Thief!

Place: Taco Bell
Lunch: Extreme Cheese & Beef Quesadilla, Crispy Taco, Nachos Supreme (no tomato), Pintos & Cheese, Mug Root Beer

This Taco Bell is like thirty years old and is housed in a building that was originally a Sambo's. They "remodeled" a couple of years ago when they brought in seats and tables from another Taco Bell that was either demolished or remodeled. This style and color hasn't been used by Taco Bell in 20 years or more. There's a reason Taco John's dominates this market.

So yesterday I was browsing Google News and noticed a story about CKE (proud owners of Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s) suing Jack in the Box to try and stop a commercial of theirs that CKE alleges implies “Angus beef” comes from the anus of cattle. (Jack in the Box has the funniest commercial campaign on television. I really want to see this ad.)

But it wasn’t so much the article I noticed as it was the picture that accompanied the article. It was a picture of a Hardee’s that I had taken several years ago and included in a review on my own website. The Money Times had lifted it from my website and took it as their own. Without my permission.

So I clicked the link for a closer look. Yep. My photo. At the bottom of the page they had a comment form for the article. So I posted a comment.

“The picture used in this article was taken by me, lifted from my website, and used without my permission. As you might imagine, I'm not terribly fond of you.”

This morning, I checked the website again and discovered they’d resolved the problem…by banning my IP from accessing their website again.

No problem, I have access to other computers. So I found the article again and discovered they also changed the picture to a generic CKE burger photo that they probably lifted off somebody else’s website.

That’s more than the Bloomington Pantagraph did when they lifted a photo I took for an article of theirs. They just ignored me completely. Same goes with several sleazy owners of drive-in theatres who took many of the unique questions and answers from the “Rules of the Drive-In” page I wrote for 99w.com and adapted them for their own sites.

You know, it’s not like The Money Times and the Pantagraph are websites set up by some punks with no morals and too much time on their hands (like said drive-in owners). One is a major publication owned by a global organization, and one is a primary daily newspaper. The same types who would be screaming and crying and issuing “cease and desist” orders through lawyers if somebody took their story and republished it WITH credit.

But it’s perfectly fine for them to take stuff from some average guy’s site and post it as their own.

And it’s not like I would have said “no”. I’ve given permission for my photos to be used in magazines and websites previously. No problem.

The bizarre thing is that I stumbled upon both instances completely by chance.

If I really went digging, what else would I find?