\u2018Most of the offending sites were based outside the UK…’ amateur photographer Graham Stephen, 49, told AP.<\/p>\n
\u2018But I reached out with generous offers of settlement to 40 sites based in, or targeted at, the UK.’ <\/p>\n
Stephen, a software developer who lives in North Wales, said the copyright breakers – which included companies as well as individuals – would typically respond by incorrectly stating that \u2018copyright of an image only exists if there is a visible watermark’; and \u2018images found via Google searches are free to republish on the internet’.<\/p>\n
In 20 cases, added Stephen, the matter has been \u2018amicably resolved’.<\/p>\n
But of the remaining 20 UK sites from which he demanded compensation, \u201810% did nothing at all – all communications were ignored and the breach has continued’.<\/p>\n
Almost half (45%) removed the infringing image from their website \u2018but failed to provide any compensation for their breach’, said the photographer who believes there is a low appreciation of intellectual property rights and that copyright abuse is ‘widespread’.<\/p>\n
More than a third (35%) removed the photo but failed to reply to any communication regarding the photographer’s plea for compensation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A photographer was left in shock after discovering that his copyright had been breached by more than 130 websites that \u2018illegally used my photographs\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":324,"featured_media":5685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"product-category":[],"class_list":["post-7064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photo-news"],"yoast_head":"\n