Someone stole some photos off my website, and now is filing DCMA take down notices against my website claiming copyright.

That's the world we live in now.

I literally cannot just share my photos with the world without becoming a target for some complete arsehole. It's not enough that people try to hack into my social media accounts every day, or flood my mobile with scam calls, or try to rip me off when cancelling a tour... I now have to waste my life responding to this shit too.

I feel like there's been a massive rise in "gonna act like an arsehole because I can" over recent years.

It's worn me to the bone. It's relentless. We've built a world where people have decided it's no big deal to literally destroy other people because their personal gain is more important.

Everything is under siege. All the time. You can't just opt out and go listen to waves on the beach. Some arsehole is gonna find you there too and find a way to make life shit for you.

@ewen Ugh, this sucks. Seems like the public sphere (or rather, the open web) has become weaponized to such a degree that it's becoming hard to exist on there.

I wonder whether the DMCA takedown requests are some crappy LLM-to-court-filing scripts that some shady outfit is running in the hope to shake you down. Indiscriminate patent trolling, now coming for the rest of the web.

I don't have any good solution for you unfortunately, but I share your outrage.

@moritz_negwer

Someone has an Only Fans account that at some point stole a bunch of photos (of Norway in this instance) and the list of websites they're claiming against read like a shopping list of stolen loot. My website doesn't even appear on the first page.

@ewen @moritz_negwer

This is the next level up from Marco Verch, who would merely sue people who incorrectly credited his CC2.0 images.

Calling them leeches is an insult to leeches, they have uses.

Hey hope things get resolved quickly for you.

@ewen @moritz_negwer

A slightly amusing thing for me though was when an external agency tried to argue against what I recommended and provided a (poorly written) contractors report to support their end.

Half the uncredited references I had written (for work, so no name). Requested they provide the references to confirm. Probably got three times what I earn too I bet.