Photography And Copyright Infringement

Photography and copyright infringement go hand in hand. The only way I can protect my photos from online thieves is if I do not post them on the internet at all.
The screen shot above shows Vive Antiaging using one of my hawaii swimsuit photos without my permission.
See: bigger screen shot of the Vive Anti Aging post.

This is the screen shot of my original post:

My post is from January 9th, 2006 the viveantiaging.com post is dated at July 7, 2007.

When Copyright Infringement Can Make You Famous

Every photographer will have a different attitude towards their images being ripped off, and there are different means the thieves will use those stolen pictures.
Photographer Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir from Iceland had her photos downloaded from her Flickr albums and sold for thousands of dollars by a gallery.
One good thing did come of this Flickr scandal: Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir received a huge amount of exposure and publicity which would have been impossible before.

How To Combat Copyright Infringement

My photo which Vive Antiaging has stolen can be easily found and copied.
Many different Google image searches like the one for the word: swimsuit will show the above photo within the first few results. (The price to pay for a highly visible photoblog).

UPDATE: since this post was written All Mighty Google has categorized my pictures in my blog as adult images even though I do not have any such pictures on this website.
So the above search for the word swimsuit will only work with the search filter off. Due to this horrible mistake I virtually receive no visitors anymore from image searches.

The tagging feature of Flickr makes it easily searchable for “free” high quality and high resolution images.

I have a copyright notice on my website which is of course not an effective deterrent. As far as a watermark on my photos: I will not do that on this website because I find and text superimposed on a photo offensive.
While watermarking is an effective measure, it is also horribly ugly (I do not care if it is transparent).

My approach to copyright infringement issue is to only post photos which I am willing to have stolen. Of course it does not mean I encourage or enjoy the copying of my images.

What to do when a photographer discovers his or her photos on another website?
If the information of the domain owner is public it can be easily found using one of the WhoIs services, in the case of viveantiaging.com it is:

Administrative Contact:
info(at)syameses(dot)com
Julia Martinez
+34.661490109
Fax: +34.661490109
Italia 25
Alicante, 03005
ES

Technical Contact:
syameses(at)gmail(dot)com
Julia Martinez
+34.966384414
Avda Salamanca 13, 3F
Alicante, 03005
ES

Contacting the thief by email is the first step followed by more persuasive methods like legal action.
Is copyright infringement the sincerest form of flattery???
I can think of better ways, one would be clicking on my handy Donations link! Wink wink Vive Anti Aging!

UPDATE:
Never underestimate the power of a Wordpress blog!
Since this post was published about Vive Anti Aging, I am now on the first page of Google when someone searches for Vive Antiaging!!!