I am extremely curious as to why other photographers would consider copying a website as ethical. Honestly I would never consider doing such a thing, but it seems like it is common practice lately and I found out that my website, karrphotography.com was the latest victim.

Tuesday afternoon I received the latest copy of our local yellow pages. As always I love to see what’s new in the photographer section. I noticed a new name. Curiosity always has the best of me so I went to the listed website and looked around. It dawned on me something looked very familiar. I visited the Frequently Asked Questions page and there was my answer. It was MY website! The photographer had visited my site, saw what he liked and saved everything to his hard drive. He then edited out all of my information (while leaving things like “Saved from KarrPhotography.com” in the HTML) and posted the site as his own! Honestly, it wouldn’t had upset me had he taken a few specific questions, modified the answers to suit his own business practices and posted it on his website. We as photographers are supposed to be a creative bunch, how can one say this if they copy others work?

A cease & desist was promptly mailed Wednesday evening and by Friday morning the offending website was no longer available. This was in no way done in an attempt to “eliminate” competition, but rather to make someone do their own work and not use that easily obtainable from “other” sources.

Honestly, I would love comments about this subject. It is a very interesting topic to me as it seems that every day I am reading stories about photographers having their sites or pictures copied by unauthorized parties.