PhotoWalkPro

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There has been a dust up recently over photo contests and the cost of actually entering an image in hopes of winning a prize.  I’m not referring to entry fees, but the cost of giving away all your rights to your prized photographs.  Blog reader Andrew Graham from Belgium pointed me to this article (click here) from the Sydney Morning Herald about how many mainstream photo contests are burying clauses in their Terms of Agreements (TOA) that, in essence, take away all rights to submitted photographs and claim them for themselves.  This means that the companies that are running the contests are free to use or sell the submitted images without compensation given to the photographer.  Most of the contests are aimed at amateur photographers that are so excited at the prospect of winning the contest that they fail to read the TOA.  It doesn’t help that many of the TOAs are written by lawers and are often confusing and filled with so much legal-speak that it is hard to decipher just what you are getting yourself into.

Earlier this week, Super Blogger David Ziser, wrote about an appearance he made on the PhotoNetCast podcast (click here to see his post) where he participated in a round-table discussion that covered this very issue.  David, like most of us, finds it hard to believe that so many people would willingly or unknowingly trade away their rights.  If you think the problem is just with small contests, you would be wrong.  In 2005,  Microsoft ran their FuturePro contest with a TOA that read in part:

By submitting your Entry, you grant Sponsor and Administrators an irrevocable royalty-free, worldwide right, in all media (now known or later developed) to use, publish, alter or otherwise exploit your Entry.You hereby forever release the Sponsor and Administrators from any and all claims you might have in connection with their use and exhibit of your Entry as set forth above. You also agree to sign any necessary documentation to effectuate that license and release.

There was such a public outcry of contempt for the TOA that Microsoft was forced to change the rules, leaving the rights to images intact for the photographers.  So the bottom line is that while you might be excited about showing off your great image in hopes of winning a prize, be wary that you might be filling the stock photo coffers of some corporation without any further compensation to you.

If you are wondering where to find more information about which contests are protecting your rights, check out this link provided by David Ziser to Pro Imaging International.  They are committed to disecting those TOAs and determining which contests are really in your best interest.

Do you use Flickr or Picasa to share your images? Do you add your copyright info before you upload? If the answer is no, we need to talk. If you answered yes, you should still make sure you are getting the most from it.

So what exactly is a copyright? Well, the U.S. Copyright Office defines it as such:

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works.

Copyright allows you to; reproduce your work in copies, make derivative works based on your original, allows you to distribute your work through sale, rent, lease, or transfer, and to display your work publicly.

You may have read on the web that even though your image is copyrighted the moment you take it, it doesn’t mean that you will be able to effectively claim your rights to your images if you don’t have them registered. Some lawyers won’t even touch copyright infringement cases for images that aren’t registered.

Copyright Registration:

In general, copyright registration is a legal formality intended to make a public record of the basic facts of a particular copyright. However, registration is not a condition of copyright protection. Even though registration is not a requirement for protection, the copyright law provides several inducements or advantages to encourage copyright owners to make registration. Among these advantages are the following:

• Registration establishes a public record of the copyright claim.

• Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U.S. origin.

• If made before or within 5 years of publication, registration will establish prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.

• If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney’s fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.

Obviously the internet is making it easier for you to display your talents for everyone to see. Unfortunately it is also making it easier to steal your art without you getting your due, whether that is a byline or a paycheck. So what should you be doing? First and foremost you should be adding copyright data to your images. I know what you’re thinking, “Hey Jeff, I use a fancy Flash program to display all of my images so you can’t right-click and download them.” And I say, “Have you ever heard of a screen capture?” A lot of image theft is for the purpose of web publishing so if your images are being displayed at a decent screen resolution, then they are prime for a screen capture. Grabbing your image is one short keyboard shortcut away on a Mac (Cmd+Shft+3 or 4).

So what should you do? If you import your images using a program such as Adobe Lightroom or Bridge, it is relatively easy to set up default copyright information so that it can be added to every image you import; information such as your name, email address, web address, etc. When you enter your copyright/author name, add your email address to the end of it so that it is listed right there in plain site. Sometimes you can’t see all of the extra IPTC information in the metadata that is entered for an image such as the web address and email for the owner, not unless you include it on the Author section. Below is the Info from an image that I had uploaded on Flickr. I then downloaded it to see what information would be displayed in my simple Preview viewer on my Mac.

Here is the information displayed in Photoshop for the same image.

As you can see, Photoshop shows the complete IPTC metadata including the web page address labeled as Copyright Info URL, but this information is not available in the image viewer in the first image. If I had not included an email address, there would be no contact info, just a name. Sure, someone could do a Google search in hopes of finding my name and then an email address but why make them hunt. Just put it right there with your name.

So now we get to the unscrupulous individuals that don’t really care what info is embedded in the images they download because they have no intention of contacting the owner. This is where the registration of your images comes into play. It is possible to collect damages from an unauthorized use of your image but you will probably spend more in legal fees than you could ever recoup. However, if your works are registered, then you have established that you are indeed the owner of the copyright and this allows for the much easier prosecution and obtainment of compensation with little financial commitment from you.

So how do you go about registering your works? There are a few methods available from the U.S. Copyright Office (click here). You can submit (also called a deposit by the Copyright Office) in several hardcopy or digital formats but the most appealing method I have seen is the fairly new electronic submission option which is still in beta. The electronic Copyright Office (eCO) is a web-based system that actually costs less than traditional registration ($35 for the eCO as opposed to $45 for a traditional submission) and, once registered, can help streamline the process for you. The cost is per submission, not per image in case you were wondering. To see a great evaluation of this system, check out this post by professional photographer Joseph J. Delconzo. For even more information about copyright and your rights as a photographer, go check out Carolyn Wright’s always informative Photo Attorney blog.

By the way, I downloaded multiple images from Flickr and less than 5% had any copyright in the metadata. I wonder who they belong to? They must be free, I mean I found them on the Internet.