there's no getting away with it...

i can't believe how some people would think they can just lift something off somebody else's blog, put it up on their public site and think they can get away with it. what's worse in this case is that the photos lifted were used for commercial gain.

sample of some of the many misappropriated layouts posted on their site

yesterday, a good friend Pia posted on our scrapbookers' egroups Pinoyscrapbookers and Scrapbooks Exchange warning us to watermark our photos. this was because they had just discovered that the photos and album layouts her pro photographer husband Jeff took for clients' events coverage were lifted from their blog, shootandscrap.blogspot.com and was displayed without permission, in a Multiply account used for a similar events coverage business: idigitalprod.multiply.com

some comments praising the layouts...plus Jeff's displeased remark

upon confrontation with the issue, all the owner of the account did was block them off multiply and delete their messages. so Jeff phoned them and demanded that the photos be taken down. but it was not before Jeff had confirmed that they claim to their potential clients that the photos and layouts are idigitalprod's work. he found out because he ASKED the person he was talking to before he identified himself...and their answer was a brazen YES: yes, they took the photos and yes, they made the layouts!

the photos were subsquently taken off the idigitalfraud...er...prod multiply site but perhaps a public apology is in order in this case. bitter pill to swallow? yes, but probably the best cure for amnesia on what copyright infringement means.