On 30 Jun 06, at 7:09, Mary Sue Ittner wrote: > I came across my picture from the wiki of the plant I was working on a > commercial German site. It's the potential for this kind of piracy that has led me to put a copyright notice on each and every picture I contribute to the wiki. Not that I think this will make a devil of a lot of difference, but at least no one can say "I didn't know." In the interests of not obscuring the interesting part of each picture, I keep my copyright notices off in one corner. Of course this makes them easy to remove, but such is life. If the problem persists, it may become advisable for us all to put a watermark copyright notice smack across the face of the picture where it can't be trimmed off. This is actually fairly easy to do using masks and selective adjustment of hue, brightness, contrast, gamma, or whatever suits your fancy. Incidentally, the website is clearly the brainchild of an amateur whose understanding of "usability" is unusually shaky. Among other things, the long unindented list of plant names on the homepage is totally unworkable, while the site demands you have cookies turned on. Whoever built this site clearly doesn't have a clue, not about copyright, not about usability, and obviously not about acquiring and retaining customers. In a word, they're idiots and we shouldn't expect anything more than a seriously subnormal level of competence -- or is that incompetence? Those of you who have been victimized and who are in a malicious frame of mind may wish to simply send them a notice that your fee for unauthorized use of your pictures is X dollars per image, please send your payment in US dollars immediately or the bill will be turned over to a collection agency for action. I suggest that since the site is commercial, it would be reasonable to set X at $500 or so. Complaints to the ISP that hosts the site may also be in order, with the overt object of having the entire site taken offline. Don't get mad, get even. -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island