More tedious cataloguing of innocent bloggers and dastardly companies who used my photos without asking, this time from the first six months of my second year of travelling (September 2011 to March 2012). I'm hoping there'll be fewer of them as I get closer to the present and beat them to it, but then I'll probably be compelled to search again in a couple of years' time and see how things are getting on. I'm bracing for frustration, let's dive in.
Singapore (cont).
Singappalling (Monday, September 26, 2011)
Well it's gratifying to see my unpleasant photo of shower floor sputum hasn't been banded around because I'm not sure what diseases would be carried with it, but a load of people inexplicably liked the look of a hasty photo I took of Long John Silvers fast food restaurant.
Philippines
Lil' bastard (Monday, October 10, 2011)
I thought my pictures of Taal Volcano were quite nice (and it was a bastard getting there to take them), but the only site that's pinched them so far is an unknown one that's apparently down, due to a pending investigation into malicious content.
I know, I complain when they steal them and then I'm disappointed when they don't. This must be how a village's remaining virgins felt after the Vikings were through raping and pillaging their friends and neighbours - what did I do wrong? If my website goes down promptly, it'll be due to that malicious content. Sorry.
Japanese burn (Saturday, October 22, 2011)
My tasteful black and white photo of an anonymous building in Intramuros has somehow ended up on a strange page alongside Phil Collins and hoax alien photos. Google tried to translate the Turkish for me, but it crashed. I think there were too many non sequiturs to handle. I'll throw in an irrelevant porn gallery entry for good measure.
Borneo
Mm, that's nice (Friday, October 28, 2011)
Here we go, the first thieving travel agents of the new year. Please don't book your holiday with them; they are twats.
Cruise for a conk (Thursday, November 3, 2011)
Yes, I did catch some nice lighting there, didn't I? A couple of small-fry tour operators helped themselves.
Curious orang (Monday, November 14, 2011)
I wouldn't have thought my blurry, overcast photos of orangutans were worth stealing, but a few Malaysian travel companies were apparently desperate enough. They're probably just the same company under different names. I've crossed paths with a couple of them before.
Bignose strikes again (Thursday, November 17, 2011)
Thailand
Like a rubbish Venice (Thursday, December 1, 2011)
It's not clear what that blog is. Just a jumble of stolen images I guess, and they have the cheek to slap their watermark on everything.
They're grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-good (Monday, December 5, 2011)
Okay, so technically I didn't take this picture, it was one of the volunteer staff using my camera, but... that is actually me. Why are you using my happy face to front your French website?
Boring probable answer: I'm the only person OCD enough to type out the sanctuary's full name, rather then just using the 'Tiger Temple' shorthand. For more evidence of my OCD tendencies, see this page you're reading now.
If you thought that was weird, what the hell sort of relevance does this photo have to this website? I said something in the post about efficient production lines, so that blog author felt the accompanying image would suffice without looking at it or anything. This is the most baffling one since Facebook.
Crime and gunishment (Thursday, December 8, 2011)
This wasn't a surprise, my mannequin torture photos are always popular with sick searchers. Obviously I'm not similarly sick for enthusiastically taking and annotating these photos in the first place, nope. Look, there I am again.
Sufferin' Sukhothai (Saturday, December 10, 2011)
The same Thai press release posted in three places about Sukhothai's place on an ASEAN heritage trail and a German T-shirt shop with no relevance whatsoever. The Thai one at least credits me via '1.bp.blogspot.com,' so I guess they're off the hook.
Cambodia
You Wat-n't like me when I'm Angkor (Thursday, December 15, 2011)
A guest house has half-inched and cropped my balloon photo for their own nefarious ends, while a similarly cropped picture of a headless, armless Buddha has been plastered over Facebook for... some kind of event, maybe in Poland. That's the language where 'w' can be a stand-alone word, right?
That one with the big faces (Sunday, December 18, 2011)
Several more thefts from the Angkor Archaeological Park, including Spanish and Vietnamese blogs that might be corporate or personal, it's hard to tell with all that ad clutter. More prestigious is one of my photos getting picked for inclusion as a lecture slide for a talk on non-Western art history at Bethel University. Wherever that is.
If it's broke, don't fix it (Wednesday, December 21, 2011)
Just the one, from another site I can't really get my head around even though it's in English. Something about yoga. S/he tinted it blue because that makes it more magickal.
I'm pleasantly surprised that more of my Cambodia temple photos haven't been pinched, but judging by the pages of similar search results that came up, I guess there are already plenty out there in the mainstream for travel agents to steal as they see fit. Maybe it'll be a grower over time.
Thailand again
Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Chang is (Friday, December 30, 2011)
Most of these photos are posted by a Russian guy on a couple of forums, where he admits he hasn't had time to upload his own photos of Bang Bao yet so found some similar ones on the internet. Almost a year later, he still hasn't got round to it.
I'm a bit annoyed about some Spanish websites passing around my picture of a cat and snake facing off, and crediting each other as the source.
South Korea
Literally everything I spent last year (Monday, January 2, 2012)
Yes, it does annoy me that the top result for my picture isn't me, but more that they didn't even label it with the right continent. The Korean blog is weird, inserting my photo of some proboscis monkeys between loads of pictures of cash. There were a couple of pictures of cash in my post, which is presumably what brought them here, but they evidently preferred the monkeys. Well, they're only human.
We'll tear your Seoul apart (Thursday, January 5, 2012)
One of my photos from Gyeongbokgung Palace is being used to illustrate the attraction on Wanderfly, whatever that is. It has at least two users. Another's been praised as one of the best pictures of Gyeongbokgung, which would be more of an honour if other pictures in that list weren't a bit rubbish.
Holiday (Monday, January 16, 2012)
A few photos from Seogwipo Harbour plastered over a Romanian woman's Korean-drama-obsessed blog, but she put a link to my site. THAT'S HOW YOU DO IT! You duplicitous Asian travel companies could learn a lot from Romania.
Jeju - The Isle of Wight of South Korea (Thursday, January 19, 2012)
But you didn't, did you? There's no point debating intellectual property rights with the Vietnamese, that'd be like trying to educate a Malaysian about sexual equality, it's just an alien concept. I like Romanians a lot more than Malaysians today.
oh! NO~ (Wednesday, January 25, 2012)
I'm showing up on the internet again, this time in the slightly more incriminating position of riding a massive cock, though it's 9000% more innocent than that sounds.
Excerpts from the forum discussion:
Re: Well cya
by Alex:) » Sun Oct 21, 2012 3:27 am
LOL i googled land of cock, and it came up with pages about chickens and also this
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J46EkYmWy70/T ... -korea.JPG
Alex:)
Re: Well cya
by jesse595 » Sat Nov 10, 2012 1:41 pm
and alex, i've seen that picture before
How have you seen it before? Where else is it showing up that Google isn't showing me?
Taejongdae is a good day to die (Wednesday, February 1, 2012)
Now I can be racist against Indonesia too. The Korea Tourism Organization (Indonesia) evidently has the same level of professionalism as the Bali Tourism Board when it comes to stealing my bloody photos.
Busan-d one more thing (Sunday, February 5, 2012)
Travel companies, wallpaper sites, a Korean drama blog, a forum and a beach towel website. I'm tired now.
You're snow fun anymore (Monday, February 20, 2012)
This pisses me off - two Thai travel companies (probably the same one) have bundled some of my snowy Seoraksan photos in with those presumably taken by other non-corporate bloggers to promote their shitty tours. I quite liked these snowy photos, and now feel like a father might feel when he discovers some repugnant Thai guy's corrupted his daughter's innocence.
Some stuff's showing up semi-irrelevantly on dedicated Monument Mountains and National South image galleries (are these keyword-generated galleries useful to anyone?) and there's some website I won't check out because it could destroy my computer. I'm not quite willing to be a martyr for this.
The Valley of the Kings of South Korea (Friday, March 9, 2012)
Relevant and irrelevant wallpaper sites. I don't even know who that is.
Never mind the Bulguksa (Monday, March 12, 2012)
Bloody Russians.
