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361

Hawaiian Letters & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Hawaiian Art Network files 2 more suits

« on: May 04, 2012, 08:12:16 PM »

Buddhapi is absolute correct. I have seen a litany of information about this scheme in the forum. Would it be of value to assemble a list of the pattern as it's repeated over and over with so many of his images? How can he admit he gave it away and claim he is still the victim of infringement?

The person that originally made a seamless tile from one of his images that I had contact with tells me the image must have come from a CD collection she bought at some retail outlet named Liddel's or something. This photographer has a longtime relationship with Webshots and admits to selling them his work. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Webshots has for years offered CDs of royalty-free images, some of them containing 10,000 images or even more, and they were usually less than hundred dollars, sometimes even way less.

If that person's story checks out, then the image must have come from one of those CD images and he must have known it was in there. Or did Webshots start the virus of un-watermarked images, thus being guilty of the original sin?

The layman and even people in the trade are going to assume that any image in one of those collections is free-for-all for any purpose. If the source image was from one of those collections, that may explain the different crop and the absence of the watermark.

So this is a bit of a different question: what if the source of the image was NOT a wallpaper website, but another source that amounts to retroactive seeding? The person that bought the CD estimates it was purchased about 10 years ago. That coincides with the copyright for the image. I'm not saying the scheme is 10 years old, I'm saying they may be opportunistically taking advantage of other ways in which his intellectual property seems to have spilled into the computers and servers of 1000s of people.

362

Hawaiian Letters & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Hawaiian Art Network files 2 more suits

« on: May 04, 2012, 07:35:40 PM »

Adam, I commend you on the positive attitude. I'm very inclined to agree with you on every point you've made. I have made the same findings concerning another image by the same photographer, Vincent Khoury Tylor (http://www.hawaiianphotos.net/VKTylor.htm), and the company that represents him, Hawaiian Art Network. The image I'm referring to is this:

http://www.hawaiianphotos.net/images/A-01%20Hammock%20NEW%20Web-LG.jpg

There are a ridiculous number of websites offering this image free without attribution (and sometimes with attribution) and without the watermark that's visible in the lower right corner. I've studied the image very closely (I'm a professional graphic designer with very strong image processing skills), and there appears to be a second version of the image that does not have the watermark that is consistently repeated across the free baitpaper network. In the 2nd version, the image is cropped slightly, but not enough to completely crop out the watermark shown in the original. About half of the watermark should still be there. For example:

http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/dreamsofhawaii08.jpg

Looking at it VERY closely (about 800% magnification), I would have to say that the part of the watermark that should be there was NOT airbrushed out. It does not look manipulated that way. Which suggests that someone had access to a version of this image WITHOUT the watermark and put that out there for grabs.

The most obvious candidate for having an un-watermarked version of the image is the photographer himself. This doesn't prove he put it out there for grabs as bait, of course. It doesn't prove he didn't either, but I believe it is relevant to consider chain of custody issues with his intellectual property.

So I've been working on trying to find the oldest version of the un-watermarked version to try to see where the virus started before it spread into a shapeless cloud. BTW, another difference with the second version is that it is relatively light in color, contrast and saturation. This suggests that it may have been the drab original, before the photographer made it more dramatic by artificially pumping up the saturation (didn't you?), or that it was an image that was color corrected for darker monitors or for use in print applications. I actually found a version on a jigsaw puzzle being offered on the Italian version of eBay.

One last thing you may find of specific interest: the 2nd version of the image that I linked to up there, is on a page that is still live, still giving it away, and exactly below the same image you're getting the letter for:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/41956/desktop-fun-dreams-of-hawaii-wallpaper-collection/

The unmitigated audacity. Please let me know if I can be of help with anything.

363

Hawaiian Letters & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Hawaiian Art Network files 2 more suits

« on: May 04, 2012, 04:56:25 PM »

Adam, your case sounds very similar to the one I'm aware of. Did they tell you the name of the photographer who allegedly has been infringed upon? Are you aware of what the original copyrighted image looks like? Is it basically the same as the one you thought was in the public domain, except for missing a watermark in the corner, or was it modified in any way? As you read through the forum, a certain pattern arises concerning letters sent from HAN and in particular with the works of one photographer.

One thing that is very useful about this forum is that it is helping analyze certain patterns in the conduct of these companies, and it is helping quantify the magnitude of the problem. As Matt has said, no one can tell for sure yet but the number of letters sent could be in the thousands.

It seems like the letters are a shotgun approach, but the lawsuits are precision sharpshooting. There is no doubt that these people are banking on the fear and naiveté of the people they're shaking down.

364

Hawaiian Letters & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Free Baitpapers

« on: May 04, 2012, 01:35:11 AM »

You're quite right.  Go to the link that "Extortion-Victim-No Longer" provided in a previous post:

http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://fwallpapers.com/files/images/road-hana-turquoise-lagoon-maui-hawaii.jpg&imgrefurl=http://fwallpapers.com/view/road-hana-turquoise-lagoon-maui-hawaii&usg=__G2huN_098plvFFevENfvF1yejXQ=&h=1200&w=1600&sz=662&hl=en&start=84&zoom=1&tbnid=dhcZY3kpBMATnM:&tbnh=158&tbnw=204&ei=zzKwTYTxJYrSsAPD0JTlCw&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhawaii%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1659%26bih%3D841%26tbm%3Disch0%2C2140&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=936&vpy=327&dur=3308&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=98&ty=109&page=4&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:11,s:84&biw=1659&bih=841

Download the picture.  Now go to Google, click on "Images", click on the little camera icon next to the search box, click on "upload image", browse to the image that you downloaded and click "open".
Next scroll down to "Pages that include matching images", look at the listed pages.

The photo appears on more than 89 "FREE" wallpaper sites on the first 26 Google search pages alone.

Many will recall that the image in question was the subject of the infamous "Brandon Sand" extortion letter, seeking an astonishing $10,000.
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/brandon-sand-extortion-web.pdf

I'd say that Hawaiian Art Network and photographer Tylor have a credibility problem.

S.G.

Brilliant tip, Soylent Green! I used this technique on a HAN/VKT image. I got about 270 unique results, almost all on free wallpaper or free stock image sites, none of them showing the copyright mark they accuse people of removing without having any proof. I did not know Google had the image matching search capability. You could say it's the ethical version of what the PicScout black hat crawler does.

365

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: A non-lawyer idea about "The Letter"

« on: May 04, 2012, 12:21:57 AM »

Thanks for the tip, mcfilms. I will check to make sure I'm not posting redundant links. I know there's several posts with links to the baitpaper sites. I like the link to the Glen Carner baitpaper download on brothersoft.com someone posted. The unmitigated audacity!

366

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: ELI Photo Gallery

« on: May 03, 2012, 10:17:02 PM »

Something like this?

http://blog.webshots.com/2008/03/featured-photographer-vincent-khoury-tylor/

367

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: A non-lawyer idea about "The Letter"

« on: May 03, 2012, 08:35:49 PM »

Thanks, Matt, I do deserve the gentle ear tug. I will try to be diligent and read through all the posts before I put forth any other theories. I spent most of yesterday trying to catch up but only made as far back as Nov. 2011, so I'm sure I've missed a lot.

Buddhapi was kind enough to answer my redundant question. I can see he is very well-versed in this subject matter from what I've read here.

My field of expertise is image processing and retouching as well as graphic design. I have been a professional in the graphic design field since the 1980s. I have seen many changes in the industry and electronic media has created legal challenges that didn't exist with traditional analog media, such as print, from the moment of its inception. As a career professional in this industry, I have always been very interested in these matters.

One comment I'd like to make is that, regardless of one's feelings about the "business plan", the crawlbot software is quite amazing.

In the case I'm aware of, an image claimed by HAN/VJK was used by a person a long time ago. The person estimates about 10 years ago. This person claims the image came from a royalty-free image CD purchased at a retail outlet. This person modified the image very drastically by cloning parts of it and creating a textile-like image that would work as a seamless tile. I would estimate 95 out of 100 persons would not realize it came from the HAN/VJK image, but to the trained eye, there is no doubt. If I were testifying under oath, I would have to say I'm 100% sure the HAN/VJK image was used to create the collage-like seamless tile.

I must say that this software must be really good because the image had been severely scrambled from the original. There were some parts of the image that would still have a pixel-to-pixel match with the original, leaving no doubt about the source image, but not that many. I'm impressed that the software was able to find enough of a match to identify the source image by simply crawling the seamless tile file data.

The person who created the seamless tile felt at complete ease to use not only this image but other images to create a number of seamless tile backgrounds because they came from a royalty-free CD. These seamless tiles were posted on a website clearly stating they were free to use on other websites. This person still has the content up for anyone to find and it has been up at least since 2006.

Here's the interesting part. That person did not get the letter. Someone else picked up the image from this person's website, assuming they had the full blessing of the owner, and believing they were at liberty to use the file without worrying about IP issues. The latter was sent the letter, not the person who created the seamless tile.

As has been stated on this forum many times before, several HAN/JKV images are up on all kinds of "free wallpaper" images all over the web. I have found several matches for this particular image by doing a simple gsearch for the title keywords. Many of them are perfectly intact and are offered at very high resolutions for free. As has been noted here, I confirmed that some of the sites are in foreign countries, but I've identified some being hosted by GoDaddy, one of which had the image posted since 2009. Some even have an "author" on the page (it's usually not the real photographer's name).

As has been noted, the real photographer offers many of these same images that are peppered all over the www for as little as $10 for a 4x6 print.

If it would be useful to anyone, I could post the links to the sites where the images are STILL being offered as free downloads with no royalties or copyright requirements. One of them even offers you the HTML code to make it a background image for your site or your forum post.

Don't worry, I won't post the actual image here as a background!

368

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: A non-lawyer idea about "The Letter"

« on: May 03, 2012, 05:33:21 PM »

Thanks for your prompt reply, and sorry for re-hashing. I'm trying to catch up on all this and there's much learning to do here. I'll search around the forum for some other thoughts I was having about this. Thanks again for all the time and effort you're all putting into this.

369

Getty Images Letter Forum / A non-lawyer idea about "The Letter"

« on: May 03, 2012, 05:04:53 PM »

It sounds like most people are receiving a letter accusing them of infringing a copyright because they allegedly have a copy of an image file on their server, which was identified by a crawlbot designed for this specific purpose. As "proof" that a copyright infringement took place, they take a screen capture and attach it to "The Letter". The screen capture allegedly shows an image that was copyrighted being wrongly used. That allegation has yet to be disputed, but there is another fact that is indisputable. The image capture they send with "The Letter" contains copyrighted content, such as the website logo, which they have no permission to reproduce, especially for commercial use.

I'm not a lawyer. Is this line of thinking going anywhere?

BTW, this is a great forum, thanks very much to Oscar and Matthew for their hard work and to all the contributors for taking part in this exchange of ideas. Knowledge is power.