 Someone stole some photos off my website, and now is filing DCMA take down notices against my website claiming copyright. That's the world we live in now. I literally cannot just share my photos with the world without becoming a target for some complete arsehole. It's not enough that people try to hack into my social media accounts every day, or flood my mobile with scam calls, or try to rip me off when cancelling a tour... I now have to waste my life responding to this shit too. 90 comments
I was chatting to a nice lady yesterday about her computer. She couldn't work out how to attach a different keyboard to it. All the while I'm thinking "how long before someone hacks your Windows OS and cleans out your bank account?" She has no idea how exposed she is. One click on a dodgy email and her world could be flipped upside down. How did we end up creating a world where people are thrown to the wolves like this? How badly have we screwed this up. And this is just that section of the world where nobody is dropping bombs on my home, or shooting children in classrooms, or banning access to abortion and other healthcare. We are living in the worst timeline. If there actually was a multiverse with different planet earths then ours would be the one that nobody else wants to visit.  @leon @ewen H. Beam Piper, 1950s and 60s SciFi author, wrote 1 book and a series of short stories in his "Paratime" series all with this exact plot. The first civilization to discover alternate probability time travel monopolizes the technology and colonizes all the time lines where humans never developed or went extinct, and manipulate more primitive cultures to exploit specific resources. Endless worlds sliced finely like pages in a book, with similar groupings around major global events.   @leon @Urban_Hermit @ewen @bruce @Urban_Hermit @ewen yes, clearly a giant, if he can pipe entire h-beams like a small urchin pipes a penny whistle @leon @ewen I think he didn't like his first name, Horace. His SciFi stuff, as in space ships & alien worlds, he wrote every book within one continuous 5,000 years of future human history. He is considered to be the guy who originated the concept of a federation of planets. But there were entirely different eras: a Federation era with colony worlds & a unified space navy (most of his novels), a Space Viking era of reunification after a dark age, an endless Empire era - fascinating speculation.  The responses and support here on Mastodon has been just marvellous today and if ever I needed a reminder of the good side of humans, you all were exactly that today. Thanks peeps.   @ewen Be thankful you lived to your years without dying of plague and polio. His photos were stolen, a big deal! PS @ewen Ugh, this sucks. Seems like the public sphere (or rather, the open web) has become weaponized to such a degree that it's becoming hard to exist on there. I wonder whether the DMCA takedown requests are some crappy LLM-to-court-filing scripts that some shady outfit is running in the hope to shake you down. Indiscriminate patent trolling, now coming for the rest of the web. I don't have any good solution for you unfortunately, but I share your outrage. Someone has an Only Fans account that at some point stole a bunch of photos (of Norway in this instance) and the list of websites they're claiming against read like a shopping list of stolen loot. My website doesn't even appear on the first page. @ewen @moritz_negwer www.hurtigruten.com also has some lovely pictures of Norway. @ewen @moritz_negwer And then they apparently assume that you will file a DMCA claim against them to get to your images removed? Seems like they chose the most antagonistic way to do this. This is the next level up from Marco Verch, who would merely sue people who incorrectly credited his CC2.0 images. Calling them leeches is an insult to leeches, they have uses. Hey hope things get resolved quickly for you. A slightly amusing thing for me though was when an external agency tried to argue against what I recommended and provided a (poorly written) contractors report to support their end. Half the uncredited references I had written (for work, so no name). Requested they provide the references to confirm. Probably got three times what I earn too I bet.  @ewen Hmmm... could be why Macquarrie dictionary has named enshittification, word of the year for 2024. In this instance they've managed to highlight just how many sources they steal from. Will there be consequences for the thieves though? Rarely. @ewen Legal consequences are rare and that really hurts but there are other consequences. Materialism is glamorous but unsatisfying. The arrogant can't see their faults and so their relationships to things and persons sour but they don't know why and can't escape. You know the deep contentment of work, creativity and community. Users/abusers cannot experience it and unless they change, it haunts their inner life even though apparently successful. The times are dark. Guard your light.  @ewen There seem to be people who have adopted "professional arsehole" as their personal mission Fkn nightmare. Like it wasn't bad enough dealing with a certain shitty client this week who seems to think the best way to get anything they want is just be awful to people. I hate this society. Any form of kindness is just a target for exploitation. Thanks Sy. My reserves are depleted to zero right now. I know there's lots of good people out there on this planet with us, but it's overwhelming how many awful ones are among us too.  I know this doesn't help this situation, but it is heartening to read in your thread that you care deeply about this situation. It sometimes feels like most people are just letting these things happen with a smile on their face, not caring about the consequences. Knowing that some people ARE worried, and do see the reasons for concern... that makes the world feel less cold and lonely, and more human, if that makes any sense. Thanks. I think if anything I care too much. This world is easier to navigate when you don't give a hoot about nobody else. @ewen As a fellow photographer this is my nightmare scenario. Stealing my photos and claiming they aren't mine. I keep every RAW file for every photo I take, so this would be easily provable, but like you said, the time required to prove that I took my own photos!?!? would waste days of my time. Very frustrating. I think it's a whole class of scam/abuse whatever. It's one more expression of parasitic humans on the internet. Why not just ignore it, send them a message back telling them why. It's not like they can actually go to court, because then they risk getting charged with perjury and then going to jail. That's not worth the fraction of a cent. I'd write to OnlyFans too, in some super public way that lets a whole bunch of other people see it, so they can't just brush it under the rug and actually have to deal with it. Do they have a Bluesky account?  @ewen I feel for you. Every day from late January to the end of September, at least one disinformation post about me has gone up. I literally spent hours each day fighting it. They are still going up, but at a lower frequency. Fake DMCA crap, copyright trolls, and “AI” are making the web hostile to those of us who actually create good stuff. It's such a blow to the soul. Literally being targeted because you did something good. Humans can be so toxic. @ewen Iʼm going to link to your awesome site from my work one when I get back. The thieving bastards wonʼt have any legitimacy for their site because of a lack of inbound links. I donʼt know how big a difference this will make, but itʼs worth a shot to get back at those gits who are trying to ruin it for the rest of us. Thanks Jack. Has been nice seeing all the shared umbrage on my behalf here. It's been a weird few weeks in my life, swinging wildly between "hell is people" to "thank goodness to be in a community". Have managed to survive as a self-employed fella for nearly 25 years now, largely thanks to the internet, but it feels like it's trying to destroy us all these days. Hugs!   This is so horrid. It's too bad there isn't an easy way to "break" the image--watermark, hidden comment in the file data, anything--that makes it difficult for creeps. So sad this happens to creative people  No idea. New thing for me. Lots of courts can have claims submitted. It's just another way to scam people.   @n_dimension @ewen and the timestamps you posted it, especially if you post somewhere on a private-ish post first, then wherever else in one or more places. (And use Glaze. Please use Glaze. http://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/ And the web version is good for mobile devices)  @ewen It took him several years and (probably) millions of dollars to fight him and eventually win. And nothing the guy did was illegal.  @ewen I already heard of people getting copyright claims from AI bots that had scraped their creations and then reproduced them. Brave new world.
@ewen That's absolutely shocking! 😞 Things can very easily be proved, but the onus is thrown onto the victim being flooded with fake claims. I'm just one human, not an automated script. @ewen I had that happen to me only years ago on Amazon. I got a foosball table that had horrid assembly instructions. I wrote new ones and posted them. Apparently, the company took those, put them into their product, and then complained to Amazon that I published their copyrighted material. My instructions were removed. I spent over an hour putting those detailed instructions together and they not only stole them, but said I violated their copyright. I can't imagine how you feel. GRRR.  @ewen Something very similar happened to me on YouTube. Someone decided to record readings of my short stories - without my permission or credit - and put them on YouTube. I reported this to YouTube (including providing publication dates and ISBNs) and they shut down my account for accusing someone falsely of copyright infringement.  @ewen I think I try to remember that as much as it feels personal, it isn't. And I don't mean that as a way of deflecting blame but as we cultivate poorer and poorer ways of community care, we can't really expect folks to look out after anyone but themselves - because we've created whole environments that forced people to.  @ewen Ugh. Sorry this happened to you. Clearly someone from the future is using Douglas Adams's Aorist Rods to steal energy from our timeline. I was angry enough when someone reposted all my Flickr pictures as public domain and Wikipedia started to use them with photo credit to the thief. That was a long time ago, and no lawyers were involved, but it's draining. |
Gregory's Server
I feel like there's been a massive rise in "gonna act like an arsehole because I can" over recent years.
It's worn me to the bone. It's relentless. We've built a world where people have decided it's no big deal to literally destroy other people because their personal gain is more important.
Everything is under siege. All the time. You can't just opt out and go listen to waves on the beach. Some arsehole is gonna find you there too and find a way to make life shit for you.