Major Copyright Infringement site Scroller.com

As a photographer and a digital artist, you always have to be mindful of protecting your intellectual property. You put your heart and soul into creating a piece and the idea of someone stealing your work and then making money off of that work can be irritating and demotivating.

What I am about to tell you about is both. 

I periodically do a Google search on my work to see what comes up. I know you could say that’s self-absorbed, but quite often I find things that are positive. Last year I found several situations where someone had used an image of mine for a Blog piece they did on Infrared photography and said some very flattering things about my work. Things like that don’t bother me.  I just assume they forgot to ask to use the image or didn’t even realize they should ask to use an image.  

No harm, no foul.

Last evening, I did a quick search and the title below one image caught my eye and bothered me. 

It said “Infrared Porn”

That is not the way I would describe my work. The image was linked to a site, Scrolller.com

So, I clicked the link and found this.

 

 

I immediately noticed there was a button to download the image, so I clicked it, and it ask me to log in.  I don’t have an account, so I clicked register.  Then this came up.

So I created an account and then tried to download my image, and got this.

One more click and I got this.

So, Scrolller.com is charging a fee for people to download my, and other artists’ images without our knowledge or consent.

Not good.  My work is being labeled “Porn” and Scrolller.com is making money off of it. All without me being aware.

I did find an about page on their site.

I decided to contact Scrolller.com to see what I could get done. I sent an email informing them that they have my images on their site without my consent.

The following is the email chain, starting with the response.

 

It was at this point that the communication stopped.

So, to recap, Scrolller.com is charging is making money off of artists’ work, without their knowledge.  And it is next to impossible to keep your work off of there as their site is “updated constantly”

As I looked thru their site and checked out the large number of images under “Infrared Porn” I learned there are also real porn images in the same folder as our Infrared work.  In fact, there is a large area on their site just for real porn.  

This is frustrating!

I did a little checking to see who owns Scrolller.com and found out that Twitter bought Scrolller in 2021.

I did one final thing; I posted a Tweet to @elonmusk asking him if he is aware of what Scrolller.com is doing.  As of this writing, I have not received a response. 

I suggest you check out Scrolller.com to see if any of your work is on their site, and maybe you should also contact Mr. Musk and ask him the same questions I did.