I just found a photo taken without my permission from one of my cat´s profiles and used on LOLcats. If the culprit had asked my permission I may have been willing to allow it. What are the rules regarding photos we post here? Are they in the public domain now? Is it plain rude, or actually illegal to reproduce an image posted here without the owners permission?

MichyD, I´ve scanned the terms of service in an attempt to find answers to your questions with no success. I´ll consult Admin about this issue and let you know. Illegal or not, it´s most definitely rude and hopefully it was not a UC user who posted the photo. Were you able to see a name?

Hi marcatmm, the user on LOL identified herself as Laura Li, but I searched under that user name here and couldn´t find her. I also sent an catmail to admin to ask, but I wanted to post in the forum so other users would be aware this has happened. I contacted LOL cats as well and hopefully they can contact that user and let her know she has violated their rules - anyone who posts there needs to have consent for all materials they post. Thanks!

From reading our Terms of Service, I got the impression that it would be LOLcats who would be responsible for the photo being used, not UC who would be responsible for the photo being "borrowed" (or whatever word you care to use).

I´ve also contacted Admin and asked what the UC policy would be if the LOLcats poster happened to be one of our users. Admin would be able to trace the name Laura Li in the UC user records. Due to the time difference, we´ll have to wait until tomorrow to hear.

I think there´s an option to report credit violations on Lol Cats. Maybe if you do that they will remove the picture. It´s such an iffy thing putting your photos online because anyone can copy it and use it as they please and you would probably never even know about it.

It is definitely not the right thing to do, but if you do not have a copyright on your photo, it is public domain, I use a program that I run my photos through, an put my own little mark on them of course. If someone is so desperate to seal your photo, and that´s exactly what they are doing, and they have a photo program. They can always take your mark, away
My Mark

According to Admin, it´s LOLcat´s responsibility to deal with the offender if there is in fact anything that they can do.

Also, there´s no method of searching the names users provided when they joined UC and even if there were, the name provided to UC might not be the same as the name provided to LOLcats.

(There´s that cute little sparkly black cat again!! His eyes look like he´s been staring at the computer screen too long. )

For this cases, especially on my (our) blog, I use watermarks, see this example of Brownie with the iron (it wasn´t turned on), if you see the corner, It will be a watermark everyone can see clicking too see the picture bigger, but maybe the image-stolers wouldn´t:


Click to make bigger
(Note: For those who ask, here´s the post where brownie with the iron is performed Photohunt #124: Wrinkled (you can translate )

Sometimes, when we do graphics to friends, we make very, very tiny watermarks so stolers won´t know they will stole copyrigthed content, muahaha!

Remember, important content must be copyrigthed like in this Creative Commons License, so the one that want the picture must attribute you like something like this:
Graphic by MichyD

I hope this help you so no more problems can be here

Thanks everyone for your comments and advice. I did contact LOL cats and they promised to contact the user and remind her of the rules. She did actually credit the photo to me (my name on this site, which is how I knew it was here she took it from). What bothered me was that she didn´t ask my permission to do it. I´m still torn about asking them to take the photo down. If she were profiting from it financially, it would be more cut and dried and I would certainly take further action. For now, just a warning to other members - our photos are available to the unscrupulous. Here´s the image in question (from Howie´s profile). It´s okay, you can laugh.