Photographers (especially professionals) tend to be paranoid people who are worried that everyone wants to steal their images. In the mind of a photographer, the internet is smoke-filled backroom full of shady men waiting eargerly to steal any photo posted online and immediately use it in a multi-million dollar advertising campaign without any compensation.
But with the explosion in digital photography over the last few years, there are a lot more pictures out on the internet than there are viewers. In most cases, it’s hard enough to find people interested in looking your photos let alone steal them.
However, if you manage to build an audience, you will have to constantly deal with people taking your images and using them without your permission. How you decide to deal with that fact can have a major effect on your photography career and income.
Note: This article is specific to the laws of the United States. If you live in another country and can fill us in on the rules in your country, please post a comment below with the details!
It is my image, right?
Your copyright begins when you click the shutter button.
In most cases when you take a picture, you automatically own the copyright to the image. That means you without doing anything at all, you have the sole ability to sell the image for money. One exception to this is if you are being paid as an employee to photograph for someone else. In that case, the company paying you may own the image if you signed an agreement. There are some other exceptions, too. For example, you can’t take a picture of a piece of art or another person’s picture and then sell your picture since you didn’t create anything new and didn’t have the copyright to what you photographed.
However, having the copyright your the image does not mean you have complete control over the image. The law allows for fair use of your image by others without asking your permission. The rules of fair use are not set in stone, but generally someone may use your image for criticism, commentary, parody, news reporting, research or education without asking you or paying you as long as they are not depriving you of income. For example, someone could post a small version of your picture on their blog along with a criticism of your image and it is totally legal. So before you get mad at someone for “stealing” your image, keep in mind that they may not be doing anything wrong at all. For more information on the rules of fair use, check out the NOLO article.
If copyright is automatic, what else is there to do?
Your goal: Get a copyright registration certificate for your images
You automatically own the copyright to your images, but the rights you get automatically are limited. You are in much better shape if you actually register your copyright with the federal government.
Here’s something that a lot of people don’t know:
You can’t successfully sue someone for using your copyrighted image unless you have formally filed copyright registration. The case will be thrown out because you have no legal standing.
It’s true! If you walk by a bus stop tomorrow and see a major company plastering your picture all over it in a giant ad, you can’t actually sue the company until you register your image. That means that now you need to file a copyright registration, wait for the registration to be processed (usually about 8 months), and then sue.
But it gets worse. If you file a registration after someone has already taken your image, you are much less protected. It will be much harder to convince the court that you own the image. And even if you win, you won’t get legal costs repaid and you can only win the amount of money you actually lost due to the misuse.
If you register your image before anyone steals it, you are set! In that case, it is simple to prove that you own the image by showing the judge your registration certificate. And if you registered your image before it was published or within three months of publication, you can also sue for legal costs. Finally, you will be able to sue for statutory damages. That means that you can sue for a fixed amount of money (up to $150,000 in some cases) even if you didn’t actually lose that much money due to the other person using your image.
How do I register my images?
The ASMP provides a step-by-step guide to filing copyright registrations online.
Filing for copyright registration is easy in the digital world:
- Create a ZIP file of all the images you want to register
- Fill out some forms online at the Copyright Office web page
- Upload the ZIP file along with your application
- Pay the government $35
You can register as many images as you want at once. The most complicated part is that you can’t mix and match published and unpublished images in the same filing. You have to register published images separately from unpublished images. Determining if an image is published or unpublished is tricky in the digital world since posting the image online on your website may be considered “publication”. Your best bet is to follow the excellent tutorial published by the ASMP.
Can I stop people online from copying my images?
Firefox's built-in "Page Info" window can easily download "protected" images from Flickr.com.
By registering your images with the copyright office, you are fully protected under the law. You may also be wondering how you can use technology to prevent people from taking your images.
Here are some common ways that people suggest to protect your images on the web:
- Using a script to block the ability to save the image in a web browser
- Embedding your image in a Flash application
- Overlaying a transparent image on top of your image to confuse users trying to click on the image to save it
- Adding watermarks to the image
All of these methods are completely ineffective at preventing theft of your images. If a user can see your image on their screen, they can easy take a screenshot of the image and save it. No fancy webpage tricks will slow them down at all. And watermarks don’t prevent copying. Often, they can even be removed or cloned out of an image using Photoshop. Watermarks are more useful as a way to give credit to the photographer than as a means of preventing copying.
Once an image is online, it can be copied. The only way you can reduce the copying of your images is by not posting full-size images online in the first place. If you only post smaller versions of your images, the images won’t look good as prints. That will greatly reduce the likelihood that someone will take your image and do something truly bad with it (like using it in a print advertising campaign).
Do I even want to stop copying?
Photographers are bred with the idea that they must control their images. However, that is not always the best choice. In many cases, it is beneficial to share images.
Flickr.com is a popular photo sharing site. By visiting their Recent Uploads page, you can see how many photos were uploaded to Flickr in the last minute. At any given time, that number is in the thousands. And that is just one photo sharing site!
These days, obscurity is often a bigger threat than theft. You have to compete with tens of thousands of new images being uploaded to the internet every minute. Those images are being created by millions of individual photographers with millions of individual websites. If you are so worried about protecting your images that no one ever sees them, you are only hurting yourself.
A popular way to share your images freely while maintaining control is to publish your images with a Creative Commons license. By licensing your images under the Creative Commons, you are allowing anyone to take your images for free under certain limited circumstances. For example, you can choose to allow anyone to use your images for non-commercial use and require that they give you credit any time the image is used. You can also restrict their ability to modify the image.
While sharing your images may seem counter-intuitive, it is often quite beneficial. By making your images freely available for noncommercial use, it helps to spread your name. Then it might catch the eye of a business who would have to pay you separately to use the image for commercial purposes. This may not be appropriate for wedding or portrait photographers who depend on selling individual images to consumers, but it may be a great way for travel and landscape photographers to build their brand.
Licensing your work under the Creative Commons is very easy. Just follow the tutorial.
Be realistic
DeviantArt user =pumatooth stole this photo from me and claimed to have taken it. But is this idiot worth suing?
If you find that someone has taken your work, assess what exactly is happening. They may be legally using your photograph uder fair use. They may be illegally using your photograph, but it might not be worth worrying about it if they aren’t making any money. If they are making money off your image, it is probably worth taking further action.
Copyright is not an absolute power that lets you control your image in every possible way. Instead, it is a tool to help you make money with your photos if you want to make money with them. If you don’t care about making money, there is nothing wrong with sharing your photos with everyone.
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Misleading at best. You absolutely do not need to have registered to protect your copyright. You do have to register to sue, but that can be done any time as a matter of process.
Here’s a good primer.
Dave,
We are total agreement. You do not have to register to protect your copyright, but you do have to register to sue. No disagreement. How is this article misleading?
The key point is that if you register ahead of time, you get much stronger protection under the law including the ability to sue for statutory damages instead of actual damages. That can very well be the difference between being able to afford to sue and not being able to afford to sue (or finding a lawyer who will take the case). Note that this point is specific to the US.
There’s a reason that every major media company (music, movies, etc) registers all their publications. It’s well worth the money and that is the message I’m trying to spread to professional-level photographers.
If you are just publishing some photos online for fun and don’t care to ever sell them for money, then this is all a moot point. In that case, registration is probably overkill.