> Just got back from a weekend away so this is the first chance I've had of > reading the postings from various Prodigers in response to my original > posting last Friday about safeguarding the copyright of original digital > images. Very interesting and, as usual, very helpful they were too. > > In particular, Victor Patterson's suggestion that Adobe should address this > issue in a future upgrade of Photoshop appears a sound one. Perhaps Martin > Evening, as a Photoshop alpha and beta tester for Adobe, would consider > taking up the cudgels on our behalf? > > Regards > > Ron Jones > > Ron Jones Associates > Tel: 0151 650 6975 > Fax: 0151 650 6976
Ron, I'd just like to address two points you have brought up in this thread. First is the embedding of copyright information in digital files. In my opinion this is a very bad idea to offer as proof of ownership, as its an absolute certainty that any part of a file that can be read, can also be edited. Your copyright infringer could change the info so he owns the copyright at an earlier date to your claim... For this reason I doubt that such info would ever stand as legal proof of ownership. You need to rely on more tangible evidence, such as adjacent frames from the shoot, props that were in the image, statements from models that appeared etc. Second, I have had a case of copyright infringement, that I fought. The 'client' in question never disputed that I owned the image, but basically admitted the use, but refused to pay. I very much had the impression that they were prepared to fight any copyright cases coming their way, on the grounds that a certain amount would just go away... It turns out that its quite a good policy for large corporations to do it this way, after all who is going to pay a lawyer �2000 to recover �1000? Sure you get your costs back too... If you win. My case dealt with much larger fees than this, so I decided to fight it, but the end result was an out of court settlement of about 75% of my claim, which I was told by my lawyer was a 'good' result. The point is Ron, you first of all have to be absolutely certain you are being violated (seeing an image of a sunset over the sea, that looks like one of yours for instance, doesn't cut it). You also need to know that you won't get value for money on a re-use case (not sure about work that�s been commissioned but not paid for) unless the sums involved are large (over 10k) because whatever you might get back, you will have put an awful lot of effort, and money, into recovering it... Anyway, just from my own experiences. Regards. Dave Greenwood =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
