Mexican Tattoo Magazine Stole Photos

I suppose when you publish on the internet you have to accept the fact that your words and pictures will be stolen by other websites. This is just the way that it is, but I was always under the impression that print magazines would have the decency of asking permission before using photos.

I was wrong.

Mira and I were walking through the streets of Cancun, Mexico when the idea struck me that maybe she should pick up a Mexican tattoo magazine before we move north. Mira is an aspiring tattoo artist as well as a traveler, so she collects various tattoo magazines and tattoo related things in her journeys. So we walked up to a news paper booth and asked the lady inside if she had any tattoo magazines. She did. We bought one.

————–
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Cancun, Mexico- May 2008
Song of the Open Road – Travel Photos
————–

We then walked around town a little more and then returned to the hotel and began leafing through the tattoo magazine on the roof. There, inside this magazine, was a photo of myself being tattooed in China. At no time was I asked permission for this photo to be used, at no time was I told that it would be published in a rather big international tattoo magazine, and, of course, no photographer or website credit was given. It was just a photo of me being tattooed by my friend Yujing in Hangzhou, China. This photo was clearly stolen off of Vagabond Journey.com.

I do not know what this tattoo magazine was thinking. Did they just assume that I would never find their magazine in Mexico? That I would never know anyway? Well, I am a traveler, and travelers go to where they are called. I was called to Mexico, I was called to Cancun, I was called to that newspaper kiosk, and I was called to that magazine. And I opened it to find myself in a Mexican tattoo magazine. I now laugh.

And I laugh and laugh and laugh. I never would have expected that I would open up a random tattoo magazine in Mexico and find myself in it. This is overwhelmingly funny. I do not really mind this intrusion and pillaging of my website and photographs- as it at least means that people are reading, that visitors are coming. Now, I am of course going to write this magazine and try to make them kneel a little. They robbed me, and I am at least going to kick and scream about it a little, but deep down I am laughing. This Mexican tattoo magazine got me good. This was a good joke.

I would have graciously given permission for this photo to be used – just as long as a credit tag that said something like: photo courtesy of www.VagabondJourney.com was attached – and I would have even of linked to their site and made a mention of one of my photos being used in a magazine on Song of the Open Road. But they did not ask, they just chose to steal the photo. Oh well.

Photos of the magazine that stole and published a photo from Vagabond Journey.com:

To view the pages that this photo was taken off of go to China Tattoo Photos and China Tattoo Photos page two

This world is too funny.