Hey! Someone's using my truck picture in their eBay ad!?

One one hand, I say let it go.  Karma and all that.  I steal things too.

On the other hand, I could ask them for a header as payment, which I would hang on the wall and it would make a good story (I sold the truck years ago).

Thoughts?

Meh

Take it like i do with all my pirated build thread and pictures (amc and s10 and duster are on FAR more media and websites than i put them on): its cool my build is getting press. If i didn't want it taken, id watermark the pictures. And not publicly post all ober al gores internet. As long as others dont claim my work as theirs.

Andy's autosport used a pic of my Firefly for years. When I asked them not to, they said, you're Canadian, right? Go berkeley yourself.

Hahahahaha.

Perhaps the bigger life question is why were you ebay searching parts for a truck you don't own anymore?  

No - someone saw the ad, recognized the truck, and sent me the link.

Is it hotlinked? Because you could have some goatse style fun with that.

Is it your picture or a pic of the truck you used to own? 

kazoospec said:

Perhaps the bigger life question is why were you ebay searching parts for a truck you don't own anymore?  

Because GRM, duh!

I had a well known off-road suspension company "steal" one of my photos back in the day. Not only was it not their photo, but not a single one of their products was on the Jeep they were using to show off their product.

They blew off my emails requesting that they remove the picture, until I bluffed legal action. They took the picture down, and now ~90% of my stuff online is watermarked.

Slippery said:

Is it your picture or a pic of the truck you used to own? 

It's -my- picture -I- took of the truck -I- used to own, during the time -I- owned it, parked in front of -my- work. Currently posted on -my- website.

No, it's not hotlinked off my web site.  Otherwise I'd be quick to change it to something deliciously naughty.

In reply to SkinnyG :

If you want to get mildly nasty, send a DMCA takedown notice to ebay.

If you want to be somewhat polite beforehand, send the seller a notification that they're using your copyrighted image and that you either expect some money or that they remove it, stat.

I found someone selling refrigerator magnets on eBay with photos of cars on them, and one of the photos was one I took of my own car.  I sent them a note but got zero response; it was a fairly low resolution photo anyway so hopefully no one bought one from him.

One of our competitors once ran an ad with a recognizable shot of my car in it, lifted off the internet. It had been done for them by some random graphics designer who didn’t  understand the terms “fair use” or “copyright infringement”. Boy, were they embarrassed when they found out. Never ran the ad again.

More recently, one of our competitors used a stolen photo from one of our events on his social media. When the photographer  asked him to take it down, the vendor claimed he didn’t know it was copyrighted. Might have been a more plausible story if he hadn’t cropped the watermark off...