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| A D'net original. Photo taken by me only I can release permission for the image to be used, |
Copyright, it is has been a great topic of discussion in my other line of work of photography. It was not mentioned in the discussion, but each photo or digital image was created by a person. The average person feels that there is no harm for copying an image off the internet and posting to Facebook, twitter or their own personal website. Just last week the Professional Photographers of America polled several members on the use of copyrights and their imagines. The results were astounding! Of the 2,830 that took the poll, (84%) 2,392 photographers NEVER register their work. 41 (1%) ALWAYS register. 324 (11%) OCCASIONALLY register. These are professional that make a living at creating images. It goes to show not matter on what platform you create, educate yourself and protect your work.
D'net,
ReplyDeleteWonderful photo! Thanks for letting admire your work! If copyright refers to permanently fixed work that can be seen or heard. So photos are there. Are not they? I had the same thought about how much work you and all of us have created so far and that personally I have not done any copyright.
I think that this topic about copyright should be included in schools and universities so people can get educated in this topic. I plan to share this knowledge with my seventh-grade students. I think that doing so, we can help the future generation to value the importance of copyrighting.
Danette,
ReplyDeleteMy husband is a photographer also, though not quite on the scale as you. I was also surprised to know that they did not mention photography or digital imaging in any of the articles. I was again surprised by your post when you mentioned that over 80% of photographers did not register their work. Sadly, he falls into that category, but now that I know better, he will do better! (lol) Any information that you have that can point me in the right direction for how to get started registering his work would be extremely helpful!!
Danette,
ReplyDeleteFrom my experience in digital imaging, it’s mostly the big portrait studios that have issues with copyright. Nobody seems to understand that it’s say, Owen Mills that owns the rights to their portrait of Dad taken so many years ago, not them. Telling them to go to a website to get a release form is too much trouble. I once had an employer ask me to repeatedly violate this so it’s not just individuals who are at fault here. Like so much other corruption, it’s institutional.
For me, the cost & time associated with registering every image I create is impractical and really overkill. I find that © and a date and my name to be sufficient protection. But I also know an excellent copyright lawyer who’s made a career of suing Getty and National Geographic on behalf of photographers! Again, I feel media creators are more threatened by big media conglomerates than from downloading. The key for me is to control distribution. I never make an image available for download that has enough resolution to print much bigger than a 5x7 print of any quality. Kind of like I keep the negatives!
That is a great point! I totally missed a teachable moment last year with my middle schoolers. Many of them were apprehensive about creating works from scratch (the former teacher had provided template like projects...). I had them search the net for generic pictures on Google images that they would then transfer as line drawings onto their paper. I was not grade them on the actual picture, but more of how they finished them. This seemed to really help the students when I had them do self portraits in the same manner, but for the other pictures the only thing I stressed was no logos. I could/should have spent A LOT more time on copyright with them!
ReplyDeleteWow, interesting statistics. I guess it depends on whether the photographers were more... veteran as to whether they'd see the necessity of registering their work for copyright certification. After the law changed, eliminating the certification requirement and especially in the digital age I'm guessing that younger photographers do not see certification as important. I know that the more veteran ones certainly do. Great insight.
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