While we Photographers, the practitioners of the art of male erotica, were out dealing with the daily oddities of model's personalities & their demands for insane sums of modeling fees, deranged right-wingers writing un-Constitutional "laws", bible nuts belting us, crazy paperwork, & the other "joys" of modern day Photographers... Armageddon arrived.

The public have always believed nude pictures grow on a magic tree in a secret garden. That we Photographers know where it is and fill baskets full of pictures then have the gall to charge them. Models don't really want money to pose. Film doesn't  really cost anything nor does developing or prints. Lawyers don't   really charge fees for defending us during right-wing run "witch hunts". Nude pictures are suppose to be free! Says so in the United States Constitution someplace. Oh yeah, right next to where it says every man, woman & child have a God given right to own, conceal & use an Uzi (I'm joking of course. The Constitution doesn't say woman & children have any rights)

Armageddon arrived in the form of the Internet, The World Wide Web, electronic mailing lists, Newsgroups, Web sites, Scanners & electronic darkrooms. We Photographers have to obtain multiple forms of I.D. & a model release in order to market our images or videos. We have to go the extra mile to prove our models are of age. But law enforcement, those self RIGHTous guardians of decency, wink & turn a blind eye to the average schmo who scans pictures from magazines or prints & posts them mainly via Newsgroups & electronic mailing lists. Copyright, what's that? Models must be 18 or older, what a silly idea. They scan & post our work with the dedication of heroin addicts. They don't make money but their life depends on getting pix up everyday to appease the god FREE. Mammon's followers saw this & decided to cash in by opening "sites" where they gather the pictures & charge admission to the public to come in & take their fill of the pictures. No paperwork, no model I.D.s, no paying modeling fees or film costs or esp. fees to the owners of the images. Like the song in "Evita", the money started pouring in. And as if on a scale, as the money poured in to their side the money dwindled on our side. Some photographers went bankrupt. Some magazines & publishers went out of business. Cool huh! The greedy kill the golden goose. No studios, no magazines, what are they going to scan?

We have a choice. We either fight back and use every legal means to protect our valuable assets or we cease to exist.

PHOTOGRAPHERS UNITED is the first step. We become ever vigilant. We get to know each other as the Photographers did in the Physique era. We get to know each other's work. And as we travel the Internet & see our work & other's work being illegally posted on Newsgroups, electronic lists & web sites we report it on the Photographers United electronic list so the owners know & can take action. We have this site to share information & make ourselves a force to be dealt with. And that means we will confront web site owners, owners of electronic mailing lists & esp. the individuals who do the scanning. They, most of all are the cause of the problem. They operate from under the rocks where they hide thinking they are immune. Let's shed a whole lotta light in there & watch them run. If you see an e-mail posting or newsgroup posting of your work write directly to the poster. They are doing something illegal & their provider can be contacted & your lawyer can go after them!   You can write to Egroups & let them know a list is posting your property & demand they cease. Egroups will shut the list down. I personally confronted the owner of a list posting images I own & he turned tail & shut the list down.

Jim French of Colt has been a pioneer in this. From his early days of having 2-bit crook Michael Umbers duplicating his magazines, Jim has taken action. It's cost him a mint to protect his art & he has been a leader in confronting theft of his art on the Internet. If you don't do it who will? If you keep quiet others will make money from your art & you will go out of business.

Bad Puppy, where we make our home, is one of the sites where if you say "one of your contributors is using my copyrighted images on this or these pages" they will order the contributor to taken them down or will close the site. You can't just say my work is somewhere on your site. Bad Puppy needs to know exactly where & who is violating your copyrights. The problem here is that some contributors continue to put up work they know they have no right to. Bill needs to be more aggressive about this & shut down contributors who continue to do as they damn well please. Other site owners on the Internet either ignore you or say "fuck you". You then have your lawyer(s) go to court & fuck them. When word gets out that you don't tolerate theft of your art the stealing stops. Colt, Falcon, Bel Ami, The Brewer Brothers, Titan Media & others are now very aggressively protecting their assets & are going after those who steal their work

Some Photographers are starting to license their work. Bad Puppy has been doing a very positive thing by buying images from studios like Latent Images, Paulo, & Miami Studios to put up in the original models section. Others, like GayImage (the home of  the first Internet Superstar Shawn Fisher) & Miami Studios hire models & offer original work. It's policies like this, between photographers & servers,
that will pave the way for a new era where we all survive. Sites always have the option to do the right thing & contact Photographers
& ask about licensing images for their site. GayImage, Miami Studios & others are offering such at reasonable rates.
Helping those who create images benefits us all.

Fair use:
does NOT include reproduction and distribution without permission! The rule of thumb to use: if you didn't take the picture, you don't own the copyright, and therefore you don't have permission to reproduce or distribute by any means! Period!