Hey guys, this is Kristen Wheeler, a fellow photographer and I really need your help and support. A long long story that I can explain further but I really need your help and help from the industry right now. Please feel free to repost, pass along, whatever.

About two months ago I found out that a website www.silvextribal.com was using a bunch of my images without permission along with another photographer's that I know. We contacted the guy who owns the site, but to no avail. I am a member of PPA and I contacted them right away and they have been sending letters to this guy as well as the website hosting company to take down the site. The hosting company sent us a final response stating that they cannot "get involved in the matter". Funny since they have a very strict section on their website about copyright infringement. Well after sending another letter to this guy, today we finally recieved a response and the lady from PPA sent it to me and then told me there is nothing more they can do. So now I dont know what to do. This is the copy of the email from this loser at Silvex:


"Dear Maria,

Thanks for your email ..this is the first letter which we received from you..we didnot receievd any other letter from you before.You have mentioned in your letter about the unauthorized used of pics. First of all these pics are not unauthorized ,we got the pics from one of our client we cannot disclose her name as its confidential .These pictures are all originals if they had copyright then there must be marked with it .All the professional photographers with copyright do mark there pics with water mark or etc. So how somebody will know whether they have copyrights or not .We also paid 400US$ for those pics and more over we invested another 800US$ in the website designing .

I would also like to know how Kristen Wheller claims that these pics are his/her copyrights.

Regards,

Imran
(Design Manager)
(silvex)"

This is just simply not true. First of all, it does not matter if the images are watermarked or not. Second of all, the bellydance community is very large but also very tight-knit. I am a well known phtographer in the bellydance community along with Jeremy Shane who's images were also stolen. We found out through the community rather quickly that this guy from Silvex has been in trouble for stealing images numerous times before. So now we dont know what to do. The models in my images are all close friends of mine and none of them by any means gave this guy permission. I dont know what else to do or who else to go to and I am hoping you can help or point me in the right direction. My husband was laid off of work and I was laid off of my primary job and we are hoping not to lose our house right now, so the other problem is that we have no money. Nothing. So if we did hire a lawyer it would have to be someone who would take their cut after we won the case. I am begging for your help at this point. I dont know where else to turn. I am so dissappointed in PPA and was from the start since it took them more than a week to get back to me when I first called with the emergency. I am now asking for help from within our industry to pass the word around and beg for help.

I understand if there is nothing that you can do, I just thought maybe you might be able to help in some way by reposting or passing along the information.

Thanks so much for your time.

Sincerely,
Kristen Wheeler
www.khphotographics.com