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Daft copyright question (1 Viewer)

Eos9

Well-known member
United Kingdom
I guess it might be a daft question but if adding a copyright logo inc year to a photo is it 'normal' to include the year to the photo on the basis of the date the photo was taken or the time the photo was edited or posted etc.
i.e. If I was adding a photo that was originally taken in 2012 to my website now should I put © Eos9 2012 or ©*Eos9 2014.
I guess its probably down to individual choice and matters little but just wonder if there was a 'standard' way so to speak.


Many Thanks
 
Gut feeling is that if your post processing is minor then the art of the picture is really from 2012 and copyright should be labeled as such. If you take several images and combine them, or change colors in a drastic way (more painting than just showing the photo) then the piece of art did not exist before you did the processing and copyright should be at the time of processing (2014 in your example).

But, I am not a lawyer and can have misunderstood something.

Niels
 
In the EU (and a lot of other countries) you don't have to put a copyright logo on your photo for it to be protected, in case that wasn't clear to you.

But, of course, once a photo has been posted on the web it become pretty near impossible to keep control over it. I think that copyright notices and watermarks are added to make the photo less appealing for people to nick and use. (But of course if you put your notice in a corner it's easy to crop it out.)

I'm pretty sure that what you put in such a notice will not have any legal effect, and I agree with Niels that I'd put the date of the original picture, since that's when it became protected.

Andrea
 
From Wikipedia:

"In the United States, the copyright notice consists of:

- the © symbol, or the word "Copyright" or abbreviation "Copr.";
- the year of first publication of the copyrighted work; and
- an identification of the owner of the copyright, either by name,
abbreviation, or other designation by which it is generally known.

e.g.

© 2011 John Smith

The notice was once required in order to receive copyright protection in the United States, but in countries respecting the Berne convention this is no longer the case. The United States joined the Berne Convention in 1989."

So technically its a relict (always was ouside theUS), but useful because putting it in your watermark (everywhere in the world) makes it a no-brainer for everyone to understand that your work is not a freebe to use!
 
Professional photographers are having a tough time surviving nowadays because there are so many amateur wildlife photographers that are happy to give their photo's away for nothing purely for the kudos of seeing their pictures in print.I think the chances of having your pictures stolen for commercial gain are very slim indeed because if someone doesn't want to pay they can find someone prepared to give them what they want for nothing quite easily. If you have any doubt don't post them on the net, if you have a shot that you think has merit enough to be worth selling try approaching an agency. I have to say I have to laugh when on places like Birdguides people post prices on their shots when they are total garbage. Interestingly though, you can't steal a shot from Birdguides whereas here on Birdforum it's a doodle.
 
Hi,
I put a copyright notice in my tags, not on the photo. And I give a freebie creative commons licence by-nc-sa not because of seeking kudos (I'll never know if my photo is used somewhere I suspect), but because I like being able to download photos and resources for free, so I also lime to provide them to others for free.
 
In the US, while you might place a copyright symbol and date on a printed image, or one on the Internet, defending it as your property will be difficult to address unless you have have registered it with the copyright office, thereby creating and setting a date of creation as your work and having it within government records. A major problem with the Internet, which is to say PEOPLE, is that many, many, do not realize and/or care that an image is real property, just as a car is, and feel it's there, it can be taken and used as they wish. Again, this is for the US: you can register multiple images at one time with one fee with the copyright office. If you have ambition to publish, or have an image in a magazine, I would strongly suggest you go this route so that someone else can't claim ownership and that you plagiarized it. It sounds crazy, but it happens from time time.
As noted in another post, if you are in fear of being ripped off, don't put it up, or at least watermark it since no warning will deter everyone.
 
The problem with putting anything in the public domain it becomes just that: "Public" and if anyone really wants to download a pic of yours then the little copyright symbol etc will not put them off.

One solution is to watermark the pic with your name etc, but in order to be effective you wouls have to have it in an area of the image easily seen which may spoil it.

A second idea may be to disable the right click facility thus meaning it can't be downloaded, or a third option is to save it at a resolution high enough to view on a website, but low enough to discourage anyone wanting to use it for other purposes.
 
I do a lot of fire ground and fire equipment photography and that said a lot of Magazines will not pick up your photo if you have a watermark on it. But there are a lot of fire equipment photo collectors out there that will add your photo to their collection and then remove the water mark unless you put it as close to the rig as possible. I do that when I post photos on fire forums. I also have my camera set to put my copyright information in the photo details automatically.

I also try and keep a copy of the original photo, and any post production photos just in case. But your right if somebody really wants that photo their is nothing that is going to stop them. There are always ways of getting it. The honest people out there will be deterred a little by the copyright symbol.
 
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