These people are stealing EVERYONES photos from dgrin!!!

racer · February 23, 2011

This forum has THOUSANDS of our photos, from random dgrin members and smugmug, saved right from this site.
http://en.jo1jo.com/vb/index.php

I found this site by googling my smugmug site, and this place came up high in the results.

I know dgrin probably cant be stop these place, but it will make me think twice before I ever post another photo on dgrin ever again, since I can be guaranteed my photos will be stolen for whatever purpose.

I really hope that this cant happen with everyone's smugmug sites. I would feel like such a fool if smugmug had similar issues.

I haven't posted that many photos here, but there are many people who have been posting for years. Even if we post small watermarked images, having every dgrin image copied, I think that is unacceptable, and not fair to the members

Edit - inorder to find all the images and posts, you need to search that forum for "dgrin" or "smugmug"

Richard · February 23, 2011

Yeah, I noticed some referrals from that site in my SM stats. What I just noticed is that they are not only grabbing images, they are grabbing whole posts from Dgrin. Here's one that was in our Street forum recently: http://en.jo1jo.com/vb/showthread.php?t=337130 I don't much understand what their game is, though, as there does not seem to be any advertising on the site. Very strange.

aquaticvideographer · February 23, 2011

Richard wrote: »

I don't much understand what their game is, though, as there does not seem to be any advertising on the site.

When I went to the link the OP provided, I saw a couple of Google ads. Can anyone tell where (geographically) they are hosted? I have been getting hits from random places-places that normally don't hit my entirely password-protected and hidden site-on the days that I've posted images as external SmugMug links to Dgrin.

Figuring out their geographic location is beyond my Internet abilities, so if anyone could provide info, that would be great.

racer · February 23, 2011

Okay, I must be living in a cave, since it is common practice for other sites to save entire forums and everyone's images any place they want.
So I have been living with blinders on all these years thinking that the only issue was people right clicking to save a image for themself.

It seems like around every corner, the internet is waiting to slap you in the face

racer · February 23, 2011

Richard wrote: »

Yeah, I noticed some referrals from that site in my SM stats. What I just noticed is that they are not only grabbing images, they are grabbing whole posts from Dgrin. Here's one that was in our Street forum recently: http://en.jo1jo.com/vb/showthread.php?t=337130 I don't much understand what their game is, though, as there does not seem to be any advertising on the site. Very strange.

There is google advertising (go figure), but your browser might not be displaying it. There seems to be multiple google ads in each thread

Richard · February 23, 2011

racer wrote: »

There is google advertising (go figure), but your browser might not be displaying it. There seems to be multiple google ads in each thread

Yeah, thank Vishnu for AdBlock on Firefox. I sometimes forget I am using it.

The domain is registered to somebody who claims to be in Jordan, though I wouldn't expect that phone number to work

.

REGISTRANT CONTACT INFO
mohammad jordan
jordan jordan
jordan / amman
jarash 26111 POBox 81
amman
amman
00962
JO
Phone: +962.00962785401418
Email Address: jo1jo.com@gmail.com

The site is hosted by Singlehop, a Chicago ISP

aquaticvideographer · February 23, 2011

In case people are interested, you can find Google's policies on using their services for content scraped from other sites here:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66361
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359

You might be interested to look at the last paragraph of the first link and the last bullet of the second link.

Also, if you feel that the use of AdSense on that site might not be legit, you can take a look here:

http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=16763

And finally...Here is the DMCA compliance/complaint info for SingleHop (the ISP of the site that Richard identified in his post above):

http://www.singlehop.com/legal/legal-complete.php#dmca

(Also look under "Acceptable Use", 8th bullet.)

racer · February 23, 2011

I just looked, entering my smugmug site into google image search, the first 7 images that show up are from that site. While many have a hard time making money off there images, these poeple are most likely making money off our images by directing people to there site with our images.
I dont even post many photos, so I could only image what is happening to the people who post a lot. Not only are they missing potential sales, but the other site is making money from the google ads that are with there photos

WillCAD · February 23, 2011

The site is stealing whole posts from other message boards, too. I saw some posts from the DIS Boards, and from DVDTalk.com.

It looks like the whole board is nothing but stolen posts from other boards, set up to draw in traffic for web advertising. Probably some sort of spider-like crawler that searches sites that use vBulletin software all over the web and randomly steals their posts to simulate lots of traffic on their own. Clever, if despicable.

Art Scott · February 23, 2011

racer wrote: »

but it will make me think twice before I ever post another photo on dgrin ever again, since I can be guaranteed my photos will be stolen for whatever purpose.

The ugly truth is ....if you can view it on a computer screen it can be stolen.....that is why all my pix a nice big beautiful watermark across it..............and that watermark is my web addy.......that way NO DOUBT who it belongs to........ and it will take hours and hours to get it removed with PS or any other image editor, also never link to or allow original sized images....I restrict mine to xl as the largest.........you can't stop the stealing but atleast you can get some free advertising from it if the pix are watermarked with YOUR web address.............

Cygnus Studios · February 23, 2011

They even posted this thread about them stealing threads.

Richard · February 23, 2011

Bots don't read very well.

Did you notice that the so-called poster, divid, joined in November, 2010 and has 60,000 posts? What dedication!

aj986s · February 23, 2011

Richard wrote: »

Bots don't read very well.

Did you notice that the so-called poster, divid, joined in November, 2010 and has 60,000 posts? What dedication!

But alas, looks like virtually all of his posts are without reply. I wonder if he feels lonely?

racer · February 23, 2011

Art Scott wrote: »

The ugly truth is ....if you can view it on a computer screen it can be stolen.....that is why all my pix a nice big beautiful watermark across it..............and that watermark is my web addy.......that way NO DOUBT who it belongs to........ and it will take hours and hours to get it removed with PS or any other image editor, also never link to or allow original sized images....I restrict mine to xl as the largest.........you can't stop the stealing but atleast you can get some free advertising from it if the pix are watermarked with YOUR web address.............

Regardless, that's not what is happening. Your watermark means very little to them. What they are doing, is stealing your whole post, photos included, and posting them as there own, so the google results sends traffic to there site. Watermarked or not, every time someone clicks on a photo that they have stolen, they are making money from your image. If this is allowed to continue, this means less traffic goes to your website, and they make more money off of you.

They are even making money off your highly watermarked photos in a post you made about watermarks!
http://en.jo1jo.com/vb/showthread.php?t=58691&highlight=artscottfotografie

Not only that, but they are pretending to be the author of that post, and pretending to own those photos. They are directing people away from your site, with your own images
Since jo1jo.com is getting more hits total then your site, I imagine that if this continues, it wont take to long for there copies of your images to rank higher then your copies on your site. I imagine over time all there copies will rank higher then any of your photos, pushing your images to the back of google

Richard · February 23, 2011

racer wrote: »

Since this site is getting more hits then your site, I imagine that if this continues, it wont take to long for there copies of your images to rank higher then your copies on your site.

What makes you think this site gets any traffic at all?

racer · February 23, 2011

Richard wrote: »

What makes you think this site gets any traffic at all?

OOPS, worded that wrong, I meant the "jo1jo.com"

Although I dont really know much about this all or how this all works. It would be nice if someone in charge here would look into this. It seems only a few of us are taking this serious?

Richard · February 23, 2011

TBH, I can't get too worked up about it. jo1jo.com is obviously a scam, probably trying to milk Google till they get caught and start a new one. It's pretty hard for me to believe that it could jeopardize anybody's sales. Now that doesn't mean that I approve. The owners of that site should be locked in a room and made to listen to a poor recording of Bolero performed by a gamelan ensemble at top volume on a crappy sound system for five to ten years. But really, the world has worse problems than pathetic two-bit frauds like this one. OTOH, I would be ecstatic if their dumb bot software copied this post.

Bend The Light · February 23, 2011

Hmmm...I don't know whether to be relieved or annoyed that they didn't farm any of my threads!

Cygnus Studios · February 23, 2011

racer wrote: »

They are directing people away from your site, with your own images

How are they directing traffic off your site? That site is a forum (scamming forum, but forum nonetheless).

Didn't you find them by googling your name? How is this any different than coming up in search from dgrin or any other forum that you participate on?

I am not saying that they are right or shouldn't have their toenails removed with a pair of pliers, but in the overall scheme of stealing images, this one is pretty minor.

SittingElf · February 24, 2011

There are a number of things that can be done to stop them.

1. They are probably using a hacked version of VBulletin, so contact Jelsoft about potential pirating.
2. Contact the Web Provider (or ISP) and state copyright violations. They HAVE to investigate and take action under US Law.
3. Contact Google with the same info.

Aint' nothin that contacting the forum owner alone will solve, as he is clearly hacking multiple forums to post over 30,000 topics just today alone. The best solution is to get the Web Service Provider to shut them down.

aquaticvideographer · February 24, 2011

SittingElf wrote: »

There are a number of things that can be done to stop them.

1. They are probably using a hacked version of VBulletin, so contact Jelsoft about potential pirating.
2. Contact the Web Provider (or ISP) and state copyright violations. They HAVE to investigate and take action under US Law.
3. Contact Google with the same info.

Aint' nothin that contacting the forum owner alone will solve, as he is clearly hacking multiple forums to post over 30,000 topics just today alone. The best solution is to get the Web Service Provider to shut them down.

That's why I posted that info for Google and the ISP above.

Cygnus Studios · February 24, 2011

racer wrote: »

Regardless, I am certain there are things that dgrin could do to protect us, or steps to take to prevent this is the future.

Other than report this site, what can dgrin do? You simply cannot stop people from stealing things. If you put something on the internet, it can be stolen not matter what you do. The best that you can do is limit the amount that is stolen and enforce your copyright when it is.

racer wrote: »

I really dont understand how people can be so okay with people stealing from them, regardless if there is money involved.

In this particular case, this scam site is lifting threads, not individual images. If they were stealing your image and removing the watermark that would be an entirely different story.

As this site is probably a hacked site, what do you honestly expect to be done? If you want the contact info for my copyright attorney, I will be more than happy to pass that info along to you. You can then pay $500 an hour to find out that this is a hacked site and things like this happen.

Then you are going to pay $500 an hour to be told that you need to limit what you put on the internet. This isn't a dgrin thing, it is an internet thing.

Look at our site, we only show 150 of the more than 15,000 images that are on the site. We limit our exposure to theft on purpose.

Andy · February 24, 2011

racer wrote: »

I will try to be a little more patient in waiting for a reply, but if I dont get some sort of response, if I am just ignored or shrugged off, I can see myself switching to a different hosting site over it all

I'm sorry you feel this way

I've already communicated to the offender's provider, by emailing abuse@singlehop.com - you (and everyone) should do the same thing, that will help

Thanks!

ziggy53 · February 24, 2011

Andy wrote: »

I'm sorry you feel this way
I've already communicated to the offender's provider, by emailing abuse@singlehop.com - you (and everyone) should do the same thing.

Thanks!

To be clear, the site that we are objecting to is at:

http://en.jo1jo.com

... and the offense is flagrant theft of the material from DGrin.com and other websites. Evidence of the theft is at:

http://en.jo1jo.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=2

I am also emailing the site host that Andy linked above and I hope everyone else does the same. Let's take this person down.

Bend The Light · February 24, 2011

ziggy53 wrote: »

To be clear, the site that we are objecting to is at:

http://en.jo1jo.com

... and the offense is flagrant theft of the material from DGrin.com and other websites. Evidence of the theft is at:

http://en.jo1jo.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=2

I am also emailing the site host that Andy linked above and I hope everyone else does the same. Let's take this person down.

I'm in...

ziggy53 · February 24, 2011

Bend The Light wrote: »

I'm in...

Thanks. Who's next?

Bend The Light · February 24, 2011

If it makes it any easier for people, this is what I wrote. I hope I have the "essence" of the complaint correct...

I am writing to object about the blatant theft of forum posts and copyrighted
photographs from the forum at DGrin.com and other websites.

The website that
is committing this theft is hosted by yourselves...it is:

http://en.jo1jo.com
and evidence of theft can be found at

http://en.jo1jo.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=2
Theft of material in this manner
is ruining the credibility of genuine photographers, and in some cases, due to
the wholesale theft of LARGE quantities of material, is affecting genuine
photographers standing on Google and other search engines, thus impacting
negatively on their legitimate business.

I ask that you take the appropriate
action to stop this activity being hosted by your company.

Thank You

Hope that's helpful.

Cygnus Studios · February 24, 2011

ziggy53 wrote: »

Thanks. Who's next?

I added my complaint also.

ziggy53 · February 24, 2011

Cygnus Studios wrote: »

I added my complaint also.

Thanks. Let's hope they listen.

racer · February 24, 2011

Andy wrote: »

I'm sorry you feel this way
I've already communicated to the offender's provider, by emailing abuse@singlehop.com - you (and everyone) should do the same thing, that will help

Thanks!

THANK YOU, I will send them a email

ziggy53 · February 24, 2011

racer wrote: »

THANK YOU, I will send them a email

Thanks. Let's keep the pressure on.

These people are stealing EVERYONES photos from dgrin!!!

Comments