Let’s take a behind-the-scenes look at Live And Let’s Fly today and strategize together how I can go after folks who are stealing my content. Sadly, it happens more often than you might think.
People Are Stealing My Content. Time For Lawsuit?
Theft is as old as the human race and therefore, it comes as no surprise when lazy and crooked people steal the work of others and misappropriate it as their own. As a blogger who has been at this for 15 years and published over 10,000 articles and 160,000 pictures, there has been a LOT of theft, though it seems to ebb and flow.
A reader just alerted me that my trip reports have been copied, verbatim, and images taken, then posted on Facebook under the handle Steff Ben.
There are dozens of flight reviews and thousands of photos stolen…
I’ve screenshotted everything and filed a take-down request.
This guy, if he is a real person at all, is quite active in stealing content online:
Then there’s the Taboola ad. Hundreds of you (no exaggeration) have let me know that an ad has popped up of my dad and me (stolen from my blog) promising, “Seniors Can Now Fly Business Class for the Price of Economy Using This Hack.” There’s another version that just has my mug on it taken on a JAL flight last spring. Sometimes, both appear at once:
Clicking on the ad opens up an article written by “Olivia James – Thrifty World Traveler” that seems linked to Capital One:
I’ve already had a forensic expert examine the photo and we can see that it was stolen from my blog and the date it was stolen.
Another image (of me) has also been taken in a “flight attendant shows how to fly business class for the price of economy” ad…
And I’m sure there are many, many more instances (feel free to bring them to my attention in the comments section below).
My Legal Options
This is not my area of legal expertise, though I’m willing to familiarize myself with this area of the law to explore my rights and remedies.
However, the LALF audience is diverse, deep, and smart…so I figured, why not ask you first?
It’s easy enough to eliminate the stolen content “whack-a-mole” style, but these Facebook posts, for example, have enjoyed some serious eyeballs…revenue that I won’t see.
I’m wondering what my practical options are to pursue damages…
The Taboola ad is more interesting. The Online Shopping Tools app uses the Capital One logo…which makes Capital One potentially liable as well.
The contact information for this website/app is 3525 Piedmont Rd. N Atlanta, GA 30305, an apartment according to a Google Street View image:
CONCLUSION
I’m tired of the near-daily emails or texts from folks wondering if I know that my dad and I are in an “ad” online. I’m tired of content I spend countless hours writing and photographs I line up way too early for (like an idiot) so that I can get unobstructed cabin photos are taken by others without my permission.
Any thoughts on how I can best handle this are welcome…
Not much. My wife has her X/IG content stolen all the time and posted under other peoples names. She tried adding a watermark to her images with her name. That helped for a bit but people just started cropping them out. IG is better about taking these down when alerted. X less so (insert snide Elon comment here). Not sure what FB does.
Good luck
@Cy … +1 . Agree to wish good luck to Matthew .
Although if the hackers are in Asia or India or elsewhere , as seems probable , then ask the lawyers what to do ?
My suggestion is do not contribute to politicians who allow this . Contribute to only politicians who stop this .
Do we want politicians to stop this?
How would they stop this?
@Matthew … Laws , my friend . Laws enforced .
Not ex post facto laws or bills of attainder , which were used to ensnare Trump .
The entire internet has been a gift to hackers from Asia and India .
Telling us you’re both an esteemed law school professor and the top law school graduate at Trump University without saying it.
Trump breaks the laws, not enforces them. Just because you like the criminal doesn’t mean he’s not a criminal.
@ Matthew — Lawsuit.
Who do you file a lawsuit against? Some dude in Uzbekistan who owns nothing other than a laptop and an Internet connection? Large mega platforms that harbor these people and have countless lawyers and just laugh at you?
Sure, you can whack a mole with DMCA take downs costing you countless hours and endless roads to get anything done. Only so that they will come back under another account and do the same. Who cares?
If you post it, you lost it. It’s that simple. The better investment is to make your content unique, real, and engaging. And to accept that others will try and use it for whatever. In the end what they are doing is not causing direct harm and they are probably making pennies on it and have chickens and sheep living in their house.
Very soon I predict more and more will migrate less from socials and return to a focus of getting content direct from news, blogs, and sites they trust.
Why don’t you just watermark the photos?
Why should I have to do that? I hate watermarks.
You shouldn’t have to do that, but it will help reduce theft. It is probably the quickest and easiest way.
It will take time, resources and money to constantly monitor, identify and go after those who steal your content.
Matt, I think step one is to connect with a forensic IT company that specializes in such security matters. Job one would be to determine the real origin of the Steff Ben site to determine if it is overseas or not. Even though it may look stateside, some of these are good at that obfuscation from abroad. That will make a difference in your approach.
3525 Piedmont Rd NE is an office building that seems to have a different entity in nearly every room. Including a law firm that seems to be a general “attorney of record” for hundreds and an IT company that does web site design and maintenance. So willing to bet it isn’t really whoever is behind the site.
I know where that is, deep in the middle of the Butthead area. I can go crack some skulls next time I’m in town.
I reported his Saudia post on Facebook immediately, both to Facebook and to the mods, but they don’t seem overly enthusiastic about shutting it down as it’s still there
For the unauthorized use of your images on ads, submit a California Consumer Privacy Act request to remove the pictures. If they fail to comply or respond, escalate to California Privacy Protection Agency.
I had no idea that you were so litigious.
Must be new around here.
HAHAHAHA
Yeah I hate it when people get all bent out of shape by thieves stealing their livelihood.
Call Delores Blasingame
I’m sorry you are going through this. I had no idea how prolific the thieves are. I cannot help in any way but I wish you lots of luck!
I’m only a 2L who’s taken property law, but you definitely have an actionable claim for the use of your likeness. The bigger question is how much time (money) you want to put into stopping these clowns. I think it’s really a judgment call.
I take issue with Matthew being used in those ads for a travel hack. As far as the Facebook copy of reviews, I am less bothered by it.
While Matthew may hate watermarks, that might be the way to mark his review photos though the written content would be still vulnerable. It may be possible to just cover up the watermark if not remove it. However, simple people like me don’t know how to remove watermarks.
Matthew’s wife is in a health care related profession so she may know that lots of people try to pretend they are a real doctor or the “real thing”. Chiropractors, optometrists, nurse practitioners calling themselves “doctor” are among them. Chiropractors can do dangerous neck manipulation. In addition, they can go beyond massage and start to treat diabetes and other conditions with quackery. Optometrists who stick with glasses and contacts are fine but some try to convince states that they can do surgery without medical school or the medical school basic sciences and clinical experience of the whole body.
I think that you need to obtain specialist legal advice, not in terms of what’s in the statute books, but in terms of assessing the likelihood of recovery from the thieves and the sites hosting the content.
As others have said, there’s no point spending time and money chasing anonymous Facebook users who can’t be traced and/or realistically made to pay. To give you an example of how paralysing a simple legal process can be, I’ve had someone crash into my car in April (it was parked and I was inside). Even though we’ve identified the culprit and we believe he’s also being charged for drink driving, we still aren’t really in a position to sue him and his insurance company won’t pay as it insists that the car was stolen (it belonged to his mother and he declared it stolen after abandoning the scene)…and that’s from the perspective of a claimant who drafts contractual documents as part of his day job and has engaged the services of a solicitor specialising in tort law.
Even with the best understanding of the substance of applicable law, trying to second-guess how it all works in practice may well be a mug’s game.
@PM … The politicians are responsible because they allow this . Only the politicians have the ability to pass laws .
I’m already protected by copyright law. The problem here is not the lack of regulation.
The problem may be a lack of enforcement against the sites .
The politicians coddle and protect the sites from disagreeable oversight .
Enforcement is costly. Resources are finite, even if some commies don’t want to believe that. Money is not unlimited unless you love inflation and running the proverbial printing presses on overdrive. So it comes down to prioritization and what provides more return on the time/money allocated for prosecution or litigation. When you have as many laws, regulations and extensive case law and real world circumstances as rational people face in the real world, the wishful commie-like thinking of “prosecute them all and sue all the rest” just doesn’t fly as easily as the unrealistic types would believe.
Love your Trump University-issued JD. Maybe you can put it beside your “I hate commies but think like a commie” confession. 😉
Belated Happy New Year. I am sure you will entertain me for some time to come, so thank you.
Well that stinks. I was plagiarized once in my blogging day–by a BoardingArea blogger, no less–and shamed the blogger into taking down the post. It sounds like you’re up against a more automated machine that won’t be as responsive though. I wish you the best of luck.
On the bright side, this really is a testament to the quality of your content!
Lawyer here (though not a specialist in IP law). For what it is worth, I think your post serves as a really clever cease-and-desist letter to the thieves! If they read the blog to steal your content (and are not a bot), then they are on notice that you are considering legal action. It would be kind of funny if they stole this post and posted it as their own (in a dark humor way)!
I think your strategy depends on who is behind the theft. As you have pointed out, this is a matter of remedies. For the Taboola ads, I think you should consult with an IP lawyer, since that is an entity that you can probably recover from in a conventional lawsuit (and a rational actor, so to speak). They may know from experience the nature of the relationship between Taboola and CapitalOne and whether you could realistically hold CapitalOne accountable for those Taboola ads.
For less sophisticated actors like Steff Ben, I think you probably can’t do much legally unless you can identify him as a person in the US. You might refer him to your local FBI or US Attorney’s Office. I don’t know how high this ranks on their priorities, but, if you can come up with a solid amount of monetary damages and it is significant enough, they might be interested in taking action—even if the thieves are abroad. I know that some US Attorney’s Offices have been filing civil actions and/or criminal complaints against foreign actors who are involved in significant scams, especially foreign crime rings. Their reach is limited to the extent that treaties and the state of bilateral relations permit. It is a long shot that the feds sue for you, but, hey, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take…. If you can speak with an Assistant US Attorney, they might be able to suggest some other options to you or other useful information.
Outside of legal action, I’d consider posting links/ads to your blog on Steff Ben’s Facebook page and other websites. There is always some risk that he could be so bold as to sue YOU, but that would be a gamble on his part, since he would be identifying himself and opening himself to be countersued. Plus, any reasonable person (i.e. juror or judge) would see that you are the originator of the content–not Steff Ben. I would seriously ponder any potential risks to this before posting on his page, but I think it could be effective. It would redirect any of his views to your blog and hopefully divert his audience towards your blog. I work in an area of law where I often deal with bad actors who do things that are legally actionable by law but cannot realistically be sued due to a lack of assets. The goal is usually to try to cut out the benefit that the bad actor is deriving from their misconduct. Hence, if you can deprive him of the clicks and web traffic from which he is deriving a profit, then you are hurting him and materially disincentivizing him from continuing to steal from you.
I hate that you have to deal with this problem. I have really enjoyed your blog since I found it in 2020, and I am frequently amazed at your ability to produce high-quality content on a daily basis while practicing law. It goes without saying, the ideas I provide above are just the product of generalized brainstorming, not legal advice…
It’s said mimicry should be taken as a form of flattery, but it’s not when it causes commercial harm or damage to reputation.
My guess is this “Steff Ben” is a Russian/Eastern European/Chinese/Indian bot, and so your chances of being able to get any kind of permanent resolution are likely close to nil, sadly. Law enforcement isn’t going to do anything to help, unless the bot farm is linked to some sort of organized crime syndicate that they’re interested in busting. I do sort of like the idea that one other commented suggested – fight fire with fire by putting links to your site in his feed.
For the Taboola ads, maybe try taking it up with Capital One? Does CA have a deceptive trade practices statute that you could potentially use as leverage?
IIRC there was something similar that happened to a blogger on Saverocity where the plagiarist was rather well known, being on BA I think. I don’t recall how it ended but it was an improvement from the initial situation if I remember rightly. Not the most helpful info I realize but there’s a lot of other less-than-practical suggestions above as well.
Guess your house is still standing after you last post about how you love cali and high taxes and bunch of regulations and what people to feel sorry for you for wildfires which could of easily been prevented in any other state. Mr. DEI. Oh yeah i hies Augutus or whatever horrible name you gave him still can’t watch cartoons but may he can understand that living in a far left state means his house burns down!!!
May they bury you in shorts when you pass. It’s going to be hot where you’re going.
Hello Matthew,
Fellow boarding area blogger here, I had this issue occur a lot on Instagram. The only way I stopped it was unfortunately watermarks. I decided to use my logo as the watermark on Instagram it stopped.
On the blog I’ll use the watermark occasionally:
https://nerdkatravel.com/the-venetian-resort-las-vegas-joins-forces-with-hyatt/
I’ve found that most won’t go to the extra effort of cropping out the watermark. If they do the photo just loses proportion. I hope this helps!
Thanks
Ahmed
Your readers appreciate your content. What can we do to help protect your conent?
It might be fun to research some of the other content (the stuff that isn’t yours on their posts) and alert other bloggers about this theft.
PS: I almost laughed out loud at your response to the suggestion of watermarking your photos, so true. Why should a person have to do that.
As a practical matter (“practical” being the key word) there’s nothing you can do. It’s unlikely there is even an identifiable “person” behind any of this. Save your money. And your time.
The sad fact is that if you put your content online, there’s always a way for someone to steal it; the point is to make it difficult and time consuming for them to do so. For example, assuming that there was no way for a bad actor to scrape your content from within the website HTML by running a script or to even see the source, they could still sit down with a pen and paper and copy your content longhand from the screen.
No real effort to run the script but a lot of effort to copy it and then re-key it somewhere else. Unfortunately, website technology was not developed with content security in mind.
A few years back I was considering building a website but I decided not to because I couldn’t think of a way to protect my content using website technology and pursuing legal actions against bad actors would be constant, time consuming, and costly.
The best way that I could think of to deliver content that would require some effort on the part of bad actors to steal was via the subscription newsletter model (not necessarily paid) using Adobe Acrobat and a registered user scheme; far from perfect and the content could certainly be stolen by someone intent on doing so, but it would require some degree of time and effort.
Not content, but I had someone try and take my domain name which is my first Initial and last name.com
I paid a $500 retainer to a lawyer specializing in intellectual property and he wrote them a letter and they went away. I did not seek any damages , just wanted them to go away. It worked.
I didn’t know it was HUNDREDS of us informing you, Matt. That’s rather wild that your blog has such a large readership that hundreds went out of our way to let you know about this.
I found it rather amusing they not only used your face, but your father’s so it’s rather flattering isn’t it? NOBODY would use my face on an ad, I can tell you that! 🙂
I can see damages from the ads not in that they’re “stealing” from you, but rather they are so tawdry with such lame AI written articles that recommend perhaps getting a loyalty program if they want to fly business class.
I personally was just letting you know for amusement because I don’t see much damages in that your blog is now getting recommended in google news and other feeds and these images may also help ironically to drive search algorithms to find your feed.
That said, here’s one geek idea:
REUSE those affected photos yourself OFTEN on your blog. Post ANOTHER article: “The most popular stolen photos from my blog!” and maybe put some additional info in them. This will cause the images to rise even more in the algorithm and while some, such as myself, clicked on them out of curiosity, it’s sort of like the phishing Rick-Rolls that teach consumers to be more discriminating in their content: We should avoid obvious trash clickbait and it takes time for consumers to learn.
Is this the same man who doxxes flight attendants and unlawfully publishes their ‘protected by copyright’ photographs? Who agreed to be the beneficiary of the silicon valley advertising and data mining industry that’s he’s now whinging against in this sad post?
Stand by whilst I reach for the tissues..
I’ll speak a little legalese since I know that you are an attorney as well.
I see at least at least a couple of causes of action here under California law. First, you have misappropriation of likeness for commercial gain (Cal. Civ. Code 3344). You also have a claim for intentional interference with prospective economic advantage for the loss of revenue. And from what you’ve described, There also appears to be Lanham Act violations (which will let you get into federal court, if you so desire, without having to be concerned about diversity of citizenship). As you know, that also means that even if you file in state court, there’s a reasonable possibility that the case would be removed to federal court anyway. And there is certainly a conversion claim here. There may well be other claims as well.
Finding the actual identity of the culprits may be difficult, but you can always file against one of them and then DOE in the remaining defendants under CCP 474 once you figure out who they are – whether through discovery, investigation, or both.
I’ve litigated all of these types of claims in state and federal court. Feel free to reach out
I concur with what Andrew WV said.
Can you write about your pursuit of these thieves? If so, it may make sense. Otherwise, you may spend time and money for nothing. Collections may be difficult (except Capital One).
I am always in the camp of holding people accountable for their actions. However, the cost of doing that has to be considered based on how costly and time consuming our judicial system can be.
I had content stolen, tracked them and actually spoke to them. I asked them to take it down, which is all I wanted, and they said, “yeah, no, go ahead and sue me.” The reality was they were in another state, and I didn’t have the funds or time to sue them.
I now look at it the way the retail industry looks at it…shrinkage. A certain percentage of your “product” is going to be stolen. Find you tolerance level for it and don’t worry about it unless it’s used in a defaming way, or they take everything.
So, IP theft, fires, and an unresponsive Frontier. Hope next week is better.
Re: Matthew “Why should I have to do that? I hate watermarks.” We all hate many aspects of many aspects of new technology (e.g. 16 character unique passwords, 3 factor authentication, automatic telephone menus with 8 steps to navigate each with 6 options, boarding pass scanners that scan mobile boarding passes MUCH more slowly than had copies, Watermarks, etc.) but it’s all unfortunately unavoidable necessary evil cost-of-doing-business if we want to safely use that technology. So as much as I also hate my suggestions, here goes.
It’s likely the thieves want the path of least resistance, content that’s quick and easy to steal and repost. I don’t know if any of these ideas would decrease theft but they would seem to make verbatim copying and reposting more difficult and if it’s difficult and time-consuming enough maybe the theft will stop. If these suggestions do not stop the theft, maybe the stolen content when posted will have many indications that it’s your content (which might be small consolation) and/or many indications that function as referrals. With the understanding you may hate it just as much, perhaps a disclaimer/explanation as to WHY you’re doing these “anti-theft” procedures as the first paragraph of EVERY blog post, your (loyal) readers will understand, just like Kyle’s “If you are considering booking travel …”.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!
Pictures: Live and Let Fly – Partially transparent Watermark (sorry) “Live and Let’s Fly” diagonally across the middle of every photo, maybe even 2 of them in an “X” configuration which might be difficult to remove when reposted.
Text: “Content Original to Live and Let’s Fly” as a Watermark (sorry again) diagonally, or 2 in an “X” configuration, across every paragraph and/or as the subscript or superscript last line of EVERY paragraph, again would require more time and effort prior to verbatim reposting.
Many of us, particularly those of us who appreciate your content, feel your pain. Good luck.
Thank you for your kind words.
I live in NYC. You have an address of the perp in Atlanta.
I know a guy.