Nigiri by Jeff, Bay Ridge has bootlegged this website’s photos

It has come to my attention that an instagram account for a takeaway sushi service, Nigiri by Jeff (https://www.instagram.com/nigiri.by.jeff/), from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, has been using photos from this website for commercial gain. 

Nigiri by Jeff is run by a couple, Jeff and Rachel. They have taken multiple of my photos to post on their instagram account to advertise the fish that they serve in their takeaway service. Whilst also using the photos, they have put in effort to crop away the watermark I have placed at the bottom of each picture. In fact, the remnants of the watermarks are still visible in some of the photos, especially on the one for skipjack tuna and kohada. 

When bootlegging the photo of tuna from my website. Nigiri by Jeff had not even bothered to correctly research the accuracy of the information which in my opinion calls into doubt the standard of his fish knowledge. This is because the picture he stole is actually one of Mackerel Tuna (Euthynnus affinis), and not Skipjack Tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis). This was a mistake in my article that I was aware of but had deliberately not chosen to correct due to time constraints and the fact that the difference between the two is very slight unless you have a well trained eye. 

Nigiri by Jeff has also posted a picture of a tuna loin taken from the famous Fujita tuna suppliers’ instagram account. Maguro Fujita is most widely known for supplying Sukiyabashi Jiro’s restaurants with tuna, but also supplies many of Tokyo’s top sushi establishments. However, it’s impossible to determine if this content was used with or without permission. 

Sadly in this day and age, there is very little that can be done by a small independent website to do anything against content theft. Whilst most platforms offer systems to report cases, the usual response is that the content is removed and the perpetrator simply gets away scot free or makes another account. Attending to your content constantly being plagiarised is a one sided battle because there are no deterrents to stop other perpetrators from taking your content, and the systems that have been put in place always require all the work to be done by the reporting party. If you report a case of stolen content, it’ll only be a matter of weeks or even days before another case of stolen content occurs making it a never ending cycle which ultimately eats up all the time that should instead be dedicated into researching and writing more informative articles. In the end, this causes most small writers to ultimately just give up writing or creating content all together. Posting this doesn’t actually change anything but serves to simply spread awareness of what is happening. 

Thanks again to those that reach out regarding the unauthorised use of this website’s photos. Your effort is most appreciated. As of writing, this website is run completely as a passion project and thus has very limited resources. A lot of effort is put into researching, photographing and writing each article and it’s very sad to see the effort simply stolen by other people on the internet.