything was published on the internet it became part of the public domain so copyright was not possible

In general, when the shutter is released, the photographer who pressed the button owns the copyright.
Copyright is a form of legal protection that is automatically assigned to content creators at the moment of creation. In other words, the moment you take a photograph, you own the copyright to it. You don’t have to register it with a special organisation, you don’t have to fill in a form or add a legal notice to the image. The rights to use, amend or sell that image are yours and yours alone.
You are also allowed to give away or sell those rights, if you wish - and that’s how many professional photographers make money; by selling rights to their work. That also means that no one else is allowed to use your work without your permission.
Many people assume that if content is online that it is "public domain" and that it's not copyrighted. That’s just a myth.
Content that’s published online is still protected by copyright law. Even if a photo has been published on a social network, like Twitter, the original rights-holder retains copyright. Any third party who wants to republish that image should contact the original rights-holder for permission.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), enacted in 1998, implemented treaties signed at the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Geneva conference. It addresses many issues, one of which affects photographers directly. The DMCA states that while an Internet Service Provider (ISP) is not liable for transmitting information that may infringe a copyright, the ISP must remove materials from users’ websites that appear to constitute copyright infringement.

[Plankton]

I've never used anything but my own photos although my new website was made by someone who has used other photos.  Not really keen on it either.

[Mike Halliday]

Alan Is this your site?

http://burnbraecleaning.co.uk/

I think it's nice clean site, for the cost Mark offers a  very good service  he offers stock photos  to ge the site up and running but I'm sure as you get your own photos he will change them. I don't see a problem using stock photos as they are a representation of the services you offer or results you can achieve.

People always say take your own photos but it's not as easy as it sounds, you need high quality photos, just whipping out your mobile phone is not good enough

[M Roberts]

We have had photos taken from our main site and trade sites over the years. Years ago a guy on here took a conservatory photo and used it as his own, after I pointed it out he removed it, used to check the net haven't checked for ages. We now watermark all photos. 
Can't see a big issue using stock photos as the 'banner' on pages but not in the gallery, surely this should show your own 'work'?

[Plankton]

Mike, yes that's the site. I've got heaps of photos and videos but as you've said quick pictures from a mobile phone just isn't great. I had thought about getting a photographer to take some but if it had my ugly mug in it  I'd be wasting money.
For the price it's very good value so thanks for recommending him in October.

[Aqua Power Solutions]

Alan,  maybe your web designer  could have the common decency to ask me first before taking other people's work as if it is your own , for your website.  Nothing personal but a matter of principal
Ed

[chris scott]

I have loads of photo's of my own work if you need some.

[M Roberts]

I have loads of photo's of my own work if you need some.

It might be worth using them on your own website   

[chris scott]

Cheeky...It's all my own work. Unless  Indian web designer runs short and helps himself

[M Roberts]

Cheeky...It's all my own work. Unless  Indian web designer runs short and helps himself

Safe and Clean pic .. quality 

[Plankton]

Alan,  maybe your web designer  could have the common decency to ask me first before taking other people's work as if it is your own , for your website.  Nothing personal but a matter of principal
Ed

That's for somebody else to take up with them!

[Plankton]

I have loads of photo's of my own work if you need some.

I'll get round to looking through my old photos and narrow them down. Hopefully I've taken some decent ones or I may have to (borrow) some.

[JandS]

What's wrong with mobile phone pictures...mine are excellent quality.

[James Gunn]

Hi Mike et al,

Three things I'd add to David Deer's post, which is spot on legally.
 
(1)    Copyright infringement can be really expensive.  For example, Getty Images claim $20,000 PER IMAGE and are likely to win such damages in an American court.   At that rate, the solicitor was making more than you, Mike !
(2)    Most stock image sites (like Getty)  use reverse image search engines which crawl the World Wide Web to detect their own images and detect copyright infringement.  They're pretty good at finding images like the ones on their site even if it's been photoshopped.    There's a publicly available  site called https://www.tineye.com/, which will check the web for any image you upload.
(3)  If your website designer is providing images for your site, make sure he/she  gets them legally,  and to show him/her you mean it, insist that he/she indemnifies you for copyright infringement for those  images.

The open source movement has invented a licence known as Creative Commons which allows the use of copyright material under certain conditions, usually this means crediting the copyright owner.  You'll find lots of these on sites like Flickr.com.  Crediting copyright owners can be a pain if you use more than half a dozen images, so you can also use other sites which are copyright free such as pixabay.com.  Google Images search engine allows you to search for images without copyright restrictions, but the copyright still needs checking! 

Finally all US government pictures are public domain, so good images are widely available for many subjects eg space , but not carpet cleaning 

HTH
James