Protecting your Pictures?

[ITRacer121]

Is there a how to or anything? I read the "so i got the Cd from my photog" thread and now Im wondering howcan you protect yourself from this stuff?
Thanks

Maybe I didnt word my question correctly. How do I protect my images on CD so they can not be reprinted? Is it just saved as a read only or are you changing quality and water marking? what are the things you do to protect your images?

[snidow]

Photos are copyrighted the moment you take them but it's best to register them with the gov and it affords not better protection but better payout of you catch someone doing this. There really is no way to totally protect yourself from image theft if you have them posted on the web. But using small res images, marked with copy helps. The PPA has also gotten many of the places that would normal copy a photo for you to no longer do that without the photographers permission. Another site I like is this one PhotoAttorney she has a great deal of helpful information concerning all areas.

[srwatters]

Anthony, you might do a search here on the forum for 'us copyright office' or 'registering copyright' and see what you find. There have been many threads discussing the best methods for registering your work.

As far as protecting it physically or electronically, good luck. If I can see it on my display, I can capture it and change it. That doesn't make it right, but we need to be aware that there is really no DRM for images that is unbreakable. At least not as far as I know.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

Only way to protect a file on a CD or DVD is to NOT PUT IT ON A CD OR DVD!

Now you can go the route that you only give your customers low res files, small file size, so that they are pretty much restricted to getting post card sized prints or smaller of any quality and you may also want to embed in the CD the Millenium Copyright Act which talks about copyrights of photos and other materials and if the person reads it that could be enough to scare them from trying to make prints themselves of your work, kind of like the FBI warning at the start of Movies on tape/dvd.

This topic has been covered many times here over the last 2 years so do a search and if you have a question just post to one of those relevant threads after reading all of it since any thread no matter how old when posted to will bring it current.

There was a recent federal court ruling about using photos in collages/montages that ruled in favor of the creators of the original works also.