Easy stealing during DIGITAL ERA
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During the film era, there was not that many cases about stealing images compare to our new era of digital photography.

These days the crooked people under the good name of Pro-Photographer could steal any images thru internet very easily. Then they could change them little bit and present them as their own hard work to few fools.

I DO have a proof.

I managed to caught a thief during my daily critic/comment writing among images. [(K=37501) on <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:date Month="3" Day="3" Year="2006">3/3/2006</st1:date>]

Then I managed the spot this.

http://www.usefilm.com/Photo_Forum/11/1012217/ (http://www.usefilm.com/Photo_Forum/11/1012217/)

Now examine those images for yourself and judge if I am right in my reason.

Good luck.<o:p></o:p>
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Kambiz, I'd say that you're right to suspect a theft in this case. Given how often this happens, I'd even say it's likely. But I think it's a bit premature to label the person a thief simply because his work contains elements of another photograph.

There are entire websites dedicated to stock photography, where photographers post their images for anyone to use. Often, they come with restrictions that indicate you should contact the photographer if you use their image publicly.

One such website that I use (http://www.sxc.hu) has a set of "standard restrictions" that state you must notify the photographer if you intend to sell print, use it in a website that promotes a product, or to mass produce items such as T-shirts. The standard restrictions specifically allow you to use the image "In digital format on websites, multimedia presentations, broadcast film and video, cell phones."

Under this set of restrictions, the use of the image you pointed out would be allowed. So while theft on the web is common, so is sharing of one's photography. In the case you pointed out, I would suspect theft, but until the original photographer is contacted to find out, I wouldn't say that it's the only possibility.

- Joe U.

Not sure what to make of the code to find the first image...

This isn't the first case of it happening, and while it doesn't come up often we've probably all read about it. Posting photos anywhere on the web is a risk. Some people put watermarks on them to try to protect themselves, but even with a basic understanding of Photoshop someone else can do a fairly decent job of cloning them out (to most eyes). Making the watermark cover the whole image makes it tough for the rest of us to look at. Yes, it's a risk...