But in the past few months, while exploring possible reasons for a slowing internet/broadband capacity, I discovered that images from Ed & Reub had been hotlinked to free wallpaper sites such as Palmlix.com, The owner, Muhammad Farhan, is impossible to contact, so there is no way to ask him to pull down the image. Palmlix is chock-full of images lifted from professional photographers, many of them clearly bearing watermarks and copyrights, so his claim that they are "public domain," is false.
walldoze.com (Domain info here, b/c you won't find it there)
wallpowper.com (Domain info)
muzic-world.net (Info)
faqih.net (Info)
Making actual contact with any responsible parties for the above sites is extremely frustrating.
I used to have a Creative Commons license in the sidebar, which allowed use of images if they were attributed to me, were not used to make money, and were not altered in any way. Palmlix apparently interprets this broadly, by use of hotlinking as a means of attribution & ads as a means of raising money while offering the picture for free.
UPDATE: Mia McPherson, author of the above link, and owner of On the Wing Photography, has just written a follow-up piece which divulges Muhammad Farhan's second thieving site A-GC.com. She gives an email address for the site administrator, if you are interested.
On a happier note, isn't this cool dino and jungle animal wallpaper?
Real wallpaper, from a paint store!
I've never heard of such, but given that he displays images that are clearly copyrighted, he doesn't sound like the kind of guy who takes the time to read sidebar legal notices. Maybe he's in some country where he feels lawsuit proof.
ReplyDeleteYeah, who knows where he is or how he could possibly be made to pay consequences. Truth is, it is really hard to protect images from being used. Sites like Pinterest add fuel to the fire by re-pinning images & the origin is quickly lost.
DeleteKerry, I have traced the owner of Palmlix.com to Indonesia but I am still unable to get my images taken down because he hides his contact information or doesn't respond and because he uses a cloud service that makes it harder to track down the original hosting provider. I have been given the wrong one or they are not responding to the DMCA Takedown Notifications I have sent. Sites like his are really despicable.
DeleteWith my Wordpress blog I was able to install a plugin that blocks the entire country of Indonesia, they just get a message saying I don't allow viewers from their country. I don't know if your blogging platform has something like that plugin.
Hi Mia! Thanks for this input. I would be SO angry if I were you. It's so blatantly wrong for these wallpaper sites to act as they do.
DeleteUnfortunately for me, I don't see such a plug-in with Blogger. I have considered moving to Wordpress, which also provides a way to prevent hotlinks. But moving is a process that I'm not sure I'm up to.
Kerry, after I commented I went to Palmlix.com and looked for my images using Google Image search, each of the images of mine that I knew the scumbag had on that site are now gone.
DeleteI was and am still extremely angry with what happened because other sleazy w a l l p a p e r sites stole my images from that site and placed them on theirs, I know that because they had the same file name that Muhammad Farhan had used.
I think that INTERNIC and organizations that provide information for a "Whois" should be required to show the original hosting provider when rotten people use cloud services like CloudFlare.com to hide the hosting provider.
I do like the WordPress blogging platform because there are plugins that can help protect images, that was until Google started by passing our protections to hotlink the full rez images in their Google Search which has only made it easier for people to steal our images. That is a whole other story.
omg. There are more layers here than I imagined. Wow. Gotta think about this.
Delete(clean as a whistle!) :)
ReplyDeletei'm going to go check out his site to see what you mean. i'm sure all sorts of stuff like this goes on!
Thanks Theresa, for the heads-up about malware associated with a link in my side bar!!!! No worries, folks, it's gone.
ReplyDeleteThe photographer in the article I mentioned is HOPPING MAD about Palmlix.
I see a paint color called "Pure Laughter" That would have to be the one for me, just for the smiles I'd get from the name.
ReplyDeleteYou have sharp eyes. Great name, isn't it? I settled on a deep yellow orange named Au Gratin, and an interesting yellow called Lemon Zest. I wonder whose job it is to come up with paint names.
DeleteScene Stealer Yellow - I've had some students who would go for that one!
ReplyDeleteHa!! Bet you remember their names too.
DeleteScene Stealer is a pretty great name for a vivid yellow.
We have Dish Satellite as our internet provider. If we exceed the allowed broadband usage they will drop our speed to dial up speed. They say this is regulated by FTC and it really sucks. We cannot have cable because we live in the country more than 3 miles out of town. We live 3 1/2 miles:(
ReplyDeleteI do not like your report on the picture thief. It looks like you could block him some way.
I didn't know that about dropping to dial up speed. Huh. That's terrible. How are you supposed to stream movies? It's bad when a company has a monopoly on being an area's internet provider. I re-installed cable now, & everything is working fine.
DeleteThere's a way to prevent right-clicking on images, but I'm not sure how to do it, or if I'd have to do it for each pic. Word Press has a way of stopping hotlinking, but I see no way on Blogger. There is also some way of preventing a picture from being picked up & moved from a website, but I need to research that. A pain for sure.
This stuff just goes over my head. Sigh. Thanks for the heads up. I guess I need to look into it more. Not a fun thing to be on the computer for. Boo.
ReplyDeleteGail, check the site that Mia mentions below. And also, just Google your name into Google images. If you have Analytics you can also spot the wallpaper thieves. Blech.
DeletePhotos that were stolen from Mia were stunning wildlife images. You had better have a look. Sorry:(
DeleteI see that Muhammad Farhan also owns a another site, which does have some of my images displayed at http://www.a-gc.com. You may need to look there for your images as well.
ReplyDeleteShit. It's like *&%@! whack-a-mole.
DeleteYes, it is. I'm going to do another post on the jerk soon.
DeleteI clicked on some of his ads, one was provided by aol advertising and I reported to them about the stolen images and advised them to shut down their ads because he was making money on my images being displayed, just went to the site and the area where the ads were is now black.
Reduce the advertising revenue and maybe he will go find a real job.
Love this idea. Good for you.
DeleteKerry, there will be another post about this on my blog tomorrow morning at 3:55 am eastern time.
DeleteThank you so much for linking to my post because without it I may not have discovered the other site where Muhammad Farhan is using my images illegally for quite some time.
I would say "my pleasure" but that doesn't seem quite right. This all sucks. I will add an update to this post tomorrow with another link to you.
Deletedude had any brains at all, he would've removed your pics EVERYWHERE. Can't he see you're a troublemaker?
DeleteYes, for his theft I am going to be a troublemaker. I may just email him the post I published this morning.
DeleteWhy not? He can't want this kind of richly-deserved publicity. He should know it's coming his way. Make him sweat. And yeah, get a different job.
DeleteAnything that goes on line can end up in somebody's space, with or without credits. If they start to make money with your product, you might be able to sue the pants off of them, and make yourself feel better, or not. Thieves are just waiting in every corner of the world. Just post what you are willing to give away.
ReplyDeleteIn my case that's not bad advice. But for artists who have to make a living off of their images, it pays to put in as many safeguards as you can, and to go after the thieves.
DeleteFor some strange reason this reminds me of a friend who heard that someone was using "lambchop"(as in the sock puppet) wallpaper for a baby's room. He thought it would be all lamp chops covering the walls.
ReplyDeleteLambchop! Is Lambchop back in? Wow. Well, clearly he's not all that in, if somebody thought the baby's wall was gonna be covered with little slabs of meat. :)
Deletewhat a stinking thing to do
ReplyDeleteDaryl, you may wish to check out the wallpaper sites & see if they scraped from you. Cuz if they did it to me...
DeleteI have heard quite a bit about this. I have a friend whose images were being sold as Iphone covers! Somehow she managed to have them removed. I'll have to see how. I would be happy to write something for fso...unless you would like to. If not, can I quote you and attribute to you? I could tell you how I right click protect my images, but a print-screen will work around that. THere is no fool proof measure, you can only make it more difficult. I also heard of a site that somehow monitors the internet for your work and alerts you if it finds something elsewhere...i bet I never saved that info.
ReplyDeleteTin Eye might be that website? Not sure.
DeleteI think you are more knowledgeable on this topic, and it would be helpful to hear your thoughts. You may borrow as much as you like from this post if you think it's helpful.
Gosh I'm not even a pro, but it bothers me that this goes on.