Fight Copyright Infringement

posted on 23rd of november, 2012

How to report copyright infringement on social media websites

By now, you must know about our reporting copyright infringement tool and perhaps you're already familiar with how to spot your images used without license.

You should also know that our DMCA tool can be used only if you are able to provide some standard info such as link to the copyrighted work or works that you claim have been infringed and information sufficient to permit Dreamstime to contact the infringing party (email or physical address). Even if those details are not clearly displayed on the website, the Whois tool should help you. Any contact address of the infringing party or hosting domain you find can be used in our reporting form.

Apart from our DMCA reporting tool, there are also other ways to fight copyright infringement you can always use. Since you are the rightful copyright owners of the images, it never hurts to send a DMCA notice yourselves too. Before taking the matter into your own hands, here are some important things you should know:

- Make sure the photo is not rightfully used and the person using it is not actually a buyer. Buyers really don't like to be wrongfully accused and they may not buy from you again if they encounter such problems. If the image is watermarked, then there are high chances the image was not licensed so you can use the reporting tool for such cases.

- Make sure the site is not one of our partners. The partner sites usually display a Dreamstime logo on the pages featuring our content so you should not have troubles differentiating partners from infringing sites. Whenever you have doubts, feel free to contact us and ask first before taking any action.

- Make sure you have made all possible efforts to convert the person misusing the image into a customer, rather than harassing him. We're here to sell images, not to spread hate around.

If you cannot find contact information and can't use our DMCA tool, note that most social media platforms have their own DMCA reporting pages which you can use. I'll list them below:

1. Facebook DMCA report

2. Twitter DMCA
3. Blogspot DMCA
4. Wordpress DMCA
5. Pinterest DMCA
6. Google Plus reporting copyright infringement instructions: click to open the album, photo, or video. Click Options, select Report, then select the Copyrighted material option.

If you fill in the information sorrectly, all of these platforms are pretty prompt in removing the copyright infringing content.

Tags: copyright dmca infringement report social

Comments (20)

	Posted by Thevegetable on December 08, 2012 great blog. Thanks for sharing.. :D
	Posted by Lenutaidi on December 06, 2012 Great post! Thanks for sharing!Merry Christmas!
	Posted by Dudau on December 05, 2012 Thank you, we'll look into it!
	Posted by Gheburaseye on December 04, 2012 Hi! I send You the images as promised ;)
	Posted by Tonnywu76 on November 30, 2012 Great and useful article. Thanks for sharing.
	Posted by Onime on November 30, 2012 great blog. Thanks for sharing.
	Posted by Gheburaseye on November 27, 2012 I don't know: it's arrived today. The important thing it is arrived! I'll send You some picture about the box. Thank you ;)
	Posted by Dudau on November 27, 2012 Gheburaseye, your email arrived and our support sent you a response, maybe you didn't see it or you have some filters on your email.
	Posted by Alvera on November 26, 2012 As a king, I have 3 servants who take care to convert the person misusing the image into a customer. Two females and one male. The male servant will get a new assignment: harassing :)
	Posted by Gheburaseye on November 25, 2012 This is true ;) We only have to hope that something will happen soon. For now, we can report to dreamstime every violation we find in and out web! ;)
	Posted by Coraldesign on November 25, 2012 Well, Gheburaseye, I found very few people (if any) who really care about the "can be protected by copyright" message. I said that if stock agencies and Google are really commited in protecting the contributors, a technical solution can be found to prevent the indexing of these images who were legally bought, downloaded and then used on the web. Might be as simple as a little flag on the image file header. The same way the movies industry is trying to copy-protect the original DVD's.
	Posted by Gheburaseye on November 25, 2012 Coral, sometimes the people uses images with watermark. Google images is a part of the problem (when you open an image in google images, it says that the image can be protected by copyright). I don't know who the problem can be solved, but punish who use image without sell them it's a good idea ;)
	Posted by Coraldesign on November 25, 2012 Viorel, I think your post is really good in showing DT users the direction to follow when they find such copyright infringements. However, the idea in this post is showing just the tip of the iceberg. The REAL copyright infringement is not the one you described in this post. People using these watermarked images are not getting any money out of the images, or at least they get very little out of the images they got without having propper permissions. The real enemy in this copyright infringement war is in fact Google Images on one side and the microstock agencies on the other side. Google Image Search service is serving non-watermarked and sometimes high-resolution images to anybody who is searching with the proper keywords. I won't be more specific on this one, but the microstock agencies must adapt their workflow to prevent this kind of situations. Any image downloaded from DT or other stock image website and then used in a website without being altered at all by the buyer is at risk...(More)
	Posted by Gheburaseye on November 25, 2012 Hi! I used the contact form here in Dreamstime. I sent the message on november, 3rd. The enquire number is 33650883, but I don't know if it's really arrived or not ;)
	Posted by Dudau on November 25, 2012 It's a bit odd, because Dreamstime will answer to more than 99% of emails received, maybe your message didn't get to us? You have to use the contact form in order to send a message, posting on our Facebook page rarely has an effect.
	Posted by Gheburaseye on November 23, 2012 P.S. on Your facebook page I posted another image used without payment! ;)
	Posted by Gheburaseye on November 23, 2012 My problem is not my images. My problem are the images of other users! I found an image on a box in my supermarket. The image has the symbol of Dreamstime, so I think this was not downloaded under payment. I sent a message to dreamstime (two weeks ago): no answer. I found the image on dreamstime and I sent a message to the contributors: no answer! What Have I to do with that box? It seems nobody is interested in this infringement!
	Posted by Dudau on November 23, 2012 Don't forget to bookmark this article, you might need it in the future :)
	Posted by Egomezta on November 23, 2012 Thanks for sharing this useful info.
	Posted by Laurasinelle on November 23, 2012 Thanks for the info!