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

I discovered that there are many chaser/stringer clips, including some of mine, in the AP's own stock footage archives:

http://www.aparchive.com

Some of these are marked as "must be cleared for re-use" but some are not. Either way, I know none of my footage was ever authorized to be posted there.
 
I found a particularly egregious case today. This site has mass-uploaded thousands of images on a wide variety of subjects to a blog that is connected to high-following social media accounts. The owner is even cropping out watermarks and (not that it matters) not crediting or citing the sources. The Facebook page has 425,000 followers and the page is advertising with both Adsense and Taboola.

whitewolfpack.com

The site has taken so many images that it's impossible to just scroll through to find one. If you search for specific storm-related terms in Google Images, you can locate images. For example, I saw chaser images using these search terms:

whitewolfpack.com tornado
whitewolfpack.com lightning

Of course, the user is hiding behind an anonymous domain registrar and provides no contact information. The good news is that any one whos image was taken can report the site to Google Adsense and Taboola, if two or three reports are logged, the site may lose its advertising accounts:

For Adsense, visit:
https://support.google.com/adsense/contact/violation_report

For Taboola, email the URLs of the stolen image and the orignal to [email protected]
 
Searched through the thread and did not find this posted yet.

I recognized some of the clips in this video, but can't remember which chaser had posted them.

 
GIF creation sites are becoming one of the primary ways that Reddit users are sharing video content on the site - instead of posting a link to the original video, they rip it into a GIF using these services and post it:

http://imgur.com
http://gfycat.com
http://giphy.com

The end result is the GIF goes viral on Reddit with no attribution or traffic to the original.

These sites make it simple for users to steal content - they just have to paste the video URL into the GIf maker, and it creates the GIF automatically.

gfycat2.png

There are already hundreds of storm GIFs from chaser videos on the site, some with hundreds of thousands of Reddit views. In most of those cases, the original video was not linked.

https://gfycat.com/gifs/search/tornado
 
Last edited:
I have been looking for a good way to deal with some of these that I receive as email messages from friends and family. I have been posting some of them on my blog, trying to determine in the photo is real, whether their explanation is real, (the "rainbow tornado" and hurricane flooded street ones come to mind), and crediting/linking to the appropriate photographer's website.

Unfortunately, when I do a TinEye search on many of these photos, I get links to Pintrest and other photodump sites. Do you guys have a better search engine for finding the proper owner of these photos?
 
Just remember to thoroughly document any infringements so you can take action when (and if) the new copyright laws become active. You should also make sure to document any request to remove the copyrighted material including the refusal by an individual to comply with your requests(s). Sending a registered letter is even better if you can get and address. You stand a far greater chance of success if you have a well-documented case. Don't forget to file a copyright on your work. You can submit a large collection of material from past years if you want. The new law may require that a copyright was actually filed.

Even if an infringement is removed you can still take action if the image or footage was used for profit, promotion, etc.

The infringers are going down!
 
I just stumbled on a big subset of stolen videos by searching with Arabic keywords on Youtube and Facebook, many with hundreds of thousands and even millions of views. These never come up for me using English keywords.

For example:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=إعصار

To do this, go to Google translate, type in tornado, hurricane, lightning, etc and translate into Arabic, then search Youtube with the Arabic words.

https://translate.google.com/
 
I came across this YouTube video of tornadoes:

Everyone please check this out and see if one of your videos is in this. I did not see any watermarks of any kind.
 
Looks like there are several tornado videos on that channel that use chasers' work:

www.youtube.com

Underworld

Welcome to The Underworld. Educational videos about Top 5's, Mysteries, Disaster and more. Subscribe to never miss an upload Twitter: https://twitter.com/Und...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
Here are a few more big channels ripping off chaser footage:


YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
I came across this YT video today:


Despite the channel owner claiming "fair use" and has 429,000 views on it, there are watermarks from Discovery's Storm Chasers Series and there are a couple of video pieces I did not recognize.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Jesse Risley
  • Locked
  • Sticky
Marketplace guidelines: please read before posting
Replies
0
Views
7K
Jesse Risley
Jesse Risley
Back
Top