How Can I Make It Stop

[SGPhoto]

Well all these copyright issues I have seen lately has really got me to thinking:

HOW CAN I MAKE IT STOP.

Within the last couple of months right after I started shooting with a local model here in Virginia I have been getting bombarded with E-mails/Phone calls from individuals asking me questions concerning this model.

The reason I am getting these calls/e-mails is according to these individuals, her photograph is being used on other people's myspace pages, dating websites such as Yahoo Personals, Fling.com ETC.

After the first person who contacted me I involved the mother of this Model because of the fact she is underage (16),and I thought she would want to know. Was this a MISTAKE??

After she did some research she has found other places that her daughter's photos have been used from different photographers and is even mentioned on a NIGERIAN SCAM website.

Well I came down to the last straw yesterday when I got a phone call from a gentleman in Florida asking me for her contact information or how he could see more photos of her "To make sure he was talking to the person who sent him her photos". To which I told him I WOULD NOT give that information out because she was underage and her MOM would Kill me if I gave the information to some stranger anyway. But what I did tell the gentleman was that more than likely this was some person in Nigeria trying to CON him out of MONEY or worse.

The thing is; if this keeps happening couldn't the model somehow get into "trouble" even though she is not involved in anyway whatsoever except that her photo is being used on such sites, I have been researching and reading and found one individual that spent like thousands of dollars sending to "Someone using someone elses photos" and the someone else never got caught but it caused problems for the actual person who was in the photograph.

How can we stop this kind thing?

Clearly the only way I know how is to shutdown all the images I have of this particular female posted on any of my sites, which to an extent I have done, and the only other way I know how is to contact these places such as Yahoo, Myspace, ETC and report it, just for these people to end up creating another profile using either the same images or different ones they have found somewhere else, either taken by me or other photographers and the CYCLE will just keep repeating itself.

So I ask which is the best way to handle such things???

Also could companies like this "Be responsible" for copyright infringement in a way because they are allowing people to set up fake profiles using copyrighted work???

This had NEVER happened to me before until I moved to Va and started shooting this particular model, and with all these current talks concerning copyrights I thought I would ask and share my issue here.

Any thoughts on where to go now would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Stephen Gibson