Friday, June 27, 2008

Stop Thief

I shouldn't be surprised at the lengths people go through to steal photos and just how devious they can be but this latest one has certainly got me shaking my head.

This is my original photo

1-DSC_3778..jpg


and this is what I found - with many thanks to a reader who gave me the heads up

http://kimkinsdietDOTblogspotDOTcom/2008/06/kimkins-recipe-cream-of-broccoli-soup.html

soup.jpg


The photo has been flipped, cropped and sharpened to an inch of its life.

I won't speak to the (lack of) character of this person - it is enough to point you in the direction of the this site - http://kimkinsdangers.blogspot.com/

The photo has been replaced with another stolen photo and I suggest you check out the site as most of the photos look like they have been stolen too. In fact in that broccoli soup post, the basket photo is from this post from Ashwini.


29 comments

  1. AnonymousJune 28, 2008

    They must have been warned--I just went to the site and it looks like there are NO pics of food any more. (Or am I missing it--??)

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is disgusting. I recently made the difficult decision to change my blog to short feed after I repeated found people publishing my whole feed. It's very annoying.

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  3. Have a look at tineye.com It's an image search engine - upload an image and it will find it (or similar images) anywhere else on the net - still in it's Beta stage. You'll need to request to be on their invite list, and their database is still limited, but it's got great potential. I've been waiting for something like this for years.

    A great way to track down stolen images!

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  4. I checked a couple of other photos (from the meatloaf and turkey burger recipes) and they have also just been reversed and cropped from the originals (the meatloaf from a recipe on the myrecipes.com site and the turkey burger from jemangelaville ). Bloody thief.

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  5. You can very easily tell all the photos on that blog are stolen.

    Every person takes photos in a certain style even if they are not aware of the way they do it. Also - lighting is usually consistent as well as crockery and locations.

    The pics on that blog are CLEARLY from all over the place. Shameful.

    Have you thought about putting a watermark on your photos? Dead easy to do with Photoshop :-D

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  6. AnonymousJune 28, 2008

    Wow I cannot believe some people. Whats wrong with linking to your orignal post and saying here look at this fantastic example of what it should look like. Thats a much better way of stealing. I know ive directed a friend over to your eat blog to look at the picture of the two hour poached eggs at Bistro Vue, but now they've checked out all your blogs and are reading them too!

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  7. AnonymousJune 28, 2008

    Hi,

    You should add a link to the original soup post.

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  8. Can't you report them to blogger for abuse? Their blog is clearly a bit ... well, more like a sales site than a blog site. If you report them, they might get taken down....

    The problem with tracking individual photos is that you really have to get lucky - and watermarks can be cropped out. When I consider that I've got something like 6,000 photos up on Flickr, the possibilities of abuse are fairly endless, and there's no way I'm going to try to hunt each photo down to see if it's been stolen somewhere.

    What's the solution?

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  9. Blogger does provide a means for enforcing your copyright claim: http://www.google.com/blogger_dmca.html describes the procedure for making the claim against a a blog. It involves either sending a physical letter of a facsimile, not an email. I'd say that it should take you about 15 minutes to pull it together, and then however long it'll take you to get to the post office.

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  10. AnonymousJune 28, 2008

    Thank you for the heads-up (what outrageous behaviour!) and all the info in the other comments; I'm now on TinEye's waiting list - with fingers crossed they're not overwhelmed with requests...

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  11. Ricki - the photos are still there

    Kalyn - it's a huge problem and to tell you the truth, it is thoroughly disheartening.

    Thanks Lorena - that sounds like a godsend.

    Jay - that whole site is full of ripped off material but she is a rip off merchant

    Very true Kitty - the varying styles make it extremely obvious that is not her work. I've thought about watermarking but honestly, it is next to useless. I know of photo theft cases where full frame watermarks have been removed - it doesn't take that much to do with the right amount of knowledge.

    Hi Katisu - i think it speaks to the morality of that person- she replaced my photo with a photo nicked from istockphoto!

    David - I have taken action but it is also important that everyone that has something stolen on that site and sites like hers, that they follow through and file the DMCA. It's a hard question about what to do about photo theft - the stats on flickr can be helpful in finding hotlinkers - be warned though, it can be a bit depressing to see how much has been stolen.

    Hi Gastroplod - tinyeye sounds like it could be very helpful

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  12. AnonymousJune 28, 2008

    I'm really sorry to read about this. Funny thing is that all they have to do is ASK. What's so hard about that? *sigh*

    Paz

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  13. I've been experiencing very much the same problem lately. The automated spam blogs are one thing, but when somebody manually goes through the efforts to steal your work and disguise it as their own is another entirely. I hate having to police the internet and sending jerky sounding emails to people, but its really aggravating. :-/

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  14. AnonymousJune 28, 2008

    You might check out picnik.com, a relatively new photo site that offers some great ways to imbed text on your photos. Not that my blog photos are all that noteworthy, but I put the title of each recipe right on the photo, as well as the copyright too, hoping I won't have a problem with photo theft. You can see some examples of the picnik enhanced photos at my blog: http://tastingspoons.com

    I'm also having problems with a couple of websites just copying my entire blog post onto their own. These are SICK people with nothing better to do. Good luck.

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  15. People can behave so scandalously! I had no idea you could see stats for your Flickr account, thanks for the tip.

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  16. AnonymousJune 29, 2008

    How...gross! The thing that bugs me most is that based on the heavy ad content, the dastardly "Kimkins", IF THAT IS HER REAL NAME, is probably making some kind of revenue with a site that only looks pretty because she's ripping off other people's stuff. I think you should totally report her to Blogspot. Borrowing a picture with credit and without permission is one thing if you aren't making a dime off it, but pretending it's yours is lousy.

    But I do give you kudos for not disabling right click and doing really annoying things like that - it makes your site much more pleasant to visit.

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  17. i find it amusing that they thought they could get away with it. i guess we're not dealing with the sharpest knife in the drawer, eh? i admire you attitude toward the thievery.

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  18. Good question Paz - I really don't know why so many people can't ask and they are the same ones that will get annoyed and call me "ungrateful" for asking that they remove my photo!

    Mike - this is the latest in a long line of photo thefts and it does get to the stage when you have to take a legal stand.

    Sorry to hear of your problems Carolyn - for the sploggers it's all about making money - they steal content to fill their sites which are usually full of ads in order to make money. If they are on blogger or have adsense then lodge a DMCA.

    Mari - they introduced stats a little while ago, it's not perfect but I have been successful in finding thieves that are hotlinking my photos, which in itself is a breach of Flickr TOS and could see them delete MY account - this is a huge loophole that Flickr could fix if they wanted.

    Melissa - Kimmer's real name is Heidi Daiz and I think there is a class action lawsuit in the works in regard to her shady diet scam - stealing photos is just another example of her character.

    Unfortunately Grace, most of the thieves get away with it.

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  19. Horrible. I didn't realise you've had a lot of your photos stolen before, Haalo. I know how disheartening it must be, especially when you go to all the effort and time of creating them to begin with!

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  20. This isn't the worst of it Y - everyday there's more stolen and it really gets to a point that I have to stop looking or I'll just get too depressed.

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  21. AnonymousJuly 09, 2008

    As haalo stated, Heidi Diaz is indeed involved in a class action lawsuit for fraud. Afraid that she not only stole your lovely food pictures but stole pictures from a Russian brides website to use as her "after" picture. The woman has no shame. Google Kimkins Scam to find out all the dirty details.

    BTW, the soup looks yummy and the only reason that she edited the picture is because she is selling a low carb/low fat/low calorie diet and the bread wouldn'tbe acceptable, otherwise she wouldn't have even bothered to photo shop the pic.

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  22. Heidi Diaz is notorious for lifting content to sell her miserably deficient starvation diet online. The woman has bilked thousands of people out of millions of dollars (not an exaggeration) and has used photos stolen from Russian Bride sites, Cooking Light, Food Network and many hundreds of others.

    She IS a THIEF and a LIAR and a SCAM ARTIST who is under civil suit and criminal investigation at this moment.

    And the kicker is? Heidi Diaz, aka Kimmer, is morbidly obese and has never lost weight with her own diet advice according to her family members.

    I hope some of you who have been her victims will join the lawsuit.

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  23. This website has a very long history of stealing content - pictures, recipe's, menu plans etc. There is a large group of people fighting to have it disabled both through the class action laswsuit as well as finding the daily frauds that Heidi K Diaz posts, be they stolen pictures or cartoons or recipe's that she tries to pass off as her own.

    I am not sure what it will take to stop this con artist but please do file the DCMA's. After a few dozen you would think her web host would ban her but so far she is sadly still in business.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Heidi Diaz, AKA Kimmer had the bread cropped out as it is a low carb diet (and low fat which combined with 800 calories a day is the border of starvation) and that would not have helped her much now would it?

    Great photos by the way to who ever took them. As despicable as she is, even she can't resist a good photography job.

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  25. Haalo, thanks for helping to raise awareness about this. It stinks when anyone steals your photos, but it's even worse when the photos are stolen to promote a scam. People are getting very sick from her DIEt, while she makes literally millions from it! I hope she'll be parting with a hefty chunk of it when the lawsuit is over.

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  26. I just realized some of you picture sleuths might be interested in this.

    Here is a link to the 'success story' photos she used that are really Russian bride models. You might get a kick out of it! But what we really need is to find the source of one particular picture. There is even a contest for it! Unfortunately the picture is broken in that post - here is another copy the picture. Can you help? We'd love it if you could find it!

    By the way, I found this blog by looking for photos I knew were stolen, but I'll be a regular reader now - great blog!

    ReplyDelete
  27. AnonymousJuly 11, 2008

    Everyone who has had any photos or other content stolen by Heidi K. Diaz (a.k.a. "Kimmer" a.k.a. dozens of other aliases) needs to contact attorney John L. Tiedt, who is spearheading the class action lawsuit against this woman.

    You can use the simple online contact form: http://tiedtlaw.com/overview.jsp


    He's got some of the actual news coverage of the Kimkins scam at the mainpage: http://tiedtlaw.com/

    Every report is just one more nail in the legal coffin that we the members of the antiKimkins community hope will prevent her from further scamming.

    On a personal note, I'm feeling guilty because I have what I call a "fake" blog -- it's sarcastic humor occasionally interrupted by actual news of the Kimkins investigation. I use a lot of funny images from Google Images.

    At one time I started a Credits list right there at the blog, to list each image and where it was found and the creator if known.

    But I got lazy and haven't kept the credits list up to date. Since it's just a stupid fake humor blog and I never claim to have created any of the images, I have a tendency to take the whole issue way too casually.

    Your "Stop Thief" blog entry is a reminder to get serious and to get my image credits list up to date.


    Best wishes to you all, and I hope you get "The Kimmer" shut down and put out of the scamming business.

    ReplyDelete
  28. AnonymousJuly 11, 2008

    By the way...

    For months (literally) a lot of people involved in the grassroots antiKimkins movement have been trying to solve the mystery of The Lady in the Lawn Chair.

    It's one of the fake photos "Kimmer" has used in her scams.

    While you guys are searching tineye for blog photos she stole from you, please also keep an "eye" out for this photo! If you solve the mystery of the Lady in the Lawn Chair your praises will be sung across the entire internet! Well, at least across the weightloss consumer fraud armchair activist section of the internet! :)

    Here's a link to the infamous photo of this unsolved mystery --

    http://biggest.search.ever.com/?skip_login=1

    (Great site belonging to AvenueGirl!)

    ReplyDelete
  29. Thank you all for the comments - I am just astounded that in this day and age of the internet people are still able to be conned by this "person" - what is worse is that people are still out there trying to defend her, I suppose money will make you do anything.

    Yust - thanks for the legal link, it is well worth investigating and hopefully this contemptible bottom dweller will finally get her comeuppance.

    ReplyDelete

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