Copyright theft

Having studied copyright law to Master's level, I'm well aware of the US DMCA (in fact it together with its UK and EU equivalents were the subject of my undergraduate dissertation)

The warning messages at the beginning of DVDs are not peer-reviewed scholarship, and are neither statutes nor court judgements. They therefore have no more authority in interpretation of the law than Wikipedia does. Feel free to read the UK's Copyright Act (particularly ss.16-27), there is no reference to 'copyright theft' but there are lots of references to 'copyright infringement':

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/contents

[EDIT: The DMCA doesn't contain any offence of 'copyright theft' either]

Copyright infringement is illegal, but copyright infringement is NOT theft.

I wouldn't want to try to teach anyone to suck eggs, but feel obliged to mention this as I can't see any previous citation on this thread.

There's a great (free) reverse image search called 'TinEye' at www.tineye.com (also available as a plug-in for anyone using Mozilla Firefox, IE, Chrome or Safari as their internet browser) which searches the web for any instance of image files being duplicated, irrespective of their size or image file format.

I'm not sure how comprehensive its search may be but, hey, it's better than having to check every web page yourself!! Hope it's useful.

Sorry, it wont (AFAIK) detect use of images embedded within Flash sequences...

Eventually I found a copyright infringement form on Gumtree which had to printed and faxed back (who has a fax machine these days?) and the offending advert was gone within an hour. I had to give a contact email address for the guilty party to use to contact me so I created 'robertisathievingscumbag(@)penciloflight.com'!

Great email address .

I'm glad Gumtree responded so quickly once you figure out how to complain.

The fax part is to put people off complaining of course.

I used to have Winfax on a PC it was much better than a fax m/c.
Faxes from Word etc. were sharp and you could also scan and fax.
I always thought it strange that faxes from a PC never caught on.
Probably because it was a good idea

There also used to be a small box that you could buy to receive
faxes when the PC was switched off and you downloaded them later.
It also operated as a Fax-On-Demand machine.