David Flash’s website bigbendtimes.com is full of articles that appear to be generated by AI. But instead of using AI to generate pictures for his posts, he grabs other people’s pictures and posts them to his own website. It’s not obvious if you just look at an article here and there linked from FB. I don’t recommend this, but if you look at a number of articles on Flash’s websites it becomes clear that he is automatically scraping these pictures from other places, usually FB.
As #ThisReporter wrote about in another article, it’s great that Flash sometimes has his AI add an image credit when he steals photos, that’s not enough to keep him out of trouble. So far the only thing keeping David out of trouble for posting photos without permission is that no one has complained to the right people. Amos Struck took the time to write an article about taking other people’s photos and using them for your own profit here. The TL;DR is that it’s definitely a copyright violation if you copy someone’s pictures from FB or elsewhere and post them on your own site without permission from the copyright holder.
Who is the copyright holder of a photo? It’s typically the person who pushed the button on the camera causing the photo to be taken. It gets more complicated if the photographer is working for someone else. Pictures taken in that situation may belong to someone else from the get go. And what if it’s not a human that takes the picture? Well that actually happened and you can read more about it here. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s talk about a pic you snap with your phone or camera and post on FB. As Struck’s article linked to above says, you do not give up your copyrights to a photo just because you post it online.
Has David Flash stolen your pictures and posted them to one of his clickbait websites? Do you want to do something about it? You have options. Unfortunately they typically involve you making a complaint and David Flash will receive information about you during the process. This will of course open you up to harassment by David Flash. You might even become the subject of a series of his grudge articles. But if you are brave and don’t like that David appears to be stealing thousands and thousands of pics, you might want to move forward anyway. And here’s the thing, if a lot of people complain all at once, David’s sites will get shut down and there might be too many people for Flash write grudge articles about. He will be busy finding new website hosting. Perhaps we should schedule a ‘liberation day.” Some day in May where we schedule our copyright complaints and submit them all at once.
The first option is this: Flash currently hosts his websites with Automattic at wordpress.org. Automattic has forms that allow people to complain about websites they host. The first one I want to mention is the Technological Harm Complaint Form. This form allows one to “Report a site for displaying spam or excessive automated actions, such as posting a large amount of machine-written content or excessively liking and following other blogs in an automated manner.” Wow, sounds just like David’s clickbait sites! The nice thing here is that one only needs to provide their own email address and there is no warning that David will get the email address. Of course it’s possible he could get the email address you use to complain, so use one you don’t mind David having.
Next option is the Automattic Copyright Complaint Form. This form has a warning that David Flash WILL be provided your information if you complain this way, so be careful. It’s a 3 step process. This site has already verified that bigbendtimes.com is hosted at Automattic, which is step one. Step two is contacting the site own. That means send David Flash an email at david.flash@gmail.com. Step three is filling out the form. Once done Automattic has “…a policy to terminate users and/or sites that we consider to be repeat infringers.” Hard to see how David is not a repeat offender, he posts other people’s pics all day long. Hard to see how he could be getting permission to use all those pics, especially since some come from people I know can’t stand Flash. There’s no way they allowed him to use their pics.
Another option is at FB. Most of the photos David steals come from FB. He also posts links on FB to his posts on his websites, so even if your picture wasn’t stolen from FB, he probably posts about the picture there. If you believe you have a valid reason to complain to FB about David’s copyright infringement, the FB complaint form is here. #ThisReporter thinks FB is a cesspool that enables ad tech creeps to divide us all for their own profit, so I can’t offer any more help with FB than that. But I hope anyone still stuck on FB (I understand, your grandma is on there) will use the form if David has stolen your pics.
If you know that David posted one of your pics but you can’t find the post anymore, you are not alone. David’s sites are incredibly difficult to read because they appear to be designed only for linking on FB. If you see a post one day, but the next it is lost because David’s AI posts so much slop that everything disappears under the endless scroll. I bet he does that intentionally so it’s harder to notice his grudge articles. To make it easier to find his posts with our picture, do a reverse image search at google. At google.com, where you enter your search words, on the right of that spot is what looks like a camera icon. If you mouse over it a message appears that says “Search by Image.” Click it and upload your image. Hopefully a link to David’s sites with your image will appear in the results.
Let’s pic May 20th, 2025 as Liberation Day. Everyone find where David posted your pics, save the URL, and get ready to submit your complains to FB and Automattic on May 20th. That’s only 11 days away! Let everyone know.
