I was on Facebook and see a sponsored post for 99pland.com so I had a look at their website only to find they have used 4 of my images for selling knitting yarn!!
I have made it known on their Facebook page that they are my images but I’m looking for some advice on what I can do.
Update: I thought I still had the originals but since I stopped selling yarn a while ago, I haven’t. I have however still got three of the 4 items in my expired listings on folksy so have taken a copy of them. In the properties it does show the time and date the photos were taken and what camera was used. I since have a new camera but luckily still have the old one that the photo’s were taken on (despite now having a gouge out of the lense, hence the new camera!)
File and Cease and desist taken down notice with facebook and with the company.
Perhaps Carol @Knittingtopia you could speak to Stephanie @StephanieGuy as she had something similar with her art being used by an MP (I think) without permission.
Outrageous! I imagine that they didn’t want to pay for the stock photographs of the wool and so found yours on a Google search and just used them. By the way (and I’m not saying you should go this far) you can take a County Court summons out yourself without instructing a solicitor. It only costs about £50.
Love Sam x
I received an email from them today saying they have taken my images down, I’ve checked and they have. They thought because they were found on Google they could use them! If they’d asked me, I probably would have let them use them since they are old photographs of items I no longer sell but because they are a bigger company than little ole me, they probably thought they could get away with it.
Thank you for your replies x
I’m glad this had a good outcome. I can’t believe they had the nerve in the first place!
So pleased to hear it’s sorted, I sure they knew what they were doing was copyright infringement and know full well you could so easily have sued them.
Well done for taking a stand! I bet they just thought they’d get away with it.
Not on my watch 
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So pleased to hear you had a positive outcome. Professional photography is expensive so it saved them money just popping onto google. Your time is precious and although you may see taking photos as secondary, this is part of your business and time is money.
Well Done for tackling this head on.
This is a crazy area. A friend of mine used an image from a film on an invitation to a dance she was promoting. When I tackled her about it (I am in the picture industry) she said she thought it was okay to use any images she found on the internet that she could drag and drop on to her desk top. I fear this is quite a widespread practice and large image libraries employ people to search for their images that have been used fraudulently. So more power to your elbow.
