Intellectual Property's Right

As I have reiterated in this blog many times before, I have to the best of my ability tried to use my own photos that accompanying all the recipes, except where I need some detail explanation with photos from other sources (with permission or link back). I understand how much effort is taken into coming up with a photo, and I respect other people’s intellectual property very much.

I do admit that I am not the most meticulous blogger around, so some of my images I did not put any watermark, especially when it wasn't that great I thought that nobody would even bother to steal it. However, very recently I have found by accident that a Sarawak NGO website which was maintained by a good friend of mine, had use one of the image which was originally from my Ayam Pansuh recipe in their website. I don't ever remember anybody contacted me about it. As I said earlier, I thought nobody will be bother to steal it.

However, the moment when I saw that very familiar image of mine, suddenly I remembered the very day we took that photo. Me and hubby had driven all the way to Kuala Klawang, the border between Jelebu, Negeri Sembilan and Selangor, all the way from Seri Kembangan just to get the bamboo. We braved the thick vegetation to get the best bamboo we could find, had war with leeches and mosquitos, and poured our energy and sweat to saw the bamboo with a blunt saw. We bought the ingredient with our own money. Later on, I prepared the marinate all by myself and religiously stood nearby the stove to ensure that I didn’t burn the pansuh bamboo. All the hard work to just test the recipe and take a photo, of which nobody seen what transpired behind it.

I am not that fussy when it come to using my property here, but what I am asking is only an acknowledgement, or permission to use them. Simple as that. I am waiting for the administrator of the website to contact me as I gently mentioned about it in my Facebook status, hopefully they’ll get my hint. They should have known better.

In fact, this story does not end here. I was curious whether anyone else is doing the same thing. I googled ‘pansuh’ image, and there it was, almost all over the place! I have left messages to the owner of the sites to either remove or acknowledge my image. I also have re-post the picture from the recipe, including the watermark this time. I will slowly do this for other images that I have left out.

I have learnt a good lesson from this, and will not do the same mistake again. I hope everybody else will also learn, and start to respect other’s intellectual property’s right.