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Lee3 -> RE: Time to change your copyright dates (1/4/2007 16:11:08)
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This may be complicating the issue more than necessary. I think updating the footer include on each site for the copyright date once each year is akin to replacing the batteries in your smoke detectors when daylight savings time goes into effect. It's a housekeeping chore. Of course, if your keeping up a lot more sites than I am, this is probably a more relevant issue. It is interesting though.
Relative to enforcing copyright, however...How do you determine if and who is violating it? I'm a photographer and the position of my association is that although copyright is enforceable, they don't want to pursue it for me on the chance that they may lose in court. Instead, their answer is to provide me with an education pack to give to the offender.
I have had at least one situation in which I knew images I placed on line were stolen. I photographed a wedding in which the order placed was extremely small. When I inquired, the groom asserted that the pictures were fuzzy. Since I had yet to deliver prints to him, and since the images on line were low res, he could not have ascertained the sharpness on his screen so it became obvious that he stole the pix and thought didn't reaize or care that he was printing lo-res files.
Another of my clients had me photograph her children and then offered me the choice of accepting a pittance to release the image, or, she would copy them anyway for her holiday cards and I would get nothing. She smiled and told me she was being honest with me.
The long and short of it is that given the opportunity, some people will steal.
My consultant and I have hashed over the issue and we've come to the conclusion that I can only depend upon my own honesty. The long term solution for me was to charge a larger creation fee and accept the fact that I can't depend on everyone to respect my copyright.
Sorry for the rant, however, if you all have a better idea, please post.
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