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| 1950's Edinburgh Princes Street © |
Most think that because you have posted it on the internet
that it is free to use and it's more of a lack of education than a deliberate
attempt to cheat the photographer or the hosting company out of their rights.
This isn't helped by various search engines indexing your photos and displaying
them in results when people search for images.
You should, of course, be flattered that someone has
considered your photography to be good enough to reproduce but it would have
been better if they had asked first and given you the appropriate
accreditation. There are of course a few things that you can do to help prevent
copyright breaches:
Firstly, put your meta data in the photo. You would be
surprised how few people check to see whether the meta data specifically says
that it is copyright and who it belongs to. Meta
data is vital to help people ascertain whether an image is being used without
permission and allows people to check whether it is okay by contacting the
photographer / hosting company. Make sure your name, contact details and more
importantly whether it is copyright or not is in the meta data. Most reputable
printers and web companies will check this and because it is not visible and obvious
to the average person they are easily caught out.
It's easy to do as well - just right click on the image and
choose properties then click on the details tab. You can easily add a Title,
Comments and Copyright status. The more information you provide the better.
Of course someone could always strip this data out of the
image whether intentionally or not (image optimisers do this) but at least if
you left it in the original you can work out who or what removed it. It makes
it a lot harder to claim innocence if you deliberately removed the meta data
and if you do not put meta data in the photo in the first place then how can
you expect people to check whether it is copyright!
Secondly, do not put high resolution images on the web. Most
printers are able to work out whether an image has been downloaded from the web
by checking the resolution but if you go and upload a high resolution image on
the web and don't put any meta data in it then the assumption has to be that
the person using this image owns the copyright to it.
Thirdly, if you absolutely must have a high resolution image
on the web then put a water mark on it. A large © in the middle set with a
transparency of 20 - 30% opacity using a bold font makes it very difficult to
remove by touching it up in a photo editing application. Even better put a soft
edge shadow around it or emboss it which makes it even harder to touch out.
Fourthly, if you personalise the photo name then it makes it
a lot easier to find on the internet. e.g. dsc0001.jpg is no use but 1950's-Edinburgh-Princes-Street.jpg
is very easy to find in a search engine.
If you are using a content management system then make sure
that it displays the name of the file on the actual web page so that the search
engines are able to index it. This makes checking a lot easier.
Lastly, if you do spot a copyright breach don't jump off the
deep end. Try and establish whether it is a genuine error or not. Could it be
an employee who has since left? Or perhaps they have been misled? Either way
ask them to take it down, or a smart photographer would ask for a credit and a
link back to their website and gain some publicity.
In conclusion, adding meta data to your photos, watermarking high resolution photos and uniquely naming them on the web will go a long way to preventing ambiguous copyright breaches.
In conclusion, adding meta data to your photos, watermarking high resolution photos and uniquely naming them on the web will go a long way to preventing ambiguous copyright breaches.
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