Yunghi Kim: Protecting Our Images

Posted: July 16, 2013

[caption id="attachment_11434" align="alignright" width="400"]© WimL - Fotolia.com[/caption]The battle between photographers and image thieves continues to rage on. What do you do when your images have been used without your permission? What can you do to stop the illegal use? Learn from this photographers experience, and take steps to protect your work and make thieves pay.

I’m going public with this to share my experience in pursuing unauthorized use of my images. I believe my experience can be helpful to my fellow photographers.

A few months ago, I happened to do a Reverse Google Image Search on some of my work and was shocked to find several of my images had gone viral. There were 10 search pages on one image alone. Some of my photographs were even in music videos posted on YouTube. (I was pleasantly surprised when the reverse image search found these images.)

One of these stolen images, if it was properly licensed, would have brought in about $14,000 worth of fees.

Most of the photographs stolen from me are unique images with historical content. Many have won awards, like my work from the War in Kosevo, refugees in Rwanda, and the Comfort Women of Korea. One image was published on a single Internet site (my own), and was clearly watermarked. It was copied, the watermark was removed, and it is now viral. You can see it on numerous different sites. I tried to limit the damage by posting several DMCA Takedown Notices. This was a great learning experience, but also a losing battle. Once an image goes viral, it’s impossible to stop. Not only does it consume a lot of time, but it is also frustrating. The longer it went on, the more upset I became. Most of the unauthorized use was on overseas sites.

Read the entire article Yunghi Kim: Protecting Our Images at National Press Photographers Association

Biz Tip Provided by Tony Bynum, Owner: Tony Bynum Photography