Just saw this over at Tyler’s blog:

“No problem douche”

This was the response from Mark Meadows at MVM Data, mark@mvmdata.com, when I contacted www.shawneeshuttle.com to remove a photo of mine they used in a commercial setting and without attribution.

That’s so much bullshit. I’d drive to that dude’s house and punch him in the mouth. I hate the way the net has spawned this “everything is for the taking” mentality.

Two pieces of advice for all of you photo-taking types out there:

1. Register your photos with the US Copyright Office.

It’s easy to do electronically these days and depending on the nature of willful infringement, the payout to you as a photographer is anywhere from $750 to $150,000 plus fees per photo.

2. Put a copyright watermark on your photos.

If you find the need and/or effort to register your photos to be too much, at least put a copyright mark on them. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal for someone to remove your “copyright management information” from your photos to disguise infringement from unauthorized use.

Even if you haven’t formally and legally registered your photo with the US government, the DMCA still allows for fines starting at $2500 and runnng up to $25,000 if you can prove removal or alteration of the copyright mark/info on the photo for unauthorized use.

Don’t let people just take the things you work hard to create. Whether you expect full professional licensing fees or nothing more than a simple acknowledgement, it’s still fucked up when someone takes what isn’t theirs.

Scary that unprofessional assholes like the one Tyler had to deal with are able to make a living in this world. Maybe if that guy created anything worth stealing, he’d understand.