Earning Residuals in Eastern Europe

One of the reasons that I always try to watermark my images is due to a story that I stumbled upon thanks to Sheryll, another friend in the photog business. She posted it on her Facebook -as did I- but I felt like posting it up on the blog. The news has broken world-wide about a Missouri family's Christmas card photo being used in promo ads in the Czech Republic. Take a look at the images for yourself:

The original Christmas card photo above, as posted on the family blog.
And this is what a college friend discovered while traveling through Prague:

The Associated Press article says it best. I'll let this quoted piece from their article sum up my feelings on the matter:

The Smiths and photographer Gina Kelly hadn't authorized anyone to use the pictures. Kelly said she has asked a professional photographers' organization to help figure out how her image wound up in Prague.

Smith has gotten 180,000 hits to her Web site since she recently posted the story about the well-traveled snapshot. She said the photo wasn't used in an unseemly manner, it was just used to tell potential shoppers about the store's delivery service.

Smith said next time she posts a photo on the Internet, she's going to lower the resolution or add an electronic watermark to make it hard to reproduce.

"This story doesn't frighten me, but the potential frightens me," Smith said.

So the moral of the story is protect your images. There is no clue as to where they may end up being used. After all, in a situation like this how does one go about beginning to earn residuals in Eastern Europe?