I think the answer is if the theft occurs in a non-signatory country,
good luck. If it occurs in a country that is a signatory, then you have
to decide if it is worth pursuing, due to costs and international
problems in such law suits.
I can tell you that in the very vast majority of cases, pursuing
copyright infringement is only of real value as a deterrent to others
who may have heard of your action. They very rarely are profitable.
The main pont of a copyright notice is to make people think twice, to
keep the image "tagged" in terms of ownership so it doesn't end up being
presumed to be public domain, and to be able to threaten someone you
find out has infringed on your copyright with action.
When you can state to someone "you are infringing on my copyright and
you better stop" (and they know you aren't kidding because your name is
right there in the image) that has more value than saying "hey, you know
that picture on your website with the horses in the field, well, that's
mine, and although my name and copyright notice doesn't appear on it,
well, it is mine, and I have the neg to prove it, so stop using it".
Of course, again, the best protection if you are going to post an image
is to use a visible watermark. Very few people will bother trying to
remove an embossed watermark from an image.
And, if you don't think theft is a problem, I can tell you of a
documented case I am aware of where a profession photographer in England
had the web version of one of his images published on a front section
page of a very established London newspaper. A friend of this
photographer recognized the image and called him. The photographer
contacted his lawyer, and they demanded payment X3, which is the usual
first approach to this. He was upset more by the crappy quality of the
reproduction, since it was taken from his website at about 100 dpi, and
was enlarged even further, than he was by the infringement.
Anyway, in conversations with this stately newspaper, the Art Director
indicated that the "do this all the time" and if they get caught
(rarely, it seems) they just pay up, and it still saves them money, even
at 3X cost. It saves money not only because many times photographers
either do not know of the usage or they don't pursue the situation, but
because the cost of a researcher contacting the photographer, writing up
a contract, etc, and the time delay (newspapers often need an image
"yesterday") makes it cheaper to do it that way.
So, don't assume it is only school kids doing grade 6th book reports who
"borrow" images from the web, its not!
Art
ADVANCENET.NET wrote:
> While they may very well be a signatory to the Bern Convention, there
> are a number of countries that are not; and the question asked, as I
> understand it and do not have an answer to, is would the copyright be
> protected from infringement on those countries by residents of those
> countries - especially when the infriniged image may be put on the web
> from sources in those countries and transmitted around the world
> electronically.
>
> filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk <> wrote:
>
>>everything you need to know about copyright registration in the US:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>PS - Israel is a signatory to the Bern Convention
>>
>>
>>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe by mail to listserver@halftone.co.uk, with 'unsubscribe
filmscanners'
or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or
body
