12 Sept: PAN has received an email from the ‘webmaster’ at Buce Juice – here it is:
Hello, your talking about our site www.bruce-juice.com on PA news, I thought I would give you the respect of a response. I suspected our site was being targeted by media groups, and tonight I found out why after reading your copyright watch. I speak to web-masters of other image sharing sites and they haven’t had any emails, as yet.
If there is copyright issues on our site, it’s only fair the owners will want to get to the bottom of it. I’ve learnt a lot over the last few days, dealing with many emails, removing a lot of content etc..
We have received emails from various media/news groups concerning our site, some conclude with simply removing content and us explaining where the images came from (I assume they take that info and attempt to follow the breadcrumbs back to source) , others however, are quite happy to hold us responsible for a planet-wide hacking conspiracy, with no talk other than layers.
I found 3 variations of “Copyright Watch!” about Bruce Juice, and the one thing that truly troubled me, is that there is talk of us having some sort of FTP or server access which we exploit to gain access to images, THIS IS NOT TRUE. All the images on our site are already openly available
on sites such as Imagebam, linked to via forums and blogs.
After explaining to one agency where we get our images from (I won’t mention names as they where very helpful) , they suggested our site’s pitch wasn’t doing us any favours, and our wording was also an issue.
We have revised our copyright notice, and our Facebook fan page text. The lady at the above mentioned agency agreed that the main concern was the source, which we helped point in the right direction.
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There is clearly a problem with the images being shared. What confuses me is the lack of talk aimed at getting to the bottom of their leaks. If someone is illegally hacking in, tho more likely untrustworthy employee’s or customers. Then this should be the focus, this is the source of the problem.
I am positive that imagebam, imagevenue etc will store records of the IP’s used to upload copyrighted images, with that information an address can be found, which I suspect would probably be the address of a customer or employee, or worst case – a hacker.
-ENDS-
We replied:
‘Hi Bruce juice, thanks for getting in touch – you have completely missed the point, I will be happy to help you understand the commercial aspects of editorial and commercial photography but you will have to call me’. … nothing from them yet.
NB – BBC reports: File-sharing site hit by hackers
9th Sept: One large photo agency will be confirming today if their legal team will be chasing Bruce-Juice.
– 6 photo agency owners have confirmed their images are on the site
– One agency owner from LA commented: “Hi Will, Yes Bruce-Juice.com are one of the many sites that rip us off wholesale on a regular basis. Their Quantcast shows only around 20K monthly traffic so we stopped thinking about them as a viable litigation.
If someone else has any ideas on how to squeeze money out of them or shut them down, I would love to hear them…….thanks”
– Another from the UK: “Our content is on this site. I have had a skim through this morning and identified 4 big studio shoots so far.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Let me know the other agencies and planned action”.
– Another agency boss: ‘If any other agencies are taking legal action we’d love to know, as this website is exposing a scandalous way of stealing’.
8 Sept:
A number of photo agencies have contacted PAN about the activities of https://www.bruce-juice.com
The site offers hi res photo downloads, mainly celebrity photo content – for free. – ‘Welcome to Bruce Juice, the UK’s biggest celebrity image sharing website’. Rex Features in the UK first raised the alarm in an email to PhotoArchiveNews.com yesterday, we then sent an ‘Alert’ email to pap agency owners including the large general news agencies. Four agencies have now confirmed their images are available on the site without permission or arrangement.
It appears bruce-juice.com or a contributor to the site has tapped into an unsecure FTP server at a newspaper or magazine in the UK. If your content is on the site without permission let us know – will (at) photoarchivenews.com – and we will put you in touch with all agencies affected.
This is the Bruce Juice copyright notice!: ‘All images on bruce-juice.com featuring individuals of ‘celebrity’ and ‘public figure’ status are believed to be in the public domain. bruce-juice.com does not claim ownership of any images featuring individuals of ‘celebrity’ and ‘public figure’ status. bruce-juice.com DOES NOT accept responsibility for it’s users downloading material that is later found to be an infringement of copyright laws’.
