This is a very belated blog entry about the photos on this website. I'd put up close to a 100 photos from my personal collection so that my friends and family, along with Con Funk Shun's fans could see them. Particularly the ones of the band, candid photos which have never before been published. The problem arose last May when my photos were popping up on other websites and even a brochure published by Michael Cooper and Felton Pilate for their "anniversary cruise" earlier this year. Not only were my pictures stolen from this website, some even had my Japanese Haiko watermark, clearly notifying viewers that the photos are MY intellectual property, i.e., I am the legal copyright owner. If you notice, each page on this site has my copyright notice. I had to send Cooper and Pilate, along with the brochure designer, Sheila Chadwick, a cease and desist letter, demanding that they stop using my photos. Cooper and I worked out the problem in a timely manner. However, in doing so, we discovered that many of my photos had been used by others.
Accordingly, I was forced to removed the Con Funk Shun Photo Album, along with my family Albums, because they contained personal photos of the band interacting with me and/or my children. This is very upsetting because the main reason for this site was so that others could enjoy photos of many old school artists which have been sitting in boxes for years. I wanted to be able to share my memories but I can't do it if people insist on stealing my photos. People seem to think that just because something is on the internet, it is in the public domain. THIS IS NOT TRUE! Especially if the owner clearly gives notice of ownership by putting the symbol "©", the year of publishing, and the owner's name - just like I have at the bottom of every page here.
The only way that I can put the photos up is to place a nasty looking watermark across the images, making it hard for people to really see them. This is a time-consuming project which can become very expensive if I have to use digital embedding software. The money is not the problem - it's the TIME that it will take.