A Rant About Luuux

So, a few weeks ago I signed up for luuux.com. I forgot about it and logged back on today. I googled a little bit about it, and found that a lot of bloggers were really upset because people were taking other bloggers' images and profiting from them.

If you don't know what Luuux is, you blog on the site and receive points for your activity for which you can redeem for prizes (really nice things like iPods and Louboutins, etc). I'll admit, I was excited at the prospect of winning things. I figured, hey, I'm a blogger, I have some nice pics... I should get some traffic on my account. The site rewards the winners for each day/week/month (people who have the most activity on their posts). When I was researching, I found that a lot of bloggers were irritated about the lack of controlling what people post on the site. You can upload anything -- even if it's not yours.

So upon browsing through past winners, sure enough, someone used my picture of my dandelion nails and won points for it. Which really really upsets me because this person is essentially receiving money (ie points to put towards prizes) for using MY pictures and MY design. They have our watermark on them for crying out loud!

I just don't think it's fair that people can just freely use other peoples' images, put a source in the credit bar (or not!) and still get credit for it. Even if you credit me for the design, it's still unfair that you're benefiting from something you didn't even do. It really makes me not even want to put anything out there anymore if people are going to steal my pictures and profit from them. I'm trying to shut down my account but I can't even figure out how to do that.

I realize I should've researched this more before I signed up for it, but I was excited and it seemed interesting. And even if I hadn't signed up, my images would still be on there without proper credit. I mean, it says right on the image that it's from here and people can't even credit the right website. Now the more I think about it, the more I think it's unfair and a scam. People want points so they'll post things that aren't even theirs.

Am I wrong in being frustrated about this? Opinion?