In all the years I’ve been covering photography based copyright infringement I’ve NEVER heard about someone going and actually fighting someone over it but here we are.
I was sent this story that was covered by TurtleBoy but I decided to make my own post about it since they admittedly know nothing about photography copyright so I felt I could expand upon that aspect of the story.
This all starts with CGT Photography getting hired to take photos of a woman’s children. At the time it is understood that this woman was not a photographer but recently the mother opened her own photography business named Katss Photos.
In early May, Katss Photos posts an ad for puddle jumping photos and uses the images taken of her children by CGT Photography but does not credit her for the original photos.
A day or so later the owner of CGT, Caeli, finds out about the image theft and leaves a comment on the post. They go back and forth in the comment section a bit about crediting her for the work.
To be fair to Caeli, up until this point of the story I was with her. We’ve all confronted those who steal our images and use them for their own commercial use. What Katss Photos did is copyright infringement and is illegal despite her thinking that this isn’t commercial use of the images since they are of her own children. Personally, there is definitely a vast difference in the quality of work I see from CGT vs. Katss so it’s not a representation of her true quality of images.
Well… then it escalated.
Caeli messaged Kat’s fiance’ on Facebook after trying to call him twice on May 5th, saying she’s on her way to give his “dumb bitch wife a new face.” So you can say it escalated a bit.
She then messages and calls Kat and tells her she’s on her way to her house. She wasn’t kidding, she literally goes to Kat’s house.
After a screaming match between the two, it appears that Caeli slaps a man who appears to be Kat’s husband and then Kat starts punching Caeli. Kat eventually posts this to her TikTok but it appears to be down but can be found rehosted on TurtleBoy and on Facebook.
You would think after that Caeli would take her loss and leave and maybe just, I don’t know…. submit a DMCA takedown request for the photos used?
Nope.
She challenged her to another damn fight.
I’m not sure when the video was posted onto TikTok but then a few days ago Caeli left a “doesn’t recommend” for Katss Photos on Facebook.
This is what Kat has to say about it on one of the Facebook threads:
Cue Rocky theme song.
