Last week I talked to a copyright lawyer (I'm trying to register a trademark) and he said he has never heard anything about copyright transfer to any intellectual work (including academic) being illegal. He even contacted and consulted another attorney about that. It is all between you and your client (and the terms of your contract). If you want to sell or transfer copyright to your work - you have every right to do that.

I talked to "Kristy". Thank you for removing the image and teaching me some new street words.

I found more information, are they related to midterm.us/customwritings.com?

But while the company's management may be publicity shy, sources familiar with its operations were able to shed some light. Essay Writers appears to have been originally based in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. While the company claims to have been in business since 1997, its Web sites have only been around since 2004. In 2007 it opened offices in the Philippines, where it operates under the name Uniwork.

blogs.inquirer.net/current/2009/05/20/the-globalization-of-essay-mills/

Now I have my own theory - they went from the "Russian bride scam" to the "Essay business scam". You can read about their Russian dating/bride scams all over the net, I'm sure some of them moved to the writing business too. I know on such dating sites they would post fake pictures of women and they would correspond with men who thought they corresponded with real women etc. THey would steal pictrues of women too, just like they now steal custom graphics from legitimate websites. Probably the best solution so far would be to block all IPs from Ukraine.

I prefer not to reveal my site's name because now I can see this company may run a shady bussines (this is my conclusion from reading this forum).

I'll just contact their host and Google to remove their pages from their index. Will also send a S&D letter as suggested by another poster. Hopefully that will be enough.

It says the hosting is securityspace.net, but I'm not sure if it's a real hosting or some kind of proxy?

whois.domaintools.com/midterm.us

They hide their contact information by proxy registration. But do you think I could contact their hosting and they could help remove the image?