On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 12:50 PM, David Parsons <[email protected]> wrote:
> While you are technically correct, filing a copyright lawsuit is > ridiculously expensive and takes years in court to pursue. And while > you can get statutory damages if you promptly file for registration, > if someone infringes on your copyright and it is not registered, you > lose out on the statutory damages, and can only claim for straight > damages. > > The rub about that is that unless you already have a history of > selling your work, you can't place a marketplace value on your work. > ie: you can't arbitrarily claim a value on your work. While YOU are technically correct you seem to have an incomplete understanding of how the justice system actually works. The idea is to have right on your side. Someone who takes a copyrighted image without permission DOESN'T (and they know it). Only a complete fool, when presented with evidence that they are solidly in the wrong and facing massive maximum penalties, would invite a lawsuit and the expense of defending themselves in a losing cause, without at least attempting a preemptive settlement. In the name of expediency (for ALL involved), few cases ever go to court. Lawyers on the photographer's side work on contingency. And yes, registration of any photograph you intend to put online would be a part of the photographer's workflow. I'm not sure you understand how easy and inexpensive that is to do. > Most people are not selling their work, they put it online to be > enjoyed, but they don't wan't random people to use it without their > permission. Massive copyright marks over the top of an image removes the "enjoyment" from the equation, so they have failed if that is their stated purpose. It's like saying you are going to put your recorded music online but you are purposely going to hit sour notes every other bar to make sure nobody downloads you song, but you sure hope that they enjoy the piece. My point is that random people who use a photographer's copyrighted work without your permission HAVE purchased their work, for substantially more than the photographer could have sold it otherwise, in fact. They just don't know it yet (and apparently neither do most of the photographers from whom they have been appropriated). People who stick big copyrights over their images are losing from every direction you can think of. Carry on! Darren Addy Kearney, Nebraska -- Nothing is sure, except Death and Pentaxes. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
