http://myweddingpicture.org/

Already screenshotting, invoice going out on Monday, already found out who it is and the address... no worries here just showing you how stupid it is to steal someone's bandwidth. It took me less than a minute to get a name, address, email, ph # and email this dude.

Lovely!

M

Wow.. that bites! Sorry to hear about that!!

http://www.joerobertson.com

It's a pay per click marketing firm - they stream my content & get paid for it. Uhhuh, sure they're gonna.

uuuhm.... what?!
What are they doing? Are they outright claiming those photos to be theirs?? Or, are they blogging for you?
I can't understand.

I'm a little slow--I don't get it!

The guy does google adwords - he steals your blog, adds it to another site, puts google ads on the site and gets paid for your content. common scheme, wrong victim.

From what I understand, I think they are basically copying his blog , and putting it under a different domain so they can sale google and yahoo ads on there. Most people would have never picked up on this, but we all know Matt .

Check the first post on his site now. (not kid friendly)

lol

Naughty, naughty....

But OH, so EVIL



That's why OSP Matt!

hehehehehehehehe

That's terrible...but I still don't understand. Where are the google ads? How did you even find this site Matt?

Note to wordpress users - here's how to track down the bad bad man.

as far as where the goog ads are - let's just say I caught THIS guy before he put his ads up. the site didn't even go live a week ago. check the posts he's gotten from me. Also, it's the VERY top link on my incoming - it's the newest.

I'm not sure I wanna know, but I gotta ask...

So who's heiney is in that shot? Did you give him the full Matt "A" Treatment?

lol no not my photo - first one i found to use but that'd be fun too

Now here's a Dear Silly Stealer letter reply:



My eloquent response:

Oh I know how this one goes:

1) Find site with content that’s updated regularly.
2) Add site’s content to your own site by hotlinking.
3) Add google adwords.
4) Get paid for someone else’s content by stealing their bandwidth.

It’s a good gig but I’m thinking illegal since you’re reproducing people’s photos without their permission. Pretty blatant & easy copyright violation there I think.

Bandwidth costs money – bandwidth theft for your own material gain, that’s a crime called conversion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_conversion

Criminal conversion, in criminal law, is usually defined as the crime of exerting unauthorised use or control of someone else's property. It differs from theft in that it does not include the element of intending to deprive the owner of the possession of that property.

I’ve taught my fellow photographer friends on several forums how to find this stuff in their blog info. You can remove my feed at http://myweddingpicture.com and I’m informing Harvard Photo and that videographer of your conversion of their property as well. I have screenshots of everything that was already up and a screenshot of your godaddy registration & contact info. If another photographer finds this stuff in their trackbacks, I predict a holy mess on your hands.

~Matt

Awwwww. He took your cool pic down.

naw I replaced it - read his email carefully. then look at the photo I put up.

Oh my God. I have a million of these things stealing my blog. I just always hit spam on the trackback link. My brain hurts. I don't know what to DO. I get like three of those things every DAY.

What happens is they say something like "Jws wrote this fabulous article about 'yay my email is back up' check it out HERE..." with a link to my blog post. So then if somebody googles my name, it goes THERE to where all these ads are instead of to my blog.

I don't get it. Did I say my brain hurts?

I'm really dense. I really don't understand how to find these guys. No offence to your explanation Matt...I'm just not that computer advanced.

But the first one you had up was much more succinct.

+1 you guys are all speaking another language and all I see is your blog Matt. I dont see any incriminating picture....
I must be dense too!

Kerri

That first one looked a bit overexposed

i wonder if mine is like that

I don't see a blog or anything..just ads, I click the link and I get no pics or anything...well, it sucks for you I guess, but I still have no idea what he did. I'm assuming he posted something of yours and claimed it his own.

umm... i dont get it - i click on the first link and i get UK wedding vendors?

Yep thats what I see now, too. My first look see was the blog and now it is ads Since it has non click able links I assume this is a screenshot?

Matt How does one know when someone is doing this to their own blog?

Kerri

OK... Here's what matt's real blog looks like:

Click to view attachment

here's what the FAKE blog looked like last night before the Perp took it down.
PS: I've fuzzed the naughty bits out, but it shouldn't be viewed with young-uns around.

.



.


.

PS: the naughty bit had a photo of a "full moon" on it, and one word for a body orifice

Click to view attachment.

Ahhhh....the first picture box that I saw just said something in it there was no behind shot....this makes a little more sense I still dont understand what the guy did totally but it sounds like somehow he used their blog for ads that brought them money per click??

How incredibly bold and illegal!

Glad you have the saavy Matt. I would have no idea if anyone were doing something like that to us. Can you tell if someone is stealing images too?

Kerri

Ok yeah - it's confusing now because they took it down. Basically they took all my blog posts, put them in a new page, and their business is to put google ads along the side & get paid for someone else's content. I posted earlier in the thread - a screenshot of how I found them. Just go back & look at that shot - under "incoming links" in wordpress, it had something I didn't recognize. I always click those. Jules - I'm going to work on a more permanent solution. I'm sure there's a way but as long as their not hotlinking your images, it may not even be illegal...sucky but not illegal. They had ALL of my images on THEIR page though - that's the illegal part.I replaced the a-hole shot with part of his email to me. He said the links were "an seo benefit" so I made the first photo on the page say "stealing bandwidth is not an SEO benefit." That was me - he thought that was an image from a family session. I took that image off our blog but it didn't update on his. So I updated the exact image location and it changed the one on his page. Very simple fix. I'm glad it was corrected quickly - but go check your incoming links.

Any reply yet, Matt?

I'm dying to know if he sent a check for using your images!

lol the site was completely removed, my images removed, harvard photo's images removed and the videographer's linked in videos removed within 12 hours. I didn't get to even send it Monday morning. It was already LONG gone. I did tell this particular dude that if we find him doing it to another member, I still have all my screenshots & info on him. I'll go all out to take him & his scammy butt down.

thanks for the info, I had no idea people did this

So..... maybe this is way over my head.... I still don't get it all. But, can I find out if anyone is doing this to me on blogger?

wow, what a jerk. I'm glad you caught him in the act. I never even thought of someone doing that since it's just wrong. Thanks for the education, now off to look at mine.

Just wondering, not everyone uses Wordpress for their blog so you can't always see your trackbacks on certain blogs (I can't on Big Folio) so would using a Google Alert be helpful in such cases?

Let us know how you go Matt!

I use feedburner to get stats of my blogger blog. Maybe you can use that for your big folio blog? As long as it has a feed.

Is this only happening to wordpress users?

Matt....are you serious!!!!!!!!!!!! I have noticed a 90% increase on my blog...I use to get
2 or 3 hits a week....now I get 300 hits a week from all over the US.......what's happening????
It's just my blog..not my website....I can't figure that one out???

Denise

I'm checking my blog right now...but it's acting really weird.......oh my!!!!! All the footprints and tags are gone.....I just checked it yesterday and I couldsee where all these different people from all over the USA were looking at my blog...now the backtracks are all gone

Dude, that's crazy!

Thanks for the heads up on this scam, Matt.

I saw my content show up on other, seemingly random sites and couldn't figure out why they would want to steal my content.

How did you get them to remove the content so fast? What was your initial email to them comprised of? Please PM if you don't want to make that letter public.

Thanks!
Peter

Peter,My first email to this dude was something like (without grabbing it):Dear Dipshit,Thanks for using my photos on your website. I'm glad you like them. I will mail your invoice for their use to you first thing Monday if they're still up. Is your address still:(inserted his actual address)Thanks! If you have any questions, you can contact me directly as I function as my own agent and attorney.MattHis letter back was a lot of nonsense about the RSS feed and blahblah. I wrote him back, he took it down probably when he saw the image I had replaced on his site and realized I was in full control of his content. lolMNo, it happens to anyone with an RSS feed. If you can check trackbacks (I'm sure blogger can somehow) then you can find out who's using you if they're bandwidth stealing or hotlinking.

Very interesting and frustrating. How can I check if somebody's doing this with my blog?

I haven't logged in to blogger yet to figure it out. Any blogger user get there yet?