TropicOrchidees.com (Frédéric Diebolt) Brazen unethical commerical theft of member photos

A new unscrupulous French orchid vendor named Frederic Diebolt has stolen 10 of my images and many others from other US orchid growers/photographers I know without consent to sell his wares.

I have contacted him to take down these images immediately but he has not done so. Now it is time to engage in a public shaming campaign. This behaviour is not just unethical and illegal, it is also really antisocial and hurtful to our worldwide orchid community.

Good photos of rare plants are not free! The plants are expensive and hard to acquire, costly and time consuming to grow, good photographic equipment is not cheap, not to mention the time, resources, skill and love that goes into producing these images.

Selling plants without images is not very profitable; everyone knows that images make a massive difference in how fast and how many plants will sell. This man is reaping the benefit of the decades of collecting, growing and photographing these rare plants without compensating those who produced the images.

Some of my friends watermark their images and I certainly respect and understand their reason for doing so. I cannot bring myself to add watermarks to my photos for personal aesthetic reasons and I have a number of friends who feel the same who also leave their photos unmarked.

Please help me put pressure on this unscrupulous vendor to take down photos that he doesn't have legal right to use. Please send him emails, comment on his item listings, call out his actions on his on his Facebook page andmost importantly, please EU friends do not buy plants from him!

Please repost this information to European orchid message boards and fora/forums in French, German, and other European-language orchid groups. Europeans will have more impact since they are within the EU and his main customer base.

If enough pressure is put on him, it will make a difference! Please help make our worldwide orchid community a safer more ethical place in which to share our images with each other on this forum and elsewhere on the web.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TropicOrchidees
eBay: http://myworld.ebay.com/tropicorchidees/

Here are the 10 photos of mine he has stolen:
Aërangis arachnopus: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/1-aerangis-arachnopus.html (my original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/morabeza79/7239851090/)
Aërangis fastuosa: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/169-aerangis-fastuosa.html (my original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/morabeza79/5575777985/)
Angraecum bancoense: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/36-angraecum-bancoense.html (my original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/morabeza79/6729900765/)
Angraecum distichum: (the idiot is using the same picture as for my bancoense): http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/167-angraecum-distichum.html (my original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/morabeza79/6729900765/)
Angraecum dollii: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/273-angraecum-dollii.html (my original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/morabeza79/5024623652/)
Angraecum erectum: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/195-angraecum-erectum.html (my original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/morabeza79/6811012905/)
Angraecum obesum: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/40-angraecum-obesum.html he took the time to photoshop-out my metric ruler! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/morabeza79/5896532958/)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/morabeza79/5896532958/
Jumellea confusa: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/200-jumellea-confusa.html (my original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/morabeza79/6685753391/)
Jumellea panduata: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/204-jumellea-pandurata.html (my original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/morabeza79/5694693965/)
Microcoelia cornuta: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orch...crocoelia-cornuta-syn-solenangis-cornuta.html (my original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/morabeza79/5563047253/)

Other photos he has stolen:

Calvin (xmpraedicta)'s photo: Aerangis brachycarpa: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/4-aerangis-brachycarpa.html (original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24115011@N03/6106851164/)

QT Luong's photo: Aerangis disticnta http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/168-aerangis-distincta.html (original: http://www.terragalleria.com/studio/picture.stud11227.html)

Mikael Karblom's photo: Aerangis fuscata (syn. umbonata): http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/197-aerangis-fuscata.html (original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lika_sweden/3465942649/)

Lourens Grobler's photos:
Aerangis kotschyana: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/8-aerangis-kotschyana.html (original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/afriorchids/5532062509/)
Angraecum sedifolium: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/277-angraecum-sedifolium.html (original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/afriorchids/4888465251/)
Angraecum clarae: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/274-angraecum-drouhardii.html (but mislabelled as drouhardii): (original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/afriorchids/984788746/)

Ron Parson's photos:
Angraecum arachnites: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/276-angraecum-arachnites.html (original: https://picasaweb.google.com/111565844854752638532/AngraecumAD#5648213005343715490)
Angraecum bicallosum: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/181-angraecum-bicallosum.html (original: https://picasaweb.google.com/111565844854752638532/AngraecumAD#5618698990763209618)

Steve Beckendorf's photo of Microcoelia gilpinae: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/102-microcoelia-gilpinae.html (original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/49017462@N05/6210135678/)

Eric Hunt's photo: Angraecum leonis: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/264-angraecum-leonis-2f.html (original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericinsf/4249838907/ )

Fred (evideerf2002)'s photo of Angraecum cucullatum: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/26-angraecum-cucullatum.html (original photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8505009@N03/6812339877/)

Ramon de los Santos' photo of Microterangis hariotiana: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/104-microterangis-hariotiana.html

Peter Lin (mini-catts)'s photos:
Rangaëris amaniensis: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/138-rangaeris-amaniensis-ff.html (original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/minicatt/3995030697/ )
Mystacidium braybonae:

SLO Orchids photo of Jumellea ibityana: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/279-jumellea-ibityana.html (original: http://sloorchids.com/oscommerce/catalog/jumellea-ibityana-p-362.html )

Orchid's Limited photo of Plectrelminthus caudatus: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/130-plectrelminthus-caudatus-ff.html

 

HA!

He has clearly made a point of not stealing any images from European growers, mainly targeting North American photographers (with the exception of Mikael in Sweden) because he must know that in doing so:
1. he would violate EU copyright legislation.
2. he would alienate his own customer base.

 

He just now erased the personally identifiable information from his flick profile page where it used to have his name, now it's blank:
http://www.flickr.com/people/27374948@N02/

Fréderic Diebolt, the internet may be vast, but the orchid community is a small world especially because of the internet. You can't hide!

 

Just found another stolen one to add to the list: one of Peter Lin's (mini-catts) photos: http://www.tropicorchidees.com/orchidees-botaniques/164-aerangis-mooreana.html
original: http://www.flickr.com/photos/minicatt/2863223324/in/faves-27374948@N02/

 

Good eye, Kelly! I didn't catch that one; after a few dozen I got tired/demoralised...

I'll put a note on Piotr's flickr photo.

 

AH! I see he has stolen dozens of Tillandsia pictures from Rainforest Flora Inc. http://www.rainforestflora.com/

http://www.tropicorchidees.com/73-bromeliacees-tillandsia-filles-de-l-air

If you look closely you'll see Rainforest Flora's copyright logo actually imprinted on number of the photos

 

Thank you Tom and Zack for your support.

Gilles, I just returned from an errand and logged on. What a pleasant surprise to see that all the pressure and support from the photo owners has paid off, nearly all of them have been taken down. He is claiming innocence and says that I am unfair and ran a "nasty" campaign, LOL. Excuse me, but stealing is unfair and nasty!

Sometimes it pays to stand up for what is right and decent. Let this be a lesson to other would-be thieves.

Thank you all who helped make this happen.

 

Because of flickr's user agreement it came to my attention that I could risk having my entire flickr account deleted

"You may be tempted to post an entry on your photostream or in our public forum about what's happening, but that's not the best way to resolve a possible copyright problem. We don't encourage singling out individuals like this on Flickr as it could be seen as harassment which is against our guidelines."

So I have taken out much of the original content, but not before adding a screen grab here since we'll never delete it on this forum! Feel free to copy it and post it on other orchid fora as a warning to other would-be photo thieves:

 

part 1:

 

part 2:

 

part 3:

 

part 4:

 

part 5: