What would be your reaction?

On the internet. This is a bit of a rant, I don't know how else to express my thoughts on this right now. Very recently a friend sent me some of my photos in an email. He found them on the yahoo group Vintage Military Aircraft United States. I had uploaded them to an aviation website within the past month, and already someone had harvested them. I have joined this group just to see what it is about, and in a friendly way to make them aware that I knew they had my images. Since joining, I have been deluged daily with photos this fellow scrounges up, I assume mostly from the internet. He then emails them out to a large mailing list. In my opinion, this group seems to be an unabashed source of stolen images. I say stolen, as he made no effort (of which I am aware) to contact me before sending out my image. Admittedly, there is no evidence of the guy making money with this, and he isn't claiming they are his photos. This has just happened since this thread started, and it is just the latest thing I have seen regarding image theft on the internet. The chances of a photographer who puts their work out on the internet actually availing themself of copyright protection in cases like this is minimal. How can you afford to do it? Who wants to spend the time looking for unathorized use of your images anyway-it's unpleasant! When it comes to technology, we see daily that the government is way behind the curve when it comes to enforcing honest and safe use of emerging products-just look at the runaway human reproduction "industry" (Octomom), and the climbing injury rate due to text-driving.

On giveaways and contributing. I have given prints to a few museums and collections over the years. There is one collection, run by an histprical society, that is open to transportation researchers and I have always been impressed by the photos I have seen that were attributed to them. I'm delighted to say they accessioned a good number of my prints some years ago. (Who knows, they may get the slides and negs when I'm gone-I have advised my wife as much, and I may have put it in my will). I have additional "overflow" negs and slides, and have looked for an organization/museum to which they may be contributed. It isn't easy. There is the New England Transportation Museum nearby, but even though they have been around for a decade now, the lights are on but nobody is home. When I made a personal inquiry into their ability to absorb some negatives and slides they asked me to be the archivist. I'm not able to do that (I am busy archiving my own stuff), so I had to scratch them off the list. No sense in sending photographic materials to a place if they are just going to sit around unfiled in a desk. Well, most of you don't have collections like this. BUT, if you keep pressing that shutter release often anough and long enough, you may face some of these issues...or evolved versions of them. (I can see wi-fi cameras being hacked by passerby who walk away with copies of your onboard image files and you don't even know it happened!) Think I'll take the cork outta this bottle an just say, "Friggit!"