Protect Your Copyright

byChessie

856 followers

Updated 9 years ago

LinaB asked for some advice about how to copyright her own material, so I thought I would do a blog in case anyone else was interested in this subject.

Once you have clicked the shutter or written your article, book etc., it is automatically your copyright. You do not have to do anything but it is good to put your copyright mark on any work, just to let people know it's yours. They can then contact you for permission and/or gain a licence to use it. I reside in the UK and we can register our work if we want but it isn't necessary. If you are in the US, as far as images are concerned, I know most photographers register their best work with the Copyright Office or eCO. One of the benefits is that if your work is infringed, you have statutory rights to gain compensation but registering does cost! With images, we just put our name and date of publication. For instance LinaB could put (c) 2015 LinaB. If you own a company or you have a partnership, always put the copyright in YOUR name not the company's name. If you take pictures for someone else ie. say you were a wedding photographer, the images are your copyright. The happy couple have paid you to produce photographs for their wedding and you in turn take the photos and give them copies. If more copies are required after the event there will invariably be a further charge.

If you work for a company as a photographer, it does depend on your contract as to whether they or you own the copyright of any images you've taken on their behalf. It would be worth making sure your contract does indeed state that you own copyright of those images taken by you.

LinaB mentioned that she always credits the artist when she uses a passage from an article etc., which is a great ethos. It is a fag to go searching for the originator of an article or an image and most of the time you will get away with just giving a credit. The problem arises when the copyright owner does not want his or her work put on certain websites or they earn revenue through licensing their work. For example, if an image is taken from the copyright owner's website and then gets pinned to a site such as Pinterest, then others take it and re-pin it and pretty soon the image is everywhere and often credited, (when it is credited) to the wrong person. That artist has then lost his exclusivity rights. You may say, well, the copyright owner should not have put it on his website in the first place. This is a catch 22 situation for the photographer, you have to advertise such an image for prospective clients to see it and want to licence it.

The copyright owner has exclusive rights to have his work exhibited or used where and when he wishes. He also has the right NOT to have his work exhibited. He has the right to be credited for that work. Nobody has the right to change his work or remove copyright information ie. a watermark. Think of the work as an item owned. If you own an ipad, it is your right to say who can use it. If it was taken and used without your permission, you would be pretty upset. It is the same with the owner of copyright. If someone decides they like your image or article and they copy it without your knowledge, you will have no clue as to where it might land up or where it will be used. It can then be copied again and again by others, put on blogs, used on various websites, printed out, who knows. Then one day you see your work on a spurious website which often has nothing to do with the subject of your work. We've actually had our images taken and put on the page of a certain website. When you clicked any of the images it took you to a porn site!! So our images were sending people, including children to a porn site, unbelievable!! It is very irritating for the artist and it could be detrimental to their livelihood.

In the case of our own livelihood, my husband and I have lost so much revenue from stolen images that this is why we are trying to diversify with WA. When we first started way back in 1990, we had a lucrative business licensing specialist images to all kinds of media. Now our livelihood is in jeopardy because it is impossible to stop people taking from our site. We have even had an image taken and used by a famous UK university who claimed it to be their own copyright! We have over 1,000 infringements (that we know of) of just 5 of our 1500 images at this present time. Most being outside the UK and impossible to get recompense for.

There are a few things you can do to safeguard your photo.

1. Put your copyright notice close to the image. Directly under the photo is fine or even discreetly on the bottom of the image itself. Something like (c) 2015 your name or copyright 2015 your name.

2. If you feel you want to safeguard your image further, you can register your copyright with the US Copyright Office which will cost, depending on if it is one image or a batch of images.

3. You could also put a watermark on the image. Have a look at one of the image libraries like Getty or Shutterstock for an example. If you are Photoshop savvy you will have no problem doing it yourself.

4. You could disable right click which may stop a few novices from downloading your image but most people seem to know a work around for that and often do a screen dump to copy an image anyway.

5. If you find a website using your image without permission and you don't want it exhibited there, you can contact the hosting ISP (Internet Service Provider) to report the infringement and instigate a DMCA takedown notice. ISPs are required to exhibit their agents name and address so you can send them this notification. To find the ISP agent go to the 'who is' site and search the website name.

There is certain information you have to give for a takedown notice. A google search on HOW TO DO A DMCA TAKEDOWN NOTICE will give you all the information you need to do it correctly. If the ISP does not take the image down after your takedown notice, then they can be liable themselves for the infringement per the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) 1998.

For the most part, infringers are completely innocent of what they are doing when they take an image. They like it, they want it, they copy it and put it on their blog, webpage, pinterest etc. They have no concept of how damaging it can be to those who created the work. If you find one of your images/articles being infringed, contact the infringer and be polite and just state the facts. If you are happy for the work to stay on the site, insist it is credited and ask for a link to your site. Sometimes you will be ignored, sometimes you will get an apology, sometimes you may be offered a retrospective licence fee (not often though). If you really don't want your work exhibited on an infringing site, do a DMCA takedown notice.

If the infringer stubbornly refuses to stop infringing your image, you can take matters further, in the US particularly, because many copyright attorneys will have a 'contingency policy'. This means 'no win, no fee'. They will only represent you if they are confident that they can win a case. Also, they do tend to work harder to make sure they get their fee.

In the UK contingency arrangements are almost unheard of and those artists who need to take matters to court can use the 'Intellectual Properties Enterprise Court' (IPEC). Despite being declared as a 'simplified' way to get redress for copyright infringment, it is, in fact quite complex to the uninitiated. As is always the case, court proceedings are stressful and never simple. Most artists don't have the time, money or inclination to go down that path and it is this that 'wilfull' infringers rely on. They are willing to to take the risk of being sued or pursued, knowing how most artist will not have the stout-heartedness to start a court case. Also, all court fees have to be paid up front by the claimant so it could be a case of throwing good money after bad!