How do you copyright a picture?

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J. Lane Easter, DVM

A born Texan has instilled in his system a mind-set of no retreat or no surrender. I wish everyone the world over had the dominating spirit that motivates Texans.– Billy Clayton, Speaker of the Texas House

No state commands such fierce pride and loyalty. Lesser mortals are pitied for their misfortune in not being born in Texas.— Queen Elizabeth II on her visit to Texas in May, 1991.

31 March 2012, 02:48

safari-lawyer

Easy . . . snap the pic.

You take the picture, you own the copyright.

Copyright protection and copyright registration, however, are two completely different things.

Copyright protection extends to all original visual, musical, and artistic works. You take the picture, you own the copyright. As such, you enjoy the exclusive right to disseminate, reproduce, display, and create derivative works from the original work.

Copyright registration is the process of registering your original work to establish ownership as well as the date of creation of the work and to place the entire copyright infringing world on notice of your claim of ownership. Registration is available on the state and federal level and federal registration carries with it some powerful weapons like statutory damages and attorney fee shifting in infringement actions.

Registration, should you wish to register, is cheap and easy. You could do it yourself, Lane. Check out the register of copyrights' webpages at http://www.copyright.gov/

Now, where shall I send the bill?

31 March 2012, 08:50

Dog Man

On Greg Brownlee's recent ibex post, I saved one of his pictures to my desktop, but when I tried to open it, it was distorted and unviewable. I assumed he had purposely edited it to keep it from being copied.
With what has been going on, I thought it was a pretty good idea.

Can anybody post on how to do this?

31 March 2012, 12:22

Mike Smith

Absolutely right. It isnt like the old days. If you want to make it more difficult you can use one of the photo programs like picassa to put c@2012 or your name C @ 2012 etc on the image. It wont stop it but might make them think twice. I also would like to know id there is a way to distort the picture to prevent ts being copied.

31 March 2012, 20:40

bobby7321

there are a few different ways to pull a switcharoo when someone tries to right click and save your photo. you can also slice a photo into a bunch of tiny pieces so the person downloading it would have to put them all back together.

problem with all of these methods is a simple "print screen" and paste into a photo editor program usually can circumvent all the above.

easiest way is to watermark the image. if its a nice photo you are worried about having stolen, just put a copyright watermark in an area that would be hard to photoshop out. then keep a nice clean high-res version in a non-public place.

02 April 2012, 17:47

ledvm

quote:
Originally posted by bobby7321:

easiest way is to watermark the image. if its a nice photo you are worried about having stolen, just put a copyright watermark in an area that would be hard to photoshop out. then keep a nice clean high-res version in a non-public place.

What program do you use to "watermark"?

02 April 2012, 18:39

Tim Vining

quote:
Originally posted by safari-lawyer:
Easy . . . snap the pic.

You take the picture, you own the copyright.

Copyright protection and copyright registration, however, are two completely different things.

Mr. Parks lays it out perfectly. Do register your work within 90 days of creation. Registering within 90 days entitles the rightful owner to recover attorney fees and costs.

Copyright protection extends to all original visual, musical, and artistic works. You take the picture, you own the copyright. As such, you enjoy the exclusive right to disseminate, reproduce, display, and create derivative works from the original work.

Copyright registration is the process of registering your original work to establish ownership as well as the date of creation of the work and to place the entire copyright infringing world on notice of your claim of ownership. Registration is available on the state and federal level and federal registration carries with it some powerful weapons like statutory damages and attorney fee shifting in infringement actions.

Registration, should you wish to register, is cheap and easy. You could do it yourself, Lane. Check out the register of copyrights' webpages at http://www.copyright.gov/

Now, where shall I send the bill?

03 April 2012, 01:10

bobby7321

quote:
Originally posted by ledvm:
quote:
Originally posted by bobby7321:

easiest way is to watermark the image. if its a nice photo you are worried about having stolen, just put a copyright watermark in an area that would be hard to photoshop out. then keep a nice clean high-res version in a non-public place.

What program do you use to "watermark"?

you'll need some sort of photo editor. there are free ones that'll do the trick.
there are fancy digital watermarks, but the type I was referring to was something like this

03 April 2012, 05:32

ledvm

I guess I did OK then.

03 April 2012, 05:55

safari-lawyer

As a practical matter, the copyright notice for a non-registered work would be:

Copyright 2012
All Rights Reserved
Nigel Thiesen

The copyright symbol, the "C" with the circle around it, is reserved for registered works.

At least that's what I recall from my former days as an IP attorney.

19 April 2012, 02:22

BaxterB

quote:
What program do you use to "watermark"?

If you have Photoshop elements you can type up a copyright, use the magic wand to select the white area, then elect "Inverse" in the "Select" menu and that will select just the letters. COpy and paste into the pic and all you'l have are letter and no 'square' around the words. Sometimes you have to select and delete the background from within the closed loops but that's easy. You can also lower the opacity to an amount you like so it's not so bold.

Good luck!

16 May 2012, 17:25

Jools

Bear in mind that copyright infringement is not a criminal offence, it is a civil offence. Also the other major problem with infringement of copyright is it only excisits where there are enforcable laws regarding copyright.

Something that even the Getty Corp who have about the largest copyrighted material bank out there realised. They even have software attached to their images that track their usage.

Try tracking down and then pursueing an infinger of your copyright thru the courts in Sth America, Africa, India, China or Russia.