A girl I used to be friends with wrote me the other day out of the blue. She had run across "me" on myspace but when she clicked the page she realized it wasn't me, but someone named wendy pretending to be me. What a weird feeling....she lives in the same town where I work and even pretended Febe was her puppy. The funny thing was that I had just gotten home from a photoshoot with a photographer who happened to be a big lawyer. So I started making phone calls and writing e-mails. Paul Parmer, another one of my photographers, is not only in law school but both of his parents are lawyers. And when you steal images that are copyrighted it is a really bad deal...she also did some editing herself which is tampering with a copyrighted material.
My friends started posting bulletins and photographers were writing her...and it all got taken down...then she started writing mean letters to everyone..
So Jason sent her this:
My name is J. Bailey and I own J. Bailey Studios. You might recognize my name as it is on several of the images you are illegally using on your myspace page. Also it appears that you have assumed the identity of ladygirljess. Copyright infringement and identity theft is serious business. Therefore I am writing you now and copying myspace legal to put you on notice.

First you violated your agreement with myspace by posting my images without my written permission.

MySpace.com Terms of Use Agreement

April 11, 2007

6.2
You represent and warrant that: (i) you own the Content posted by you on or through the MySpace Services or otherwise have the right to grant the license set forth in this section, and (ii) the posting of your Content on or through the MySpace Services does not violate the privacy rights, publicity rights, copyrights, contract rights or any other rights of any person. You agree to pay for all royalties, fees, and any other monies owing any person by reason of any Content posted by you to or through the MySpace Services.

6.4
The MySpace Services contain Content of Users and other MySpace.com licensors. Except for Content posted by you, you may not copy, modify, translate, publish, broadcast, transmit, distribute, perform, display, or sell any Content appearing on or through the MySpace Services.

This makes you solely responsible for your actions. Any and all cost's occurred by myspace will be passed onto you. As this is not the first time my work has been stolen on myspace I do plan to take full legal action.

I would also like to inform you that copyright infringement is governed my federal law, not local or state. Therefore, any and all cases must be settled in federal court. The penalties for these acts can be in excess of $100,000 per offense.

::Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of a copyrighted work. Even the simple act of photocopying a copyrighted image without permission can be an infringement. When there is an infringement, the owner of the copyright can sue for damages. All lawsuits for copyright infringement must be brought in federal court, not state court.

::The owner of a copyright can always claim whatever damages he has actually sustained as a result of an infringement plus whatever profits were earned by the infringer from the unauthorized use of a work. In addition, if the copyright to a work which was infringed was registered with the Copyright Office either prior to the infringement or within 90 days after first publication, there are alternative damages that can be awarded. The owner of the copyright can elect to seek the greater of either his actual damages plus the profits earned by the infringer, or damages of up to $100,000 plus attorney's fees and court costs. The total damages that can be awarded by a court depends upon the degree of willfulness of the infringer.


I hope this demonstrates the severity of the offense. Please remove any and all of my work from your websites and computer. All of my images are "Digimarced", so I can search them out anywhere on the internet.

My lawyer and I have obtained screenshots of your myspace page for our records. I have also notified ALL of the photographers you are stealing from so please expect the same from them.

J. Bailey

later that night she agreed to talk to me...and we came up with a resolution...I wanted a written appology and I wanted her to tell all the photographers that she was sorry...this is a blog I posted after the fact:
As most of you know I found out through a friend that my images had been "barrowed" by someone and she was posing as me on myspace. After a lot of help from friends and my writing her she IM'd me on yahoo and we spoke. I explained how upset I was and how much trouble she could possibly be in and we came up with a good resolution. I feel good about the resolution we came up with and think she isn't a bad person at all....she just didn't understand what she did. She wrote all of my friends that she had written anything offensive to and told them she was sorry and deleted everything.
Through this whole experience I actually would like to talk to myspace and possibly come up with a way to make it harder for people to steal images off their site. I found out that if you take a picture of yourself holding a peice of paper that has your URL and friend ID written on it and send it to the myspace tech people they can keep it on file so they know who the real YOU is and can then monitor for the use of your images anywhere else on myspace. Though I feel that is a good way to try and keep it from hapening people can still take your images...even if you have set them as private so you think they can't take them. As long as they can drag your image onto their desktop they can have your images. I am a member on several model sites that have effective ways of keeping your images safe and I would like to see mysapce take the same procautions.
I have no idea how to go about this, but I plan to find out and take some sort of action.
Though Megan ended up being an ok lady, there are people online that aren't and the thought of them posing as me or you is very scary. I would like to ask you all to help me in figuring out a way to go about this.
And if you EVER see any of my professional work on anyones site that is not one of my photographers please contact me.
I have copied the letter of appology Megan wrote me at the bottom of this blog. I hope that after our talk she will ge her own myspace identity and I will even help her get some images of her own that she can use to show her friends.
Thank you all for your help in getting this problem taken care of. Being so far from my friends it was really nice seeing how many of you still care about me.
Can't wait to see you all soon.
x0x0x0x
jeska


My name is Megan,
I have been using my friends computer for the past month. I had a myspace page, that I put Jeska's photos on. I didn't mean anything by it. I never made money off them, I swear. I just used them for my profile, because I thought they were pretty. I have spoken with Jeska, and have deleted all pictures from my myspace page. I did not have any on my friends computer. Jeska explained everything that goes into doing a photo shoot. I never realized how much work went into it. I am very sorry for anything I have done wrong. I never meant to upset anybody. I am begging you to accept my sincerest apology for all of this. I have already canceled my myspace account for good. I am begging you not to press charges against me, I didn't mean any harm. Once again I am sorry for any of this inconvenience.
Megan