Legal Issues - - Copyright and my website

WishfulPixel · #1 01-09-2007, 12:45 PM

So here I am, 2-3 days away from officially launching my website. The all of a sudden in dawned on me, how do I protect my work? I know the files will be low res and you wont be able to reproduce them, but what about my concepts? Is there a way to protect them?

Any help would be tremendously appreciated.

Thanks
WP

CJ Swartz · #2 01-09-2007, 02:49 PM

How do I protect my idea?
Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, systems, or methods of doing something. You may express your ideas in writing or drawings and claim copyright in your description, but be aware that copyright will not protect the idea itself as revealed in your written or artistic work.

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html

We've had long threads over the years about people stealing images off of member's websites -- there are some steps you can take to protect yourself, but nothing that will work against knowledgeable, determined thieves. (Nothing that I've heard of, yet, anyway.)

You can read about what Copyscape can do for you --
http://www.copyscape.com/campaign.php

and read about what someone thinks it doesn't do --
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/?p=25

How to find plagiarism
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/?page_id=19

Perhaps a member here has found a solution and will share it with you. The last advice I read was "don't put anything of yours on the internet that you are unwilling to have someone take and use for their own purposes."

skydog · #3 01-09-2007, 06:26 PM

I shoot primarily high school sports and I found many of my photos ending up on "myspace". Many of the photos were just copied off my website. I know the quality they obtained was not the best, but they obtained what they wanted and I never got a sale. So what I am now doing is putting a faint watermark across my photos before posting. If someone else has a better idea I'm all ears.

CJ Swartz · #4 01-14-2007, 01:14 PM

Kim Komando has some info and links that may help you with some tricks to try

http://www.komando.com/tips/index.aspx?id=1441

Excerpt: "For instance, you can insert some JavaScript code into your pages' <head> tags. The code gets rid of the potential thief's right-click menu. That menu is needed to save the image alone. This can be overcome if thieves disable JavaScript in their browsers. But most people don't know that.

If you use cascading style sheets (CSS), you can do even better. Using layers, you can position a transparent GIF over each of your photos. Downloaders attempting to get your photos will instead get the transparent GIF. Thieves will copy pictures of literally nothing."