iLounge and TiPb - Honest Mistake or Bumbling Idiots?

It's pretty common for a web site to "grab" the photos from one site and post it to their own. As long as they give proper credit (not always done) and don't materially change the photo, it's a practice that, while slightly improper, is not looked down upon.

But what happens when a site makes significant changes to the photo?

Two web sites, iLounge and TiPb have grabbed product photos from the web site story off of Unwired.HK. Again, not an unusual occurrence. As a matter of fact, STAR is tracking 20+ web sites who have used the the story and the pictures.

But look at the pictures on iLounge (first image) and TiPb:

And compare them to the original:

Notice the changes?

The question is - why? Why did iLounge go to the trouble of removing the Unwired.HK watermark? That watermark was put there for a reason - to identify the picture taker/copyright holder. Why did TiPb crop the watermark out? Both web sites link back to the original story so it's not like they are trying to make it seem like it's their own information.

We think iLounge and TiPb owe Unwired.HK an apology and their readers an explanation.

TiPb posted this:
UPDATE: This post was originally published with the watermarks removed from the original images. That’s simply not how TiPb does business. We’ll figure out how it happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Our apologies to Unwire.hk, we deeply regret the error.