Beware of Image Theft on Flickr
So you have a little portfolio of your images on Flickr. Whether or not you are a professional photographer, this latest blip below should make you think twice about displaying any of your images on the Net without a watermark - and working with a stock agency like iStockphoto whose anonymous mass of contributors can turn out to be image thieves …
“According to a news report on Webware.com (a CNET web-site,) Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir, a professional photographer from Iceland and a user of the Flickr photo-sharing site, has discovered several of her images were posted on iStockphoto by a third party using the screen name “vulcanacar.†iStock has shut down vulcanacar’s portfolio and removed his or her account from the site.
As a warning to other users about the risk of posting images on Flickr, Ms. Guðleifsdóttir posted on the Flickr blog a screen shot of one of her images as it appeared on iStock under the imposter’s name. 
She points out that of the thirty-one images in vulcanacar’s portfolio on iStock, twenty-five were hers. iStock EVP Kelly Thompson says it will be difficult to pursue damages from the user in question because he’s in a country where it would be very difficult to do too much to him.
Obsidian Stock prides itself in knowing each and every single photographer in its portfolio, having met most of them face-to-face, and paying extreme attention to usage and copyright issues.
Coming up tomorrow - How To Watermark Your Images for Flickr and the Web.