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PIRATES BEWARE[/caption]
This may not be the most enthralling portion of our work, but protecting the images we create from being used without consent is something you might want to look into if you take pride in your work. I'd say a majority of people that take photographs want to share them with others, but the overall shadiness that is the internet can cause a general reluctance to post work for the world to see. The effort you put into crafting these images isn't taken into account when a commercial company can easily lift a number of your images thanks to the digital medium being so porous. It doesn't always have to be about money either...Giving credit where credit is due should be the moral of the issue. Although you might not be able to police every one of your images from the karma-hungry users on Reddit, or worse: being photoshopped to hell by some of the more eccentric crowd on Deviantart, (I'm not entirely sure people still use this site...) there are steps to keep others from making a quick dime off your effort. The process of copyrighting your images is easy, albeit a bit boring. Not unlike diet and exercise, importance doesn't necessarily equate to fun. Instead of promising to lose some weight this year, why not make your new year's resolution to actively copyright your photos? I know...too much to ask. Resolution or not, we must soldier on.
1. Automatic Copyright
Believe it or not there are those out there that are looking to do some good for the photo community. Flickr works closely with Creative Commons which is a great legal tool that ultimately grants the owner credit, whether you allow your work to be remixed for partial redistribution or commercial use. Their goal is to allow access to share for education, research, and just general culture while maintaining your ownership. Sometimes we don't like people poking around at our pictures at all. Luckily, the automatic setting when uploading photos is "all rights reserved" which means you are automatically granted a copyright, considering you actually own the image and live in the U.S, Canada, EU countries, or Japan. You won't be given these rights when you are photographing another artist's work. If you're feeling especially paranoid, you can limit who is seeing your pictures and without a CC, users will not be able to download the original size that was uploaded. Although these are general parameters that maintain the credit to your work, it won't stop people from just taking a screen-cap. This is were the actual effort comes in.
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A small chart from http://www.squidoo.com/cc-flickr explaining how Creative Commons copyrights work![/caption]
2. Visable Copyrights
We may be going a bit old-school here, but this is where the © symbol comes in. Often we see copyright with somewhat tacky fonts aggressively pasted onto a photographs footer. Although choice of a font can leave something to be desired, the photographer is trying to establish ownership. Generally the outline is to put the "©" symbol followed by the year and professional name of the photographer. The good part is that while your work is shared among the vast sea of internets, viewers can see where it's coming from and can link it back to you. This doesn't stop people from clone stamping over your copyright or just lazily cropping it out. Watermarking is an effective tool to additional copyright protection. Although relatively easy to create, embedded watermarks are difficult to get rid of when placed over the image. Although this might be the best alternative to keeping others from copying your work it can often get out of hand. The trade off is having a giant watermark over your image...then again, people will know who's it is!
3. Registered Copyrights
Technically, an image is copyrighted after it is developed on film or saved digitally, but this does not stop people from using your images without your consent. There are horror stories of magazines publishing images without permission and when these situations happen you need an advantage to show that you own these images. Here is where registering your copyrights with the U.S. Copyright Office comes in handy. By registering you are creating a public record that your work is copyrighted. Should you need to file a lawsuit for copyright infringement, you need a registered copyright. Additionally, if this infringement happens within months of being published you are entitled additional statutory damages. Think of them as power-ups in court. If that doesn't show my lack of law knowledge, I don't know what else will. In all cases, here is some further reading in layman's terms: http://www.photolaw.net/faq.html
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While it is a tedious and boring process, copyrighting your work can save you a big headache in court later on.[/caption]
It is easy to register your images for basic claim of original ownership: You can send in as many images as you can fit on a CD or DVD (at a viewable resolution) for around $40. There are many "Do not pass go, do not collect $200..." sort of rules that come with registering your photographs. You can only collect damages when the published image has a valid copyright. Registering a published photograph after it's already been infringed can prove difficult in court. Basically, sooner is better when registering newly published works. Generally, a copyright lasts for the author's life, plus 70 years.
Knowledge is power. By learning your rights you are further protecting your images should they be subject to theft or other infringement. The best place to find out more is directly from the source. Hopefully this has been an informative simplification of the process of copyrighting. Ownership is something that should be taken into account when publishing your images. Don't let the big guys make you work for free. Remember, you are the only person that can protect your work.