Legal Questions

[Regs]

I came across a web ring of sites (mostly pornography) that like to post pictures of people from well known dating sites including ones that allow somewhat more distasteful pictures.

Some pictures include underage teenagers who of course, sign up on these dating unaware or ignoring the fact they are suppose to be of legal age.

The owners of the web ring say when someone posts a picture on a online dating site, their pictures no longer are private property and become public for any site to share. This pretty much revolts any privacy privileges they might have to keep the pictures on the online dating sites where they belong. And the pictures of the minors or any others for that matter are only removed if the owner of the pictures request for them to be removed even though they were not notified in the first place they were posted on such sites.

This scares me that if I go on a online dating site, my pictures would be smothered all over the net with links to my profile.

Is there any course of action I could take? Anything in the law books?

 

[Mo0o]

"Came across" ?

And its pretty hard to prosecute any of those companies because most of them are all foreign, and unless they're running some massive child pornography ring, the US government isn't going to do anything.

PS, no one will take YOUR picture and smother it on the internet

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: Mo0o
"Came across" ?

lol

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: Mo0o
"Came across" ?

Yes, users have notified me of these sites.

 

[FleshLight]

What's wrong with having your pics "smothered all over the net"?

Isn't that what you would want if you're e-dating in the first place?

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: FleshLight
What's wrong with having your pics "smothered all over the net"?

Isn't that what you would want if you're e-dating in the first place?

I'm mostly concerned for my friends who notified me of what happened.

 

[JustinSampson]

When you post somthing online you still own the copyright to it. It does not become "public". If the site you upload the pictures to has a TOS that says somthing like "Pictures uploaded to become property of XYZ Inc. ", then you would be out of luck, since you don't own the copyright.

It still wouldn't be "public", but XYZ can do anything they want with it, including making it "public".

This is comming from someone that works in the Internet field and has been involved in several copyright lawsuits (never on the recieving end luckly).

 

[jadinolf]

Link?

I'm kidding.

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: JustinSampson
When you post somthing online you still own the copyright to it. It does not become "public". If the site you upload the pictures to has a TOS that says somthing like "Pictures uploaded to become property of XYZ Inc. ", then you would be out of luck, since you don't own the copyright.

It still wouldn't be "public", but XYZ can do anything they want with it, including making it "public".

This is comming from someone that works in the Internet field and has been involved in several copyright lawsuits (never on the recieving end luckly).

Im not talking about the online dating site. Im saying that there are sites that are taking these pictures from the "XYZ" site and posting them on their own sites for their own profit without requesting permission from either the owners of the pic's or from the the online dating site.

Would that be illigal in any way?

 

[Drakkon]

read the TOS of the dating site but usually pictures become property of the site and it would be illegal to download and save them and post them on antoher site, if they are hot linking however then they are doing nothing wrong, i mean if anything there helping the site by directing more traffic there.
I say if ur desperate enough to post a pic to a dating site your entitled to having that pic spread across the net, no matter how gross, incriminating, or compromising that image is, unless of course you are under age and its doing something pornographic, otherwise suck it up and stop whining and hope your pic makes it to a photochop contest

 

[Regs]

lol, they are not my pictures pervert! lol.

 

[Regs]

And they do more than just hot link my friend.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Regs

Originally posted by: JustinSampson
When you post somthing online you still own the copyright to it. It does not become "public". If the site you upload the pictures to has a TOS that says somthing like "Pictures uploaded to become property of XYZ Inc. ", then you would be out of luck, since you don't own the copyright.

It still wouldn't be "public", but XYZ can do anything they want with it, including making it "public".

This is comming from someone that works in the Internet field and has been involved in several copyright lawsuits (never on the recieving end luckly).

Im not talking about the online dating site. Im saying that there are sites that are taking these pictures from the "XYZ" site and posting them on their own sites for their own profit without requesting permission from either the owners of the pic's or from the the online dating site.

Would that be illigal in any way?

If it actually is happening the way you describe, which you really have no way of knowing unless they specifically told you, then yes it would be a copyright violation. But you personally would probably have no recourse, the dating service would.