Copyright Infringement Reports (Review guidelines in post #1 before posting here)

Some of you may want to review this Facebook page's gallery for your images. It is gaining some prominence in the chase community, but few seem to be aware that the page's large following has been built primarily by stealing "viral" images from others. The site is popular, but it is ill-gotten gain no different from many of the ones we often see on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube that earn the ire of chasers. Notice how many images are uploaded to the page's gallery instead of shared from the source, ensuring that all of the traffic, likes, and shares go to this page and not the original photographer. I was hit by this page back in 2012 for one of my tornado images. Notice the numerous images copied from Twitter, chaser web sites and news media:

https://www.facebook.com/FollowMrTwister
https://www.facebook.com/FollowMrTwister/photos_stream

I see that some chasers are now voluntarily allowing their images to be posted on this page, apparently unaware of how its owner has built the following and continues to do so.
 
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Roger Edwards alerted me about this site (Mr. Twister per Dan's post immediately above). He has clearly used Steve Bluford's and my frame capture from Greensburg 5/4/2007 without seeking permission. I both sent him a PM and posted that he take it down but as of this morning, it's still there. Due to no response, I have filed a formal Facebook complaint. After doing some additional research, it appears FB does take copyright violations seriously although I'm not too sure how long they will take to act. Purportedly, they have snuffed several accounts that contained literally hundreds of unauthorized pictures. I encourage any of you that see your work therein to take the time to fill out a violation form on FB. It's a very quick process and will ultimately benefit all of us. These violators have got to account for their actions and it's a seriously growing problem.
 
More pirate Facebook pages. This first one is new, the last two have been online for at least a year (they've been posted here before). I see many chaser works stolen on these. All it takes is a few of those affected to file a DMCA report, and the page will likely be shut down:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Severe-Weather-World/834708056540523?sk=photos_stream

https://www.facebook.com/SuperCelula

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Destructive-Nature/365398036899485

Facebook's DMCA form is here:

https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/208282075858952
 
Not sure whose image this is, but it was passed off as the Sand Springs tor yesterday....another facepalm for Facebook. The poster removed the post after I said something about stolen pics and copyright laws in his comments amongst all of the "wow" comments. Can't believe we are among people who believe crap like this.
 

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This is a heads up regarding a network of Youtube channels (apparently run by the same individual/group) that has a long history of ripping viral tornado/weather videos from various sources. They post them to their monetized Youtube channels and send the links out on Twitter and possibly other social media accounts. The main Twitter handle I see doing this is "Nature Reporter" that posts links to videos from these four channels (there may be more):

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNNq8UcFB21znJheRvGM45A/videos

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0rggbkdCvXIlyFCGtjUk_g

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk2py1Iw--55m1-Gtgdi2nw

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUNDE_rGHp1yuaka7nDlCzw/videos

All of the channels are monetized with ads, and all videos have the strange, broken english "SHARE this video if you want to know the people" tagline in the description. Some of the videos have misleading thumbnails of different tornadoes designed to fool people into clicking. For example, this video of a weak tornado in England has a thumbnail image of what appears to be a high-quality chaser shot of the Langley, KS EF4 from April 14, 2012.


Briefly browsing through the channels, I did not see any chaser videos on there that I could identify, but you might want to double check. Again, I did see some thumbnails that looked suspiciously like chaser photos. They seem to target videos shot by the non-chasing public. Nonetheless, I see this account getting a lot of retweets from various people and media figures that probably aren't aware of the large-scale content theft going on.
 
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I came across this tornado compilation tonight that has stolen a bunch of chaser videos. It has reached over 1 million monetized views in 4 months (that's a nice payday for this thief).

 
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