My goal of Tips on Tuesday is to educate you (and myself with research needed to write these blogs!) on all aspects of photography. Today I will talk about something that most of you won’t find to be very interesting – copyright issues, privacy and theft. I know there are a few of you out there who have asked me questions about this in casual conversation or after viewing contracts (I have a whole section in my wedding contracts about this).
This weekend there was an issue with a local photographer getting caught blatantly using a West Coast photographers images as her own. She actually went as far as to airbrush out the other photographers logo and replaced it with hers. Thanks to a little thing I just learned about called a google reverse image search, someone caught her stealing images. This is a crime. This is a legal offense. Sure, we all make stupid mistakes. But this was 100% intentional and pathetic.
Once something goes onto the internet – it is wide open to being taken. I do my best to protect my clients by watermarking any images on my site and facebook. But clearly that isn’t even enough.
Another photographer I am in a group with was contacted by someone in Florida. This person saw a brochure for a medical building and recognized the little girl on the cover. This little girl was the daughter of the photographer. The Florida friend called with excitement that she saw the photographer’s daughter in the brochure. The problem? The photographer NEVER gave the ok for the photo of her daughter to be used. Someone found it online and used it with out permission. It may have been innocent, just a simple google image search. Regardless, it is a serious invasion of privacy. How would you feel if images of your children were being used with out your permission?
Every time we upload an image to facebook, a website, or a blog we are opening ourselves to the chance of this happening. As your photographer, I do the best I can by watermarking images. Sometimes that is more than enough to keep people away, and with the case of the local photographer who airbrushed out logos, it’s not.
With my own personal photos, I am not overly concerned. I feel the chances of this happening are slim. When you sign up with facebook, you agree to the terms of service that every photo you upload they have rights to. Yup, they can use them. Will they? Probably not. I am sure some fancy attorney told them they need to do this to cover their butts. The fact is that they can if they wanted to.
With LFP on face book, I do the very best I can to protect my clients. I went from using my name typed to my logo… I felt it was harder to remove and may keep more people away. But at the end of the day, a person could remove that logo if they really wanted to.
I wanted to share this advice so that you have the opportunity to make the best choice for you and your family. While it’s convenient to share online, it’s not always safe. The choice of what you want to do is up to you!
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