Stolen picture used on a billboard in another country

Danielle innocently scans holiday card of her family, posts picture to facebook and her blog and a friend notices it used on a billboard advertising a grocery store in the Czech Republic.

No doubt this goes on all the time and sometimes through chance it’s caught. The assumption of the folks who steal the pictures is that if you reuse them in another country the odds of someone familiar with them finding out will be low to nil. But, now that the world is much more connected the odds of someone on facebook with friends in other countries means the odds change and this is an example of that.

I see an idea for a new web site: a lost and found for images. Photographers can post images there that they know have been stolen and folks who see images like this can post pictures of the stolen pictures in use. Hopefully the site would have a way for these two posts to match up. Of course, thieves might troll this web site looking for images. Gad.

[via Digg]