There's a person down in FL who is a big presence on ebay and seems to specialize in "pirated" images. I'm not really sure if there's anything that can be done about it but it really ¤¤¤¤es me off to see images for sale on ebay that I own the negative to. Someone bought an original Frisco diesel slide for a small fortune a couple of weeks ago and last week, I see this guy selling 4x6 prints of the same image. I guess the internet is both a blessing and a curse. Whatever the case, this is just wrong. I've written him about it and he has a real attitude (putting it mildly) If you see something show up out there that is from something you own it's happening to you. Maybe if enough people bitched him out about it he might think twice. Most of his stuff is pretty bad also.
The only person who can take any real action against him is the copyright holder of the image. The problem here is that owning the negative isn't on the same footing as owning the copyright: if you are not the photographer and dont have clear rights to do so you can't sell copies of the slides either - in the case of things such as slides the image is what is protected, not the physical media on which it is made. (I can buy a digital image from a museum, but can't then copy that image and resell the copies; in the same way I cannot buy a book and put it through a colour laser printer at work and start selling copies of the book) On the other hand if you are the photographer, if you were assigned copyright/reproduction rights by whoever sold you the slides, or under some circumstances even if you simply commissioned the photographs then a strongly worded letter to ebay will probably deal with the issue - they don't want to be put at risk by allowing someone to sell pirated goods on their site. However you may have to let them know about every single image and give each auction number to get them all pulled. /A
