Copyright Infringement by Sean Peele of seanpeelephotography.com

<p>It has come to my attention that Sean Peele, of seanpeelephotography.com, has infringed upon the copyrights of many photo.net members, including me. <strong>Before rushing to the site, please read the following information.</strong></p>

<p>Mr. Peele apparently browsed through the galleries of wedding photographs here on photo.net and lifted many images from many photo.net members–so many, in fact, that the majority of the images on his site are not his. I have identified the following photo.net members, and there are probably many more, whose images show up on his site.</p>

<p>Chris Harrison, Edward Horn, Dave Gardner, Edwin Mendoza, Jerry King, Tracy Fairey, Thomas Paul, Michael Brown, Zulkefli Mohd Zain, AJ Zammit, Christine Sharp, Kevin Teachey.</p>

<p><strong>What To Do</strong><br>

If you are one of the affected photographers, here is what you can do.<br>

1. When you go to Mr. Peele’s website, make a screenshot of each image of yours.<br>

2. Contact Mr. Peele and ask that he remove your images from his site. His e-mail is seanpeele@yahoo.com.<br>

If he does not remove the images, you can file a DCMA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint with the website host provider. This is explained in the excellent article below by Bob Atkins. The site is a BluDomain site. E-mail me for the contact info.<br>

<a href="http://bobatkins.com/photography/tutorials/photography_copyright.html">http://bobatkins.com/photography/tutorials/photography_copyright.html</a></p>

<p><strong>If Further Action is Needed</strong><br>

1. Unfortunately legal action is somewhat limited. You may file a claim in small claims court for the monetary amount you would have received if you had licensed the image(s) for use.<br>

2. If any one of the affected photographers has registered their images, a class action claim for up to $150,000 can be filed in federal court for willful copyright violation.</p>

<p><strong>Calling All photo.net Wedding Photographers</strong><br>

I am asking anyone whose images appear on Mr. Peele’s site to please contact me as well and let me know.<br>

If you see any images on his site that belong to another photographer, on photo.net or not, please let me know, as well as the photographer (of course).<br>

If you care to, warn any other photographers you know, since Mr. Peele also has other categories of photography, such as Maternity and Family Portraiture and Events, using any form of communication you wish to get the word out.<br>

Mr. Peele has also infringed upon the copyrights of the musicians heard on his site.</p>

<p><strong>Please Take Notice</strong><br>

This thread is open for discussion about copyright infringement, but please keep personal attacks out of it. As always, forum guidelines will apply.</p>

Nadine, thanks for the heads up. I wonder how often this happens today.

<p>wow omg I'm so sorry to the photographers affected. Great job Nadine on discovering this and finding the other photographers on photo.net.</p>

<p>I just deleted my wedding photos from my portfolio on here. I need to come up with a new watermark :/</p>

<p>I doubt many people are quite as blatent about it as Mr Peele is, though I suspect that more copyrights are infringed than most of us ever find out about.</p>

<p>He does seem to have music by Frank Sinatra, Joe Cocker and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young playing on his site too. I suppose he may have obtained a license to do so, but given the rest of the site it seems pretty unlikely. The typical cost of licensing music is around $200-$300 per track per year, depending on which agency (e.g. ASCAP, SESAC or BMI) holds the license.</p>

<p>By the way, even if the images were copied from the photo.net website, photo.net has no legal standing to file complaints. Complaints and any legal actions must be filed by the copyright owner(s). There's really nothing that Josh (on behalf of photo.net) can do to assist. His account on photo.net has been closed. There is also no way that photo.net can prevent image copying.</p>

<p>There is nothing stopping anyone who finds their images have been used without permission from sending an invoice to the person who has infringed the copyright for an amount that would normally be charged for the use of the images in the context in which it was used. I would normally bill at at least $50 image for website use, depending on the size and the context in which it was used - and that would be for a specified limited time. Some might charge less, some might charge more.</p>

<p>Sorry--here is a link.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.seanpeelephotography.com/">http://www.seanpeelephotography.com/</a></p>

<blockquote>

<p>You may file a claim in small claims court for the monetary amount you would have received if you had licensed the image(s) for use.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That assumes there is a breach of contract or other state based claim involved. Merely lifting images off of a site without other contractual elements involved does not create a contractual relationship to be breached. If there is no state claim for damages for unauthorized use of imagery, the claim will sound in infringement and must be filed in federal court<em>. </em></p>

<blockquote><em><br /> </em></blockquote>

<p>John--thanks. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.</p>

<p>Here i am not surprised at all. In printing on sees a whole "soup" of stuff as inputs in which the origin gets murky at best.</p>

<p>The spread of area covered appears abit bizzare from a LA persons standpoint; ie extremely wide.</p>

<p>"San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, Palm Springs and Temecula"</p>

<p>Thus if he is shooting in Goleta next to Santa Barbara today and next has to go to San Diego tomorow to shoot another gig one would need a George Jetson rig or consider alot of travel time and car wear. The net seems rather huge; maybe it is just to test these areas or state we will shoot anywhere in the SantaLosDiego area?</p>

<p>Is he passing off the images as his own?</p>

<p>Starvy--yes. Notice the copyright notice on his site.</p>

<p>John - since copyright infringement cases can't be filed in Federal Court unless the copyright is registered, what's the procedure for filing a claim for copyright infringement of an unregistered (but copyrighted) image? Does it depend on State law?</p>

<p>I guess images can be registered after publication, but if registration is done after infringement as far as I know statutory damages cannot be awarded. So you could then file with a Federal court, but the best you could do would be to recover actual losses.</p>

<p>I just went through this. A photographer in Russia contacted me to let me know my wedding images were being used by another Russian photographer to solicit work on his website.</p>

<p>I asked my friend Irakley Shandize, who is a fairly well know photographer there, to write him a strongly worded cease and desist letter in Russian, while letting him know he will be outed to the community at large if he doesn't comply.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Bob, that new Supreme Court case we looked at the other day might help if a class action were filed on behalf of a registrant with non registrants piggy backing. Of course the odds of both that happening and also gaining much for anybody approaches the laughable in this kind of instance but, in theory...</p>

<p>I'm thinking about a scenario where someone with a website with sufficient notice and warning can allow images to be lifted and used but subject to a fee. In other words, making such an act a unilateral contract. Impractical but interesting. Hmm.</p>

<p>BTW, the Russian image theft was from my Photo.net gallery also. I know this because that is the only place one of the images he lifted is publicly displayed.</p>

<p>Other may p.neters want to check if any of their imahes are being lifted also. Don't know how to insert a link here, and the address gets cut onto two lines if you want to look for your stuff.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.studio-sochi.ru/index.php?option=com_datsogallery&func=viewcategory&catid=1&Itemid=73">http://www.studio-sochi.ru/index.php?option=com_datsogallery&func=viewcategory&catid=1&Itemid=73</a>"</p>

<p>I once had some pictures show up published in a book without my permission or any payment to me. Having discovered this, I then had to register the copyright, showing proof that I was the original photographer (negatives), then threaten to sue. My adversary wasted over $6,000 in legal fees trying to defend themselves, then ended up paying me and my attorney $4,500 in out-of-court settlement. (I got $2,000 of this amount.) Because the book had been out for more than 3 years before I discovered the infringement, I was unable to pursue punitive damages.<br>

You can't lose your copyright by having images stolen; they are automatically protected by the Federal Copyright Act from the moment they are fixed in tangible (viewable) form, and copyright can only be transferred in writing. If you didn't give Mr. Peele written permission to use your images, you can sue for whatever percent of Mr. Peele's income that you can convince a judge that your images contributed to.</p>

 

<p>Amazing how fast google works - a link to this post already appears on page 1 when searching for the photographer's name.<br mce_bogus="1"></p>

<p>Nadine, Excellent work. Thank you very much for your diligence. The photo he took from me was shot in Dominican Republic.</p>

<p>Thanks for the notice. I am going to warn about Sean Peele in one of the major San Diego wedding forums for brides.</p>

I found more. Vince Crisler, Arthur Yeo, Lloyd Rowson, Derick Africa, Sergey Usik, Adrian Blanco, Birte Ragland, Carlos Ramirez, Clemson Chan, Michele Rivera. So far.

 

Edward--probably done all the time, but not as blatant.

 

Edwin--you are welcome.

 

Anyone who is affected--please tell us how you did.

<p>I did a google search for this photographer. You may also want to do a search if he is using your photo's because I found a lot of pages connected to this guy. Here's a few example's:</p>

<p>http://www.partypop.com/Vendors/4340337.htm<br>

http://www.photographik.org/surfplay<br>

http://www.101valetparking.com/Directory/Event_Wedding_Photographers/v4340338.htm</p>

<p>Hopefully none of the photo's shown on these sites have been taken from another photographer. :-(</p>

 

<p>Nadine,<br>

I guess this is how he repays you for helping him out <a href="00UAqM?start=0">HERE</a>.</p>

 

<p>States often have unfair trade practices laws with harsh penalties and/or allowing people adversely affected by such deceptive practices or competition to claim damages and/or other remdies. I don't know about California. It may be worth looking in to.</p>

<p>I bet that the local law enforcement where this guy lives, would be interested.<br>

If he is charging to shoot weddings, could this be viewed as fraud?<br>

If he's charging over a certain amount of money it would be a felony fraud thing, right?<br>

Sort of like saying "this gold mine has all this gold in it, buy it!" when in fact it's been "salted" with gold dust.<br>

I would also go after his domain's ISP, let them know this fraud is going on.<br>

btw, how many if any, of these photos are actually his?</p>

<p>One could always use a business tax deduction: if Mr. Peele thinks using photographs that do not belong to him is <strong>nice</strong> , the photographer may invoice Mr. Peele for $8,000 or so. If no payment is made, the next step would be to let Mr. Peele know that a 1099-Misc. will be filed with your tax return and Mr. Peele would have the benefit of a $8,000 gift [<em>as in a bad or uncollected debt</em> .] </p>

<p>The IRS folks have no mercy for funny income tax returns...</p>

<p> </p>