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Thanks for posting this! I personally caught word of it through Stan Evans' Twitter, and I can't believe how fast and how wide the news has spread. Every snow sports forum I know of has heard of this story, and PDN even tweeted this story as well!
Hopefully this is a big eye opener to the snow industry (not just snowboarding, skiing as well) that you can only jerk around so many photographers/videographers/athletes before it will come back to bite you in the ass.
Unfortunately, I think the 'core' audience that Grenade once attracted, who I assume would also be the ones truly pissed about this, are no longer their market. In my opinion, bro's shopping for snow gear at their local Zumiez store seem to be the ones supporting Grenade these days, and I doubt they would even know about this story, let alone care enough to stop supporting a company who in turn does not support the industry in which they make their profits.
What I really can't stand are the people saying "Well it's the fault of the photographer because he should've known to send them a low res. watermarked copy."
A.) Of course it would've helped, but it shouldn't be something he HAS to do. Just like the bike shop down the road shouldn't HAVE to put security tags on a bike. They assume that people aren't going to hop on a bike they like and ride it out of the store, or else legal action would be taken.
B.) Trust me, in rare instances, sending low res. images with a watermark (aside from centered) still won't deter people from stealing the image.
While it's unfortunate that this photographer has had to deal with this, I'm happy that so many people/athletes/TM's/CEO's and others are seeing that this is the kind of thing that happens far too often in the snow industry, and I'm sure other action sports industries as well.
On a related note, a rising tide floats all boats, and hopefully this might open the eyes of a few amateurs giving stuff away for little or nothing to different companies (intentionally or unintentionally) under the guise of "exposure", that if the image is valuable enough for a company to use it in their blog/catalog/ad/website, then it's valuable enough to pay the photographer who did the work.
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