A Hijacked Area: A Cautionary Story for Photographers and Artists — Thomas Fitzgerald Images

I used to be chatting on-line with fellow Irish photographer David Cleland, and he instructed me of a moderately unlucky state of affairs that has occurred to him. I’ve been following David for a very long time. He was one of many first folks I knew who was embracing the Fujifilm ecosystem within the early days. He is definitely a former Fujifilm X-Photographer, and you could know him via his web site, FlixelPix. Unfortunately, via a collection of unlucky occasions, David has misplaced management of that area, and now has a brand new web site the place you could find his work.

The bother started when a missed area renewal set off a sequence response that started to dismantle all the things hooked up to it. The FlixelPix web site had been on-line for greater than 15 years, and shedding it meant not simply shedding an internet deal with. It additionally meant shedding e mail accounts tied to the area, years of search visibility, hard-won backlinks, and the belief of an viewers constructed over time. Missing a website renewal is one thing that’s surprisingly simple to do, and it practically occurred to me just lately too, so I completely really feel for David on this state of affairs.

But it will get worse. The area didn’t keep dormant. It was picked up and repurposed into an AI-generated pictures web site, sporting David’s former identification for solely completely different functions. For a yr, guests arriving there might simply have assumed it was nonetheless his. It was not.

Then, in October 2025, the area reappeared at public sale.

At first, there was some hope. The opening bid steered restoration may nonetheless be attainable. That hope pale rapidly: the worth climbed previous $1,000 and, finally, the area offered for over $1,500, placing it out of attain. In the tip, David needed to stroll away.

The area has since been acquired and an internet site is again performing on it. But the location isn’t David’s, it’s a foul clone. Parts of the location seem to have been reconstructed from archived materials, and at a look it resembles an earlier model of FlixelPix. But it isn’t. It is a recycled model of David’s former work, layered with promoting and affiliate content material, that are in fact, nothing to do with David. It’s a digital hijacking.

David has since rebuilt his presence at a brand new dwelling: davidcleland.com. It is a recent begin, however not a easy one. Rebuilding means recovering what may be salvaged from backups and archives whereas accepting that a lot of what as soon as sustained the unique FlixelPix ecosystem, search presence, inbound hyperlinks, and subscriber routes not leads the place it ought to.

That, he says, is the toughest half: not shedding the information, however shedding the context. The internet nonetheless remembers what was as soon as his however not sends folks again to him.

If there’s a lesson on this, it’s a easy one: don’t deal with area possession as background administration. Auto-renewals fail. Cards expire. Reminder emails get missed. When that occurs, the implications are hardly ever reversible.

Check your domains. Verify them. Treat them as crucial infrastructure. Recovering a misplaced area is way tougher than stopping the loss within the first place. If you comply with or hyperlink to the previous FlixelPix web site, it’s time to replace to davidcleland.com. If you already know anybody nonetheless going to the previous web site, be certain that to tell them so that they don’t get duped.