The latest post by US lawyer Carolyn E. Wright on her very useful PhotoAttorney blog suggests five things photographers can do to protect their online images. Mostly its familiar advice (and Lightroom 3 might help if you intend to add a copyright watermark to all your pictures) there was one item in the five that was – at least for me – a little novel.
This was her suggestion on copyright management information (CMI), not a term I’ve used before. This is the kind of information we are always advised to put in the metadata of our image files such as your name and copyright information, so nothing new. But although I’ve heard a UK lawyer saying it’s an offence to remove this in this country, I didn’t know the position in the US.
According to Wright, it seems even clearer there, and under the U.S. Copyright Act (Section 1202) removing CMI carries a fine of $2,500 up to $25,000, with lawyers fees and any damages from the infringement on top. And you can collect on this whether or not your images have been registered with the US Copyright Office.
She also suggests you should use a visible copyright notice on or adjacent to the image whether or not you have registered copyright, as even if your work has been registered it might be possible for an infringer to claim they had used the image without realising it was copyright, drastically reducing the damages you might get from having your work used.
I don’t intend to follow all of her suggestions. Registering with the US only makes sense you are prepared to go after big bucks in the US courts should your pictures be used without consent. And disabling right-click on your web pages will annoy innocent users, including those who can legitimately claim “fair use” such as students writing course essays. But I am thinking seriously about adding a small but clear copyright notice to all of the images I upload in future to my web sites – and of course making sure that all of the images have this and my contact information in the metadata.
For once the image by her that accompanies the post has some relevance, not for the two snow white birds in the image (probably the only oil-free birds to appear on the web in the past month or so) but at the bottom, very clearly visible, is her copyright line.