By Paul Pannone
The floodgates opened on the topic of Internet thievery led by a story on eWedNewz; many responses and reported cases led to this follow-up story.
The story, given to members of the Wedding Water Cooler story, were asked to give their opinions. Be it far from having to ask a Coolie anything and not get verbose replies.
The first salvo came from Coolie, Jim Duhe. In his usual questioning way he replied:
“Isn’t it strange that you decide to publish the piracy story at the same time that the Huffington Post decides to publish a piece about it?”
We assured Duhe there was no prior knowledge of the Huffington Post piece; we’ve developed this story for months and decided to break what we have because of an anonymous source making allegations against the photography website SnapKnot.com. We’re still waiting for a reply from them.
From a town known as Oyster Bay, Long Island. Came a boy with a rock in his hand and some great advice for life.
According to a photographer member of the Wedding Water Cooler thievery of images is rampant on the internet. It requires an enormous cost of time and effort to protect creative property– or risk being labeled an easy target for others to prey on. Some say even if you win the results are still not rewarding.
“Even if you do win, as I did in the court of Law, then you have to deal with the “Thug” afterward because these low down scum buckets have no character, what so ever,” said one member from Maryland.
Some members of the WWC say they’re resolved to the common practices that happen every day. Some feel the best we can hope for is an eventual leveling off, governed by legislation.
“Stealing happens everyday and we all know full well that our industry is packed with thieves. We see it in fashion, writing, stylized shoots, real weddings and on websites, and with the internet full speed ahead-I can only see it as continuing in pattern. The problem with the situation is many people who are victims of copy right infringements – either don’t own the photos themselves, have a not copy written or even worst won’t pursue these fools who think they can.
I’ve been stolen from a few times. Imagine receiving an email on this weeks best submissions and seeing your work featured under someone else’s name; not once but twice. I realized that they did it again because I talked a lot and didn’t follow-up on my trash but the second time whirl wind for their asses.
It becomes annoying when you work hard to make any kind of success, create an amazing product or write a book etc and some fool takes it BUT the worst part of it all is that it will continue,” says Khalilah Olokunola.
The discussion in the WWC sparked wedding analyst/marketer, Christine Boulton to write her own piece on some of the new tools making their way onto the market. Her latest interest, Pintrest, is a hot topic of discussion. In her story Boulton writes about the current discussion but already jumps to the bottom-line saying;
“Let’s add to the conversation the very nature of the internet and the effect it has on the generation that are our current brides and grooms (and most likely all the ones to come after them) The internet is inherently about sharing and connecting. Today’s generation of brides grew up with torrents and Pirate Bay. They view any content on the internet as fair game. Convincing them otherwise is going to be a bitch, to put it lightly.”
Bolton herself was the recent victim of some low-level thievery. Her stories and ideas were lifted by one, Rose Haller, and amplified in a Linked In forum. At first Boulton refrained from taking any action. But with a slight nudge by eWedNewz– and I mean slight, she took action and received the following apology from Haller:
“I am so sorry! I highly respect you and your great work.I have Deleted every LinkedIn discussion and comment that I could find that had I posted on LinkedIn with any mention of you. If you find any I missed just let me know & I’ll delete it.After you said “Thanks” to my first use of a written quote on LinkedIn that I had used- I did make other comments. That has stopped.I apologize and I will not use your name or quotes again.”
Rose Haller
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