I hate it when people use my images without permission.

Link to the Gadling post

The thing is, I don't mind if they have the courtesy to ask - simple enough to send me a message via Flickr where they found the image in the first place. I guess in today's internet society, intellectual property means nothing. At least I got some image credit though, which is better than some other cases.

Image theft is a serious problem for photographers these days. It matters because normally people are willing to pay for images from which they derive commercial benefit, consequently, the photographer would also benefit. It's called stock photography. However, since one no longer needs negatives or prints to use an image - just right click and save - there's no longer any penalty or difficulty.

Using an image without the permission of the copyright holder - i.e. the photographer in most cases - is THEFT. This is ILLEGAL.

Photographers should protect yourselves by using watermarks and never posting full sized printable images online, unless you want to see them used elsewhere. There is some tradeoff between posting a small enough image that you're not at risk of having it jacked against being able to fully appreciate it, but if it's a good enough image in the first place you don't need to see every single pixel.

Be warned and careful...