My Pictures grabbed from the web and posted somewhere else...

After a long time writing something on my blog and that too happens to be a sad incident.

There is a person who calls himself "Wing Commander Partha De Sarkar" who seems to own a touring agency by the name "Ladakh India Tourism, Global Hop Travels India and Global Hop Travels."

Since yesterday I had been getting posts about Mr Partha stealing photos from my friends blogs, website, social media profiles and posting it on his own Facebook page as his own:

https://www.facebook.com/WgCdrParthaDeSarkar

I was following all the posts about him very carefully and also looking out if any of my photos has been stolen by him. And today morning I was shocked to find my photos as well on his "Cover Photos"album.
This is the photo I found:


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=489903457734373&set=a.266314313426623.63435.100001441692677&type=1&theater

This photo I myself had clicked on my trip to Himalayas in 2010. This was on the way to Leh from Kargil via Batalik. And following is the original photo that I had taken and uploaded to my flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumitplall/4989082633/in/set-72157624409223587


And this one:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumitplall/4989683136/in/set-72157624409223587/

As one can see from my original photos, Mr Partha De Sarkar has conveniently cropped out the watermark that I had put and posted it on his Facebook profile. I have reported this issue to the Facebook Authorities and also sent him a private message asking him about the photograph. I have not yet received any reply back from Mr Partha about the issue nor at the time of publish this post was the picture taken down from the FB page.

To add to that injury upon enquired by my friends for their photos stolen, Mr Partha De Sarkar went ahead brazenly insulting and threatening and even giving out threats of physical violence. One can go through this following link where Mr Yogesh Sarkar, who is a well respected person in Indian Touring Scene and also owner of very famous BCMTouring.com which year by year helps so many tourers/travelers who are heading towards Himalayas and all over India, has posted his part of the story:

http://www.yogeshsarkar.com/blog/2013/05/02/threatened-by-content-thief/

I generally do not put watermarks across the photo as I feel this spoils the beauty of the pic and hence watermark the pictures in the corners or where ever it can be visible. A costly mistake from my side and I admit it. This world is full of people who do not respect and shamelessly use other's work for their own commercial purposes. I don't know what can be done but this is a very sad state. I hope action can be taken against such people.

I am very much aware that this is not the first time and certainly not the last time that such kind of theft has happened. Once a picture is uploaded on the web there is more probability that it will be used/misused/abused rather than being admired for the work done by the photographer or the beauty of the place. But whenever I come to know about it I try to action against it in whatever capacity I can.

Sharing this on my blog so that people should come to know about one such person by the name Mr Partha De Sarkar.

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