Wetlook World Forum

Message # 1939.1

Subject: Re: piracy

Date: Thu 23/01/03 03:18:47 GMT

Name: courier

Email: splash@hot.ee

Website:

By WETINRED/Kev - stekz@cableone.net Thu 23/01/03 02:46:40 GMT

Website: http://www.styx-photography.com/

It's been brought to my attention that a German MSN group "wetlookalbum" has been stealing photographs and video clips from Styxwetworld (and other producers) and posting them.

UMD have now suspended his site from their listings. MSN have been contacted to close the group.

 Styx material is protected under contract by the Digmarc Corporation. They have been informed and are currently using their "webspider" technology to track down the person who has published the material (home address, etc) - they also provide a prosecution service and this person WILL be prosecuted for copyright infringement. The person or persons responsible for originally downloading the material will be identified, their details will be passed to a credit agency so they will go on a "credit blacklist" which will prevent them from joining any other sites on the internet- so they will be unable to commit any more crimes. There is a clear warning on the site that this action will be taken.

It appears that no matter how much material is supplied free to the community, there are some members of it who are never satisfied. They have to have more- to the extent that they undermine the very people who provide it.

Whether it is just greed or whether this person is such a miserable worm that he has steal other people's material to give the impression that he is somehow important- I don't know.

What I do know however is that, only nothing's for free. It might be free to the person who downloads it- but I have to finance it. I pay the models, the cost of equipment, bandwidth, etc. I don't have a goldmine or a money tree, the resources to give out free material is paid for from what I sell. The equation simple, if I don't make money  from what I sell, I can't continue producing and hence everything wraps up.

If this guy wants to provide free material to everyone, then he can get a camera, computer, studio lighting, etc, hire a model, do a shoot, edit the material, pay for a highbandwidth site - THEN he can give it away! I can assure him he won't do it very long.

If anyone agrees with my point of view, feel free to contact the thief  (sorry, webmaster) of the group concerned

wetlook@web.de

Don't expect a reply though, he's ignored 3 emails of mine. KEV