I'm so upset and annoyed!  Earlier today, I was image searching golf gifts and a photo of a cake I made for my hubby's birthday about 4 years ago pops up. I thought that was a bit weird so I clicked on it and discovered that some lady has posted MY picture on her catering/cake making website!  The nerve! Although the funny thing about it is that it was one of my first cakes so it's not even all that great but I'm still ticked off about it. I posted the picture on Cake Central so that is obviously where she copied it from and you can tell by how all the pictures are taken so differently that I bet the other pictures she has posted are stolen too. I contacted her earlier today and asked her to remove the photo immediately but she has neither responded nor taken the photo down. I would suggest anyone reading this take a look at her website and see if you recognize any of the cakes as yours or someone from this site.  Her website is: http://www.jacksonvilledelights.com/

Thanks for the heads up! So sorry this happened to you - I can understand why this would be so frustrating. I think it was great that you emailed her to let her know the situation. Maybe she hasn't read your email yet. I would give it a couple days and then maybe try giving her a call. There are always people out there that will do this. No, it's not fair but unfortunately it's going to happen. On the positive side . . . hey! She liked your cake so much that she decided to make it hers 

Best of luck!

@JPepper another angle to try is for her to give you photo credit and a link back to your website!

I think what I am upset with most is the false advertising part of it, although using someone else's photo without permission is stealing and I can't stand that either! LOL! She is posting pictures of cakes someone else made so anyone wanting to order a particular cake she is advertising is obviously going to think that SHE made the cake in the picture. Her work might be crap and the poor customer may not get what is in the picture. If I did this as a business, I might consider having her link back to my site but I don't.....it's purely a hobby and something I do for fun :)

Fact of the matter is that this happens no matter what. There will always be people who do this. A way of making it obvious is watermarking your photos that you post here. Also, file a complaint through the website host (in this case it's Wix: https://www.wix.com/support/html5/about-wix/copyright-information-and-abuse/). Also check their FB page and if your picture is on there too, alert FB as well so that they take it down. Enough complaints and they will remove the page.

Thanks craftybanana2 :)  I did manage to find their FB page and did not see my picture in their gallery. I will definitely look at contacting wix.com about it. Considering I emailed them yesterday morning through their business website, one would think that is sufficient time for them to receive, read and respond to my email as I would think they would be checking their business emails regularly. At least I do with my non-cake business.....I check it about 100 times a day! LOL!

You have to file a DMCA request to have an internet provider take down a photo. Google DMCA request forms and it will give you the format to use it. It's a legal document so you have to give them all the information the way it's requested. If she doesn't respond in 24 hours file it, there's not reason to be nice about it. If she does get back to you I guarantee that she'll say it was "the web designer" who put the photo up there and she doesn't know anything about it. It's always the web designer's fault, haha.

It's a problem with posting photos, fore sure. I always watermark any images I post online, no matter the content. Make sure to put the watermark on a portion of the photo that will be missed if the person tries to remove it. Shame on the person who stole the image. I would contact their site provider and start a thread on Twitter and Facebook about the theft, including the name, and address of their website, and shame them to remove it.

There's a woman in my area who stole my business name and named hers something verrrrry similar. She then took a bunch of photos off of other people's sites, cut the watermarks off of them, and puts hers on them to use on her website. Then she bought some stuff from my Etsy shop and started her own shop selling the same things. Some people are just full of no ideas of their own. I actually had a wedding coordinator call me to try to get me to come fix "my" cake that was falling over, when it was her cake that was collapsing, so that wasn't cool. 

I've also had people take photos off of my website and put them on theirs with my watermark still on them.

And people who took entire pages of text off of my site and put it on theirs. I've had two or three sites totally shut down when they refused to take the stuff down. One woman said that I was mean because "It's only words" and I shouldn't care. Pffffttt

And shaming them into taking your stuff down will just make you look bad. Why stoop to their level? It'll just hurt your back.

It's copyright law. If she stole it and you can prove that it is your picture then threaten her with a lawsuit that will scare her enough to take it off the site.    :-)

Seriously...Just file a DMCA. The internet service provider is legally responsible for handling it at that point. Don't waste your time messing around trying to be nice about it. File the takedown request and you'll be happy to see this instead of their website until they decide to comply and take your pictures off: [postimage id="3230" thumb="900"]

That's so annoying. I'm sorry for your situation. At least you found your picture. I just joined cake central yesterday. I don't know why I waited so long haha. I have not uploaded any of my pictures yet, and to be honest this story makes me a bit nervous to do so. I have a facebook page for my cakes, which I realize pictures can be stolen from there too. There's just a much bigger audience here on cake central.