I was wondering about photo copyrights. If I am the original photographer of a picture does that mean I own the copyright or do I need special documents for my pictures to be copyrighted?
As far as I know, as soon as you take a pic, it's your copyright. Most people put "copyright" on it so if someone copies - other than personal use usually - you have a case. However, if you want to take them to court, you probably have to prove it really came from you - i.e. the memory card etc.
I don't think I would take anybody to court over it but I would like to be able to tell someone if they used it on their site without my consent.
Yes, if you took the picture you own the copyright. You don't need to put a copyright notice on or near it, but it's a good idea. If someone is using your photo without your permission, you should definitely tell them to take it off their site.
If someone was using my picture without my permission then I would tell them to remove it. I doubt I would take someone to court over it but I would tell them to remove it.
of course, with the web it's nearly impossible to know if anyone is using your photo without your consent - nature of the beast, what with the billions of sites out there. If you ever did come across one of your photos being used, you could make notification and in many cases they would just drop it without a fight - they probably figured noone would find out. But they may just ignore you or put up a fight...it's up to you at that point if it's worth pursuing. My method has always been to put pretty small versions of my photos online - I stick to 800x600 or so. That way, someone could end up using it somewhere on a webpage without my knowledge, but they likely can't make any money off selling it or printing it and passing it off as their own. Most stock agencies and photo buyers will want much higher res than that, and an 800x600 won't print much bigger than 4"x6" without getting badly pixellated. I've found my photos once on another site - I informed the site that was hosting, with proof that these were mine, and they were removed by the site admin. But who knows where one of your photos might be lurking out there!? I think if you include the copyright symbol and documentation on the photo and date of copyright along with the EXIF data on the original photo, you'll have sufficient proof to defend any unauthorized use of your photos...even if you had to go all the way to court with it. You still technically have the copyright on your photos as the original photographer, but it might be harder to argue your point without having made notification that the photo was copyright protected.
now you know why my galleries are only 400x600. i have had this happen to me on occasion and find that being nice but professional tends to get this stuff resolved. of course, this only works with people who want to be decent about things.
Here's a good copyright overview: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html A simple fact of internet life is that the technology simply invites copyright infringement - whether inadvertant, innocent or intentional. There's no perfect solution, especially for photographers. The best way to avoid inadvertant theft of images is, like suggested above, to simply post only smaller images, whose uses are limited. One good trick for protecting yourself in the event you ever need to "prove" an image is yours is placing hidden watermarks - say a certain custom symbol that his hidden in the pixels of a large image. I talked to a guy once who has a program that automatically places these, and that is undetectable unless you know where to zoom on the image.
