Stealing Copyrighted Images Online

Carmelo Diaz

As the Internet gets more and more traffic, the incidences of theft of images online is increasing. Sometimes, this is the result of lack of knowledge about what is considered theft on the web.

The copyright laws were enacted to direct the rights granted to authors to protect their writings and patent law was enacted to govern the rights granted to inventors to protect their discoveries. Eventually, the copyright laws were expanded to protect music, sound recordings, pictures and other visual art, movies and other audiovisual works, dramatic and choreographed works, and computer software.

Copyright law gives the exclusive right to use, copy, distribute, display and perform a copyrighted work to the owner of the copyright. The owner of the copyright is the only entity that may grant permission for anyone. Some uses of copyrighted works do not require permission from the copyright owner and these uses are known as 'Fair Use.'

>From the moment you create a work, you own the copyright. Though, proving your ownership can be a little tricky. Current copyright law should help you understand what you own and how to establish that ownership.

There are combinations of multiple techniques. An example is a watermark. Placing a visible watermark is a great way of establishing your ownership of an image while simultaneously deterring theft. After all, an image is less useful if it's got a big Copyright logo burned into it. The hitch to this approach, of course, is that your lovely compositions will be stained by a graphic. Nevertheless, there is no reason an image thief can't just crop it out.

Another technique is the use of copyright tags. Included in tag standards are specifications for storing ownership and copyright information. These tags are not specific to Photoshop format, and are supported by TIFF and JPEG formats as well. Because you can include these tags in JPEG images, you can ensure that all images you post to the Web have your copyright information embedded in them.

None of these technologies can prevent a user from downloading and saving your images, of course, but most people want to use images legally. These techniques help quickly establish your ownership of an image, making it easier to dispirit a thief.We can use anything on the web but not without permission.

Let us take into account that copyright law guards the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves.

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