Larry Colen wrote: >There's an old saying that locks only keep out honest people. > >At the risk of turning the greasy spot that used to be a horse into a smoking >hole, I'll weigh in with some thoughts. > >First of all, in theory, theory and practice are the same. It is legally and >morally wrong to duplicate and use copyrighted material. Yet, in practice, >people who would never walk out of a store with a CD that they didn't pay for >have no compunction with making a copy of a friend's CD. There is perception >of value of a tangible object, or even of someone's time, but for many people, >there is no perception of monetary value of copying a file. > >I suspect that the most practical compromise is text at the bottom that says >something like: >Copyright Barbie Mohs. For commercial use contact [email protected] > >Honest and moral people will contact and chip in a few bucks, the others would >steal it anyways.
That's pretty much how I work things. A few weeks ago I attended a seminar on copyright held by the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), so let's clear up a few misconceptions about copyright that have been promulgated in this thread: You are under *no* obligation to put *any* copyright symbol or text on your image or in the metadata to own copyright. But if you don't *register* your copyright with the copyright office, you can't (in the U.S. anyway) take an infringer to court. In the U.S. copyright is a federal issue, so you have to go to Federal District court to file an infringement claim. This costs, according to the representative from the ASMP, around $10,000. But if you have *registered* your copyright, you can claim statutory damages, including legal fees, so it'll probably cost you nothing to go to court if you have a valid case. If you haven't registered copyright, about all you can do is pressure the infringer (through a DMCA takedown letter or just by bitching to his web host or whatever) to stop using your image. Needless to say, I have registered the copyright for all the images I have on my web site and in my books with the U.S. Copyright Office - www.copyright.gov - it's pretty easy to do online now. It may get even easier soon: The Copyright Office is reportedly working with Adobe and Apple to get upload and registration capability (and payment!) built in to future versions of Lightroom and Aperture. -- 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.
