Wallpart dot com/The Poster Shop stealing images from HP?

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   theraggededgeposted 8 years ago

   This is very weird. My daughter alerted me to the fact she found her artwork (from Deviant Art) on this site. When I looked into it and did a search for my name, it brought up an image from HP. However, the image is hotlinked, not actually stolen and reproduced. They seem to ask the prospective customer to upload the image and they will produce and sell a poster.
   
   I have no idea how to go about sorting this out, especially for my 14 year old, who is in tears. Is there actually a violation? Anyone could produce a poster from an image search, couldn't they?
   
   This is what their copyright policy page states (yes, the English is awful!):
   
   WallPart Respect the copyright of others.
   This means we don't steal photos or images that other people share as own.
   We don't have a base of images, and don't host or store images on the our servers.
   Only Wallpart.com helps users to find images that interest for them, the site uses data of the most known third-party search engines.
   The process of the search goes on an user's browser.
   Users make search queries by themself, all content displayed in a window of the browser is received from third-party search engines.
   Displayed images are loaded from third-party servers, and they aren't hosted on our site.
   When the user make the order, we get the image from the user, he is responsibility for use.
   Wallpart.com doesn't bear responsibility for the images received from users.

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      theraggededgeposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Replying to myself here.
      
      Have done a bit more searching around. It seems that they are probably not selling posters at all but deliberately targeting those who made the art in the first place, i.e. photographers, artists, bloggers, writers, pinners, etc. It's a phishing scam, so don't go filling in their forms if you discover your work 'on' their site.
      
      There must be some way of taking this horrible website down?

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      tsmogposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I am empathetic theraggededge! Maybe a could be solution, unsure, is a friend I know in Sweden does illustrations for her blogs and etc. She always signs her work while places a copyright too (© 2015) on the image itself. Not water marked, but an eloquent and artistic presentation. She does that with both digital and freehand work.
      
      She also uses Fine Art America for merchandising her work. Using the thumbnails a 'save image as' does occur. Enlarging the thumbnail image pixelation occurs rapidly. Really that image pretty much is useless for any size for reprinting and online usage.
      
      The greater pixelated image with greater acuity from the thumbnail can not be copied. It seems to be blocked. That 'Save Image as' cannot occur. From just checking at Deviant Art that does seem to be a site feature. Unsure except the few I checked. Of course I did not research using Photoshop to discover how large a print I could do. To me overall that means as a comparison I could use the image at Deviant Art for online purposes more easily.

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         theraggededgeposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Well, as I said in my later post, it's not to do with images at all, it's just to lure the indignant artist into completing a copyright infringement notice on their site. Don't forget that many, many non-professional peeps create digital art and upload it all over the place: Instagram, Flickr, etc. All those images: artwork, wedding photos, vacation snaps, your family bbq, pets... anything and everything will turn up in a search.
         
         That's the point - you type in your name or your website or anything at all and you'll see results pertaining to you. Their search is just a Google image search and the individual images are hotlinked. Then, following the plan, you say, "I can't have these people selling my stuff." So you fill in the web-form like my daughter almost did.
         
         They are after your personal info, and I read that completing the form and submitting it will invite them to drop a piece of keylogging malware on your computer. So you see, it's not about protecting your work.

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            tsmogposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Understood and thank you!

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            Suzanne Dayposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            You can report the site to Google spam for the malware....most sites I report with serious problems such as being spam or having malware seem to vanish shortly after, so it is taken seriously.

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   relacheposted 8 years ago

   Report them to their internet host or domain name registrar for their image theft.

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      theraggededgeposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      But according to them, they aren't stealing images - they are merely providing a printing service. There is a search facility on the site which appears to simply bring up a search engine's (don't know which one/s) results. How can you (me, anyone) report them for theft if there is no evidence of it?

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3. 82

   Mark Ewbieposted 8 years ago

   I am sorry this happened to your daughter.  These people are scum.  Lazy, useless, copiers who steal and make money off the back of other people.  They upset people, steal their dreams, hard work and creativity.
   
   Unfortunately those who also make money from us - the massive tax evading corporations such as Google and other official plagiarisers - do not care what happens to content or who owns it.
   
   That is the lesson from the internet.  If you put it up it will be instantly stolen from HubPages or anywhere else.  The only hope is that these scum are not only lazy, nasty, stupid bits of filth - they are also temporary chancers who will move on to stealing from old ladies or other forms of real life crime when they realise that for 99.9999% of people...
   
   ... there is no money on the internet anyway.
   
   I would love to meet one.  Maybe one will ask me if I want to buy one of my own pictures or articles one day.

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      theraggededgeposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you, Mark. She's okay now I explained what it was.
      
      Yes, I know that once we put it out there, it's fair game. It's a shame, especially for artists and photographers whose livelihoods depends on them being able to get their work in front of the public. They're printing from anywhere - Zazzle, included. Whether or not their customers actually receive anything is another matter. As I mentioned it's most likely a phishing scam to get you to fill in their complaint form.

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         WryLiltposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         As Mark said, anything on the Internet is fair game for dodgy people. The best thing you can do is to mark it in some way, such as a watermark. That way, if it gets stolen, at least you'll have people who like it searching out the creator.

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