New laws in the UK could threaten existing copyright protection for creatives, in particular photographers. While many of you on 365 take part for the experience, and not for professional gain, we not only want to assure you that we would never exploit loopholes in copyright law or use your pictures outside of the project without your permission!
However, protecting copyright is a serious issue, so here are a few tips to help you understand how to protect your images online.
Watermarks
There are plenty of quick and easy programmes out there that will add an instant watermark to your work, and ultimately this is the most protection you can add to an image when posting online. But if you just want to share your pictures without the added "detail" for commercial purposes, a watermark can distract from the aesthetic quality.
Meta Data
A digital camera automatically attaches a time and date stamp as meta data to an image. This can be modified however to include your name so that any images that you have online are not orphans. To do this, you will need to use an exif editor such as PhotoME
There are programmes out there that can strip watermarks from an image and meta data too - these are only deterrents! Read on for more ways to protect your images!
Register Your Images - by adding your images to a registry, not only are you upping your chance of being credited for your work, getting your images out in to the public arena and giving yourself a chance to make money - you are also making it easier for someone to find you with "reasonable effort" and therefore not use your images without consent or acknowledgement. Registering every image you take however is tie consuming and can often actually cost money.
imgembed.com promises to track, protect and monetize images.
copyrighthub.co.uk (coming soon) if a match is made with a picture on a registry that links with Copyright Hub, author name and contact details are displayed.
Plus Registry a global, multilingual hub for other registries, allowing registration and search using third-party applications and plug-ins.
Fail safe plan?
The new law will state that a person who has found an image will have to make "a reasonable to find the originator" - as such, your best bet before uploading via instagram, twitter, flickr and the like is to post to your own blog and ensure that you add your name to the meta title and meta description (not to be confused with the image meta data) in the content management system. IMPORTANTLY add your name to the alt tag in image uploads as well as a description of the picture.
This ensures that anyone who makes a "reasonable search" will find your image on your website.
Tip
It is also a good idea to back up images to CD - if you find that someone has conveniently "stripped" the image meta data and claimed the image is an orphan - you will have the evidence needed to prove that it was yours, because once it is on CD there is no way you could have tampered with the information.
What you can do now
People in support of retaining copyright protection have until the end of the year to petition against the change - http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/49422 or read a full review of the new law (and the logic behind it) here
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Quick and easy to install and use.
Hope that helps.