You Made Me Do This

OK Internet, I didn’t want to do this, but I had no choice. If you want someone to blame, I give you Sara Kiel.

I have posted a series of pictures I took in the Photo Gallery section of my website. Most of them are of me and my friends, but some of them are pictures of Ann Arbor and the Michigan campus. I posted both a thumbnail and a full-sized image, so people could view the detail and possibly save the file for themselves.

I was happy to do this, but one of the rules of the Internet is if you use someone else’s picture, you are supposed to ask. If you don’t ask, you should at least cite where the original picture is located. I have done this in the Assignment: America section of my site and haven’t received any complaints from those individuals so far.

Now this is where Sara comes in. I noticed the other day when searching for some Ann Arbor pictures that one of my pictures appeared on her site. It was the one I took of the “Welcome to Ann Arbor” sign a few years back. I immediately recognized it, and who else does that in town?

So I clicked on her page to see if I received any credit for the photo. Nope. In fact, she downloaded the file and uploaded it to her site, so it even appears that it is her picture. But she didn’t bother to resize the image on the page and it looks really amateurish sized down. So I sent her an e-mail asking her to credit me for the photo. No response.

I was really hoping she would reply back and claim it was her picture all along. I planned on asking where that specific sign was located and laugh when she guessed wrong (the answer is on Ann Arbor-Saline Road near the I-94 overpass). But Sara took the cowardly route and ignored my follow-up message as well. Since the Internet is pretty much the Wild West, that is as much as I could do without getting a lawyer, so I had to move on.

As a result of Sara stealing my picture, I have decided to take measures to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I have added SchickHappens.net watermarks to all my full-sized images that do not have me in them (example). This will ensure no one can hijack my photo and put it on her site in the future and if someone is too dumb to notice, I can call her on it.

I am also relinquishing control of that particular photo to Ms. Kiel, as I don’t want people thinking I stole it from her. I plan to take a new picture soon, add the watermark, and upload it in the old version’s place. I wanted to do this before Sara came along, as that sign now has a second component for another Pioneer High championship that was added since I took that picture. I haven’t decided if it’s necessary to add them on the A:A pages yet. I have yet to see those photos linked anywhere else, so I’ll hold off for now.

I’m sorry to all those of you who enjoyed the pictures without my obnoxious branding on it; Sara Kiel ruined it for everyone. This is why we can’t have nice things!