Photo copyright violations - help!

[tennis maynard]

Due to a sleep disorder I am often awake in the middle of the night and often spend the time researching orchids on the web. Trichopilias are often the subject; last night I discovered two photos of mine pirated from my site and displayed (though now in black and white) on a commercial website (based in Italy, I believe) as their stock photos. You can view these here:

The original pics of T.sanguinolenta and T.turialvae are from my page and can be seen at:

I recognized both of the other trichopilia pics (what can I say? I'm a tricho nut!), one as belonging to a well-known US commercial grower of my acquaintance (the other I've seen on Jay Pfahl's IOSPE page but I don't know if the copyright holder may have also given permission to ARO, though I doubt it)and notified them (they responded and noted that they have now found additional pics of theirs illegally used on the site also) as well as emailing the offenders directly concerning my two pics, politely noting my ownership and requesting they remove the pics. Here is the reply I got (in toto):

photos are in black and white: are you God and these orchids are yours? > please don't write again

I'm both dismayed and surprised by the reply. Any recommendations as to options for further action short of an expensive lawsuit? This is new territory for me; I have been asked for the use of some of my pics before and have always allowed it in noncommercial usage, but I have made a general practice of denying permission in commercial cases. There is a copyright notice displayed on the index page of my site; I guess I'll have to go to the trouble of putting it on every page, but I don't think that will stop the problem as far as intransigents like this are concerned.

Anyone have any experience or concrete suggestions in this area?

Tennis Maynard

[al]

I did a whois lookup that unhides email addresses to expand your contact options. Domain name: AMERICANRAREORCHIDS.COM Created on: 2006-01-22 Updated on: 2006-04-12 Expires on: 2008-01-22 Registrant Name: ROBERTO GREGORELLI Contact: Roberto Gregorelli Registrant Address: Frazione Grello 76 Registrant City: Gualdo Tadino Registrant Postal Code: 06023 Registrant Country: IT Administrative Contact Organization: Antonio Della Rocca Administrative Contact Name: Antonio Della Rocca Administrative Contact Address: Via dell'Agora' Administrative Contact City: Perigia Administrative Contact Postal Code: 06124 Administrative Contact Country: IT Administrative Contact Email: [e-mail] Administrative Contact Tel: [phone] Technical Contact Organization: Technical Support Technical Contact Name: Technical Support Technical Contact Address: Via A Ponti, 6 Technical Contact City: Bergamo Technical Contact Postal Code: 24126 Technical Contact Country: IT Technical Contact Email: [e-mail] Technical Contact Phone: [phone] Technical Contact Fax: [phone] Primary Name Server Hostname: DNS.BZONE.IT Secondary Name Server Hostname: DNS2.NIC.IT

I could not tell from this info who was hosting this domain. So I did a trace route and it resolved to the mail server: mail.zucchetti.com.

I think this is weird. A website on a mail server. It seems to me that the server is grossly misconfigured or something unnatural is going on. (But I really don't know....) However the trace route did provide you with another name and company contact info for addressing inquiries.

Registrant: Zucchetti.com S.r.l. Soluzioni per il Commercio Elettronico [e-mail] +39.03715941 Zucchetti.com S.r.l. C.so Vittorio Emanuele II, 21 Lodi,LO,Italy 26900

Domain Name:zucchetti.com Record last updated at 2006-05-30 10:29:46 Record created on 1997/6/28 Record expired on 2007/6/28

Domain servers in listed order: ns1.zucchetti.com ns2.zucchetti.com

Administrator: C.so Vittorio Emanuele II, 21 Lodi LO, IT 26900

name:(Paolo Camia) mail:( [e-mail]) +39.03715941 Zucchetti.com S.r.l. Technical Contactor: C.so Vittorio Emanuele II, 21 Lodi LO, Italy 26900

name:(Znet Hostmaster) mail:( [e-mail]) +39.03715941 Zucchetti.com S.r.l. Billing Contactor: C.so Vittorio Emanuele II, 21 Lodi LO, Italy 26900

name:(Znet Hostmaster) mail:( [e-mail]) +39.03715941 Zucchetti.com S.r.l.

Registration Service Provider: name: ZUCCHETTI.COM srl tel: [phone] fax: [phone] web:

I agree with Eric AND I want to add that you should try not to obsess about something that you can not fix easily and cheaply with shame and a few properly targeted emails. Reka might be a lot of help here, since she does live in Italy