Need your help...

[CrystalMirror]

The hosting company for http://www.shaketheanthill.net/ has apparently given in to pressure from RLS and the site is back up - with my photo still on the front page.

This is copyright infringement, pure and simple, but what can I do about it? Do I have to start a lawsuit against the hosting company? And if so, how is that possible when they're on the other side of the Big Pond?

Someone please advise me. I will *NOT* have my work used to promote fraud!!!

[walking-soft]

 I have been doing research for quite a while and it does not surprise me anymore what is taken, be it pictures, names,and false everything that is on line, even information that is very dangerous to people who may not have the knowledge it's on line.

Are you saying the picture is of you but the contents of the web site is not??? How did they come to have it?? Google in" marks coopywrite laws.It's very informative and perhaps you will know what to do from there. Hope this helps.

[CrystalMirror]

The picture is not of me. It is of Roy and Titus, but I took the shot. Roy is using the photo to "prove" that he has the right to speak on behalf of Hopi - or at least one of them. That is the fraud.

He did the same thing with another of my photos last year and I proved to the web hosting company that I own the photo by showing them that it had been previously published (in 1991) with credit given to me.

This time the photo (from 1994) has not been previously published. Roy has copies of many more of my pictures that he took with him when he left to start his world tour "to share his 'Hopi' teachings", without my knowledge. I am told by European friends that he regularly shows these photos to people he wants to impress.

Yes, we lived at Hopi for a while, and Roy was thrown bodily off the rez for being an ass. He tells people that the ones who threw him out are agents of the "dark forces" and the US government and that the "real" Hopis love him. Which is a load of crap. But there's no way for anyone who wasn't there at the time to know the truth, so they believe Roy. He can be very charming and persuasive - particularly when he smells money.

Who knows how much money he has collected after showing my pictures around. It really pisses me off and I want to stop it somehow.

[Priscylla]

When any individual or entity, Google, Yahoo & others included, take possession of items belonging to another, without permission, it goes beyond mere Copyright infringement.
  Such is an act of Criminal Theft of Intellectual Property and should be treated as such, via appropriate Courts of jurisdiction!

[Sparks]

Crystal Mirror also wrote elsewhere about the same thing, with title that i added above:

Caught RLS using another of my photos on his site and wrote to the company that leases server space to his hosting company. Now because this is his second copyright infringement offense the site has been REMOVED. Well, at least for the time being.

One small triumph!

[Sparks]

The hosting company for http://www.shaketheanthill.net/ has apparently given in to pressure from RLS and the site is back up - with my photo still on the front page.

The linked website does not exist any more. Problem solved?