Nothing new but a simple warning to everyone who publishes stuff on figs or anything else. As you all know I did a few videos on figs. I really do not mind anyone copying my stuff and giving it out to others. However, I really have an issue if someone takes my stuff for the purpose of making money with it and intentionally removing any links.

I work with computers so I should have known better but I was I was just too lax...

The whole thing relates to a french site who took a video I made on cutting propagation in french and inserted everything except a link to my website. Having no links to my website is not the biggest deal. However, the main issue is that the whole website is built to generate revenue with a bunch of advertisements.

The good thing is that they did not download the video into their server but created a script that gives the impression as if the video was on their website. This way, I am still able to change the original file and have http://www.figtrees.ca stamped directly into the video.

In an effort to minimize traffic to this website I will not post any links

I had that happened with my stair pictures some kind of stair guy posted them on his website in GA . You should seen my face when I realized what happened :)
I emailed the owner and he removed my pictures from his web pretty quick with apologies.

Why people are so lazy and do not take their own pictures i cannot figure out.
I would be not happy to see a picture of 1 of my figs on a website portraying a fig plant being sold but i also dont know what i could do about it as i
 dont know about that stuff.
If i can take a picture anybody can and should do so instead of looking around web and taking what does not belong to them.

I totally understand. Had a lot of issues with people using pix for Ebay. I learned to get Ebay's attention, and they deal with is pretty fast. The galling thing is that most people doing it will send a nice letter/e-mail of apology and 10 minutes later, do it again. Or claim the pix were from a friend, etc. And usually it is a nice pix of something different than what they are selling, with is fraud and deception, plain and simple. When you contact people about the use of your material, "fraud" is always a good term to include.

I have no issue with people using the material for educational purposes, but not commercial purposes.

I know they should not hijack any material just like that but there is some consolation on the positive side here and that is the (intended or unintended) credit and appreciation of the contents found worthy of hijacking.
I agree with tmc2009 to let them know that what they have done is wrong.

Ciao martin,

My Website, Ronde de Bordeaux.  Made sure I put on that it was your property. You also told me I could certainly publish the pic to my website, this is how I like to go about it. I don't like thieves of any kind.

Thank-you everyone for sharing your own experiences!

I filled a complaint with Youtube but I am skeptical anything can be done besides me adding figtrees.ca into the videos.

The web site in question tricks people into clicking on video links that are actually advertisements. When you access the website you will see different videos on the side. Once you click on one of them it sends you to an advertisement website and not the video you clicked on.

If you go on video.google.com and search ficus carica and set the results to show videos published in the last few months you will see it.

Also, I made a mistake to state it was French but in actual fact the website is based in Woodstock Illinois...

In any case lesson learned!

You cannot stop these kind of things completly but you can somehow limit them...

I will just make sure to have every new video and images that are published stamped with http://www.figtrees.ca with me stating that the video is from figtrees.ca...

Ciao Maggie,
no problem at all.
Its the bad people like Jon was referring to such as 1 most know on ebay from past that was selling that i would have a hard time with.
Or if any of our members pictures appeared on the nursery website that ryhmes with " My My" i dont want to mention there name but im sure most know .  ; )

I suggest putting your figtrees.ca stamp at the end of the video too, with the words, "if you have any questions, please contact me", which prompts the viewers to contact you rather than the people who are posting the video link on their pages.

That way, it even more reinforces that you are the owner of the subject matter, as well as the person having the subject matter knowledge.