Copyright Scam: Are you aware of this Copyright theft?

[Cyriljay]

Are you aware if this has being happening for some times? It is a serious imagery scam that is taking place. This site is based on Cypress. and It has being harvesting a lot of, uncountable images from social media and other related photography hosting galleries. Most of my important work is there for resale and I am not the only one who is the victim.

Please check all your work and by clicking your Copy righted name.
It is a miracle if you are not included. We several hundred thousand artist are on a war against this copy right theft to bring down this site.
I will update next about more actions we are taking. It is not easy and simple. We all have to work on this to eliminate this criminal site.

:bang: The Link to the site. ( search under your name here ) EASYIMAGES .NET
https://easyimages.net/search (

( or search on this link by your name )😡 https://easyimages.net/search


q=dog%20portrait%20painting&fbclid=IwAR1J-ptVjyZWd26n10uex990BIPTtWw7h9r0P2PIs-eIO5cuYVQ0vsMziIY#q=phyllis+beiser++painting&submit_type=hand&with_transform=on

 

[Cyriljay]

Are you aware of this Copyright theft?

Are you aware of this Copyright theft?

I have already posted another link on this same thing.
But I am not sure if I am doing wrong by talking the same thing here.
If I am wrong my apologies for you, the moderators.

EASYIMAGES.NET - On this web site there could be more or some of your photography on sale/ free down loading. Do a simple search by your copyright ownership name and you might be surprised to find out what is next.

There are so many photography and other art work is sale and they are all being harvested from all over internet from social media like Pinterest. FakeBook. Instergram😱 flicker , and many more. 😱

Please do a search on your name or another artist you know . You''ll be surprised that is next??? 😱

If you find you are a victim please spread the word and alert all other artists concerning.

 

[kiemchacsu]

Surprisingly, I searched my account name and yields thousands of images from various sources where I posted through the years.
I read their terms and tried to download an upsized photo, no charge at the moment but the result from a 800px to 3000px image is not good

5. Payment Terms

5.1 To download the converted image, User mast pay for one of the tariff plans.

5.2 We currently accept payments through the Paddle service located at https://paddle.com. Also, our users must comply with the Paddle payment system rules located at https://paddle.com/legal/. By making a payment, you agree to our rules and the rules of the Paddle payment system.

I have already posted another link on this same thing.
But I am not sure if I am doing wrong by talking the same thing here.
If I am wrong my apologies for you, the moderators.

EASYIMAGES.NET - On this web site there could be more or some of your photography on sale/ free down loading. Do a simple search by your copyright ownership name and you might be surprised to find out what is next.

There are so many photography and other art work is sale and they are all being harvested from all over internet from social media like Pinterest. FakeBook. Instergram😱 flicker , and many more. 😱

Please do a search on your name or another artist you know . You''ll be surprised that is next??? 😱

If you find you are a victim please spread the word and alert all other artists concerning.

 

[Archiver]

Yeah, this is rather disturbing. A search for my flickr handle (archiver) doesn't seem to return any of my images. But a search for 'rx0 the road ahead' (one of my image titles) brings up another image from my flickr stream. Not good.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

Yep, searching on my website's name throws up a number of images I have posted on several photography related websites over the years.

 

[David Hughes]

Just looked and there are hundreds under my site's name but hundreds also I didn't take mixed in with them.

No great surprise really; I've assumed anything I post will be stolen, words and pictures. It's a shock seeing them all together but anyone wanting them would find them on searching using google etc.

Now I'm thinking all of them should or could be resized somehow to, say, fit in 800 x 800 pixels...

As there's Mickey Mouse in with them, perhaps WD will find out and then the site will be dealt with quickly, perhaps



Regards, David

 

[Joao]

Same here.
I found several of my images taken from two web posting sites. Probably no one will pay for them, but I don't like to see my photos there.

Any sugestions about measures to take?

Joao

 

[Nitroplait]

To me it looks like they are just delivering the same search result as one would get by searching Google images (more or less - depending on geographic location).

Then charging for their silly "conversion service" of the web photo and try to get around the copyright issue by demanding that the buyer of the conversion service owns the copyright.

All in all pretty ridiculous and unlikely to make anyone a fortune, and probably done by some low level crocks in a country where it would be impossible to take any meaningful legal action.

Wrong? Yes! Worth sweating over - not in my opinion.

 

[Dan]

I'm honored (sort of). One of Ansel Adam's photos showed up under a search for my photography.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

If the photos are hosted on your own website, you can add the following code to the site's .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https://easyimages.net/
RewriteRule /* https://www.google.com [R,L]

Anyone who clicks the download button will be sent to google instead of the photo. This does not keep their 'conversion service' from working on pics they've already added, but will keep them from adding new photos you post in the future.

 

[Larry Cloetta]

I’m honored as well, but not that much. This doesn’t even seem to me like “copyright theft” which has been a known problem for years now, ever since people started posting photos on the internet. This seems like nothing much more than a deep google search, which is why there are so many unrelated photos showing up. In my case there is anything in there that has my name on it; a logo for Swedish Cloetta chocolate, pictures of my daughter’s college track team that I not only didn’t take, but I’ve never even seen before, etc. There was a well known photo of Iggy Pop there which I certainly did not take. When I clicked on that, it was sourced from a photrio.com thread for “greatest rock and roll photo of all time” from a year or two ago, a thread which I had responded to verbally, one time, without a photo. They’re just doing a deep web search for anything which might tangentially be related to any presence you have ever had on the web and collating it all.
For people who didn’t already understand that there were intellectual property theft issues in the world, I guess this might be a wake up call, but where have you been all this time? And I’m not seeing how this site is something that makes any of it worse given the quality on tap.

 

[lynnb]

A lot of my images are returned by the search.

 

[Corran]

Technically this is simply searching and displaying images posted online using a keyword search. Any copyright infringement would be done by the end user, by downloading and using the images. Perhaps even the conversion service could be cleverly defended, but as noted the country of origin is problematic in this kind of case.

Same as Google does here:
https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en

Simply type the same name or handle in above and you'll get almost the same results. At least I did.

IMO, many folks worry way too much about "copyright infringement" online. Of course pursue legal avenues if your work is used illegally in a major publication or something like that - but literally no one cares about this website and likely no one will ever pay any sum of money for anyone's images seen on this site. PS - I successfully took down some of my photographs used on Facebook and Twitter through DCMA notices, so I am well aware of the problems inherent in online photography theft.

 

[Cyriljay]

@Corra.
How did you take down through DCMA Notice please???

https://pypi.org/project/easyimages/ This is the Easyimages project I found .

This is the site's information:

Domain Name: EASYIMAGES.NET
Registry Domain ID:
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.danesconames.com
Registrar URL: https://danesconames.com/
Updated Date: 2021-07-15 11:50:22.333067
Creation Date: 2021-01-15
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2022-01-15
Registrar: DANESCO TRADING LTD
Registrar IANA ID: 1418
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@danesconames.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +357.95713635
Reseller: AHnames.com https://www.AHnames.com/
Domain Status: ok
Registry Registrant ID: MR_69174294WP
Registrant Name: DANESCO TRADING LTD
Registrant Organization: DANESCO TRADING LTD.
Registrant Street: 157, Archbishop Makarios Ave, office 1
Registrant City: Limassol
Registrant State/Province:
Registrant Postal Code: 3026
Registrant Country: Cyprus
Registrant Phone: +357.95713635
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax: +357.95713635
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: easyimages.net@whoisprotectservice.net
Registry Admin ID: MR_69174294WP
Admin Name: DANESCO TRADING LTD
Admin Organization: DANESCO TRADING LTD.
Admin Street: 157, Archbishop Makarios Ave, office 1
Admin City: Limassol
Admin State/Province:
Admin Postal Code: 3026
Admin Country: Cyprus
Admin Phone: +357.95713635
Admin Phone Ext:
Admin Fax: +357.95713635
Admin Fax Ext:
Admin Email: easyimages.net@whoisprotectservice.net
Registry Tech ID: MR_69174294WP
Tech Name: DANESCO TRADING LTD
Tech Organization: DANESCO TRADING LTD.
Tech Street: 157, Archbishop Makarios Ave, office 1
Tech City: Limassol
Tech State/Province:
Tech Postal Code: 3026
Tech Country: Cyprus
Tech Phone: +357.95713635
Tech Phone Ext:
Tech Fax: +357.95713635
Tech Fax Ext:
Tech Email: easyimages.net@whoisprotectservice.net
Registry Billing ID: MR_69174294WP
Billing Name: DANESCO TRADING LTD
Billing Organization: DANESCO TRADING LTD.
Billing Street: 157, Archbishop Makarios Ave, office 1
Billing City: Limassol
Billing State/Province:
Billing Postal Code: 3026
Billing Country: Cyprus
Billing Phone: +357.95713635
Billing Phone Ext:
Billing Fax: +357.95713635
Billing Fax Ext:
Billing Email: easyimages.net@whoisprotectservice.net
Name Server: KAMI.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
Name Server: JASON.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
DNSSEC: unsigned

 

[Cyriljay]

Wherever happening is very disturbing .
I found this information too.
Their times to use. They are very smart.
https://easyimages.net/terms

Can we make our own DCMA or find a form that is already existing?

I have already found this
https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_dmca?product=productsearch&uraw&hl=en

 

[robert blu]

It's disturbing...I'm afraid we cannot do so much against it...

On the other side I know whatever I post on the net can be stolen and used without my opermission even if it should not!

 

[Cyriljay]

A class action lawsuit may be the way. There are lawyers who will represent artists pro bono. Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts is one. They're based in NY, LDN and I don't know if location would matter. could anyone find out and I call them in a while.

You can also send an abuse report to : https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/

 

[Timmyjoe]

Looks like they've just copied everything off my website. Interesting, they have also copied images of mine that I shot for one publication here in Chicago, images I've never posted. But none of my work for the Sun-Times or the Tribune is on there, which makes me think they are to afraid to steel from large publishers who could come after them and hurt them legally and financially.

Pretty scummy if you ask me.

Best,
-Tim

 

[Corran]

@Corra.
How did you take down through DCMA Notice please???

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is part of the US copyright law, and anyone in the US (I have no idea about usage internationally) can fill out the form and send it to the offending website and/or the website's host.

If the website is in fact hosted overseas and run by non-US entities, it doesn't really apply. Facebook and Twitter are US companies (and the offenders in my case were US citizens) so it was pretty cut-and-dried.

However, again, this is not really copyright theft I don't think. Just like Google, they are probably simply displaying images from websites and servers directly. It's kind of like a library catalog - you can look up books, maybe get excerpts, and even look at them directly in the library, but that's not copyright infringement. If I plagiarize the book, then I'M the one who infringed on the author's copyright. Can you show that they host any of these images?

 

[Cyriljay]

"There is strength in numbers.'' I think we can make a big difference with the more of us who fill out the various forms and complain.

Resizing the image is copyright infringement as far as I know...
we need to find out who is hosting the site
They are using cloudflare, could we contact them and have it removed?
The only plus I see is, the images are small and there is a link back to the original, which should count as a good link in google. Unless this site is deemed a spammer then it counts against us. Getty Images is on there! If we contact Getty Images about this and they might be VERY interested in this and forwarded the info to their legal team. Disney and Sutter stock and Adobi too.
https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/ form to shower a ton of complain to wake them up.
Also it would be useful to notice we all write Abuse email: email@ahnames.com which I think is part of the whois IP addresses appear in WHOIS and DNS registry.
Danesco is registered to itself in Cyprus. dasconames registry is in Cyprus and probably owned by Danesco Trading LTD the parent company also in Cyprus.
If we start to report the images in the Google image search Google will stop using them as a source. Google insists we report function by function meaning if the images are on youtube or image search or regular search each has to be reported separately.
https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search?url=easyimages.net