UKC

If somebody sells a photograph is there any way in which they can protect their copyright? Similarly how does one best protect copyright of pictures appearing on a website?

Grateful for advice.

In reply to mypyrex:
In legal terms selling a photograph does not affect copyright which still remains with the photographer unless it is specifically included in the sale.
However, given modern technology, once a pic is published it is quite easy to copy and redistribute. Whether it is then worth pursuing a copyright claim againsat unathorised users depends on whether you can identify them (not always easy), the value of the pic itself, how much you can expect to get and, not least, how far you are prepared to go.

Technical ways of protecting pix (digital watermarks etc) I'll leave to people who know more about it than me.

In reply to Wiley Coyote: Thanks for that. I've just seen something whereby you can prevent "right click" to copy a site image. I'm looking further at that among other things.

In reply to mypyrex: preventing right click is fine, but there's no way to stop your print screening... For web stuff it's simple to downsize the image to beyond usable levels, i.e. a 600px wide image at 72dpi looks a-ok on the web but you can't print it worth a damn.

Check out the UKC report from Leo Houldings latest exploits, Alastair Lee just sticks his name in the bottom right. Simples.

In reply to mypyrex:

This is trivially easy to circumvent, and should absolutely not be relied upon.

Digital watermarking (by which I mean serious stuff like Digimarc, not just editting the photo to include your name in text) is basically the only thing you can realistically do, aside from not having high quality, high resolution images available on your website.

If you're selling images, having low-to-medium size and quality images available for browsing is quite enough, and supply the full resolution one via some other means (secure download, direct email, etc).

In reply to mypyrex: If you want to see if a particular photo of yours has been nabbed and is being used on another site without your permission try one of these sites:

http://www.techarta.com/3337/is-my-logo-copied-or-used-elsewhere.html
http://www.tineye.com/faq

...or watch this: youtube.com/watch?v=0URQ8ZlNBBk&

If you find one don't faff about, send an invoice for its use and demand that it be taken down. There have been some legal developments recently which have made it more feasible for photographers to pursue claims if it comes to that (beforehand there wasn't really any point as costs would usually outweigh any gain).

With regards protecting, as mentioned above if someone really wants it they can nab it. Watermarks, info in metadata, preventing right click can all help stack the odds a bit more in your favour, but they can all be got around with varying degrees of effort.

In reply to mypyrex:

With regard to watermark removal, I really do wish we had something like this here in the UK http://www.photoattorney.com/2007/07/watermarks-can-be-music-to-your-ears.h...

A friend of mine suffered somewhat from some prick nicking a photo of his, removing the watermark (and doing a crap job of it) then selling it as their own last year, and the hassle it caused is ridiculous. (story here http://www.epuk.org/Showcase/1008/masked-protester-attacks-policeman-london...

In reply to What Goes Up:
What gives?
All I get is this and the email link doesn't work either:

www.software.filesfrog.com/default/error404

In reply to mypyrex: Dunno, just tried the link again myself and it works for me.

In reply to mypyrex:

Link works for me. All it is is an article with some info in, to summarise:

1) go to http://www.google.com/imghp
2) click on the camera in the right hand side of the search box
3) give google your image and click search

This will find similar images around the net, hopefully including any pilfered ones.

RE: the right click thing, it's bloody annoying, as there are other things in that right click menu that might be useful. It's also trivially easy to circumvent. So please don't.
Realistically, anything you put on your website can be pinched. There are a number of ways to make that hard, but you can't stop screen grabs. Better to make sure that you put up "preview" images which are too low resolution to be worth nicking, or have a watermark etc.

In reply to jamesc88:

Could I not just crop that out if it is away in a corner?