Stolen photos

[gregr]

Aquatic Connection is using pictures of mine without my permission. They've been notified and have refused to remove the stolen images.

 

[fishypets]

Sounds to me like you are trying to drum up business for A.C. I wouldn't be too worried though, cause their site sucks.

 

[twinspots_goby]

I was ripped off by them several months ago. They only sent me a partial shippments and wouldn't refund me the rest they didn't ship. It took me 4 months to get my money back from my credit card company. Ron is the person who runs the business there. He is a big liar.

 

[myreef2reef]

That's why you need to put watermarks on your pics...especially if you have the gift to take really good nice pictures...you'll always have the originals for yourself but everyone else gets the watermarked ones...only way to do it in this day and age if you don't want someone like AC to swipe it and claim it as their's...

 

[Brent Thomann]

whats it hurting? just giving your photos more publicity. be happy they thought your photos were good enough to use on their website. unless their being rude to you?

my fathers a photographer and we're always happy to see others using his photos on their websites, brochures, magazines, newspaper, etc. even without permission.

 

[sciknen]

aquatic connections is well known for cheating people out of money. get the internet police on it.. as well as your local authorities

these are the same people that own saltwaterfish(dot)com

 

[Reef Pets]

Which photos are yours?

 

[ReefRunner]

whats it hurting? just giving your photos more publicity. be happy they thought your photos were good enough to use on their website. unless their being rude to you?

Well for one if they use someone else photos they are misrepresenting what products they have to offer. And that is not fair to their customers. I have also been down the road with them. They were one of the first vendors I purchased from online. I was very "green" then. Let's just say I had to dispute some charges with American Express and I won.


Robin

 

[Brent Thomann]

wow I guess they're cons. Lots of negative feedback in the search engines.

The fastest way to have them remove would be to contact their Hosting Company. Let them know that one of their customer is using illegal photos. They should put a stop to it since they own the IP their site is on.

Here's what I came up with from the public whois record-
warpspeedhosting (dot) net who appears to be a reseller of-

SoftLayer Technologies Inc.
softlayer(dot)com

if warpspeedhosting can't help you than softlayer will

 

[Brent Thomann]

I was just picturing them using his photos to jazz up their website. That of course would be wrong if their using them like how you mentioned. I hope they stop cheating customers soon!

Well for one if they use someone else photos they are misrepresenting what products they have to offer. And that is not fair to their customers. I have also been down the road with them. They were one of the first vendors I purchased from online. I was very "green" then. Let's just say I had to dispute some charges with American Express and I won.


Robin

 

[nayrgaijin]

Yeah what photos are they using ? It looks like all they sell is dry goods, which I don't think really matters.... Coral is a WHOLE nother issue.

 

[naldopr]

aquatic connections is well known for cheating people out of money. get the internet police on it.. as well as your local authorities

these are the same people that own saltwaterfish(dot)com

they are not the same

 

[gregr]

For some reason I'm not getting email reminders when someone responds- sorry for the delay, and thanks for all the comments. Brent- thanks for that whois info- I'm going to contact their host and see if they'll do something about it.
What harm does it do? I make money from my photography- if I were an amateur it would be a different story, but... they still need to ask before using the photos. The issue is this-- they are making making money selling fish. They are selling fish using my pictures, hence they are making money off of my work and not paying me- see the point? Here's the really stupid thing- I'm very generous with my pictures so all they had to do was ask first. They didn't ask and they refuse to respond to my emails. Morons... Now I see that they have a long history of stupidity so I guess this is no big surprise. Hopefully their host will make things right.
Fishypets- don't know where you got that from but you're just dead wrong.

 

[xrayrider]

Well they got the fishy part right, something about them is definately a littly "fishy".

 

[bangoo]

Wow that's just wrong. I just went to their website for the first time and when I got in to the "mushroom" section, I noticed exact same photo from ricordea-farm.com.

 

[gregr]

I sent an email to their hosting company. If I get no response from them I'll see about legal action. This has happened to me before (more than once) and they always removed the images, sometimes with attitude sometimes with apologies. This time I'm getting nothing and after reading about all the other stuff this company has done it looks like they have a policy of doing things illegally. Anybody local to them or know the owners?

 

[gregr]

Wow- just got off the phone with the person in charge of copyright infringement at Softlayer.com (hosting company) and he was very helpful. I will fill out the necessary forms- basically a statement from me saying the images are mine, and contact info for me and Aquatic Connection. Softlayer verifies the info and notifies the violater, giving them 24 hours to respond. If they don't respond their IP gets shut down. Yay. Stand by for updates!
The Softlayer guy also said that if they receive multiple complaints they act quickly to get the customer off their server- apparently they take this stuff (copyright violations) very seriously.
Thanks again Brent- you got me started on this and I learned a lot already.