There was an argument on the internet this morning. Oh yeah, just one of a thousand stoushes going down on the online frontier. But looking past the moral outrage and blazing indignation this little melee had some relevancy, especially for the photographers amongst us.

A Facebook page called World Wide Waves was the latest in a slew of pages stealing surf photographers work and reproducing them uncredited. The photos are used to attract people and increase their likes. World Wide Waves, however, raised the stakes by banning the photographers questioning the practice. One of them was West Oz photographer, the always outspoken, Russell Ord.

Swellnet: Where do sites like World Wide Waves get the photos from? Russell Ord: I wouldn't have a clue. They could be from heaps of places, I wouldn't know exactly as they don't credit where they come from or who took them.

You've been pretty upfront in demanding these Facebook pages give due credit? What I started doing was crediting my own shots. Just making comments. That's enough for them to start firing away which is ridiculous, I mean, they take all the time to write these messages back to me and they can't put 'Photo Russell Ord' at the start?

And it wasn't even my shot that set them off this time. I just wrote, 'Who took that?' I thought it might have been Spence's [Spencer Hornby] shot from Ours. And they replied, 'We don't effing do this and we don't do that.'

So the shot they banned you over wasn't even yours? Nah, but I'm banned from the whole site now. Sometimes you get blown away by other people's work and I wanted to know who took it. So I asked who took the shot and boom!

A couple of weeks ago I credited my own shot on their page so they're obviously getting a bit nancy about it now.

You've been fighting the good fight for a while now, have you managed to convince any pages to start crediting photos? Yeah, there's a couple, I can't recall what their names were, one of them sent me a real long private message and said he's trying to change the way they think about it in the office. Cos there's a group of them involved. And then all of a sudden everyone was getting credited on that site. It only takes half a second to write it, and if you share it you don't need to do anything, it's credited straight back. But when you take the photos from somewhere else, you know, you should just credit the photographer or at least the source.

Why do you think they're not crediting? I don't know.

Do you think they're from outside the industry and don't understand the protocol? Well, it could be, for sure. They've obviously never taken a photo in their life cos they don't appreciate it. And they're heaps of these sites! They ride off the back of the surf industry and take everyone's stuff. I've been fighting this for years, I'm used to copping it, but these guys [World Wide Waves] are definetely giving it to me this time.

Is there anything that can be done? Have you approached Facebook? Facebook have already got a share function which is fine, I don't know why they don't use it. I'm trying to look on Facebook but I'm not getting any response. It's difficult. Ultimately I don't think Facebook give a shit.

Where to from here? What else can you do? Ha...I could probably harden up cos they're giving it to me. I don't know, I'll just say my little piece and it'll blow over in a day or two just like anything...

But it'll pop up again... Yeah, it'll pop up again.

You mentioned you've been talking to other photographers, is there a united front between photogs to deal with this? Every now and again we all get on our high horse and we put messages on someone's site, someone whose been using uncredited work. But they just ban you. And then you can't do anything, but they can still take your photos. It's kind of amazing, there's got to be a way around it. I should have a chat to a lawyer and see if I can send a copyright infringement but I don't like my chances.

Last words...? I'd just love to take 'em out in the water and drown 'em...ha ha ha. They'd probably drown in three foot waves. Honestly. They probably don't even surf but they're taking all our surf shots. And all of this happened because I wanted to know who took the shot. It was a good one.

Postscript: As of half an hour ago World Wide Wave began to credit photos. One was credited to 'A Camera', another to 'J.A.Ckass.' Clearly humour ain't a strong suit.