I had an exchange with a friend on the C-Brats (C-Dory boating forum) last night and this morning regarding people copying images you post online. Here are some excerpts...
I have to shake my head at what has happened with
images, music, and other intellectual property these days. Some of you
know that Joan and I were in the photography business for a good
portion of our adult lives; not as a hobby, not "for the fun of it," but
as our living. I also spent years on the Copyright Committee for the
Professional Photographers of America; we fought to protect the
ownership of images. (Our professional association sued and won
settlements from the big offenders like Kmart, Walmart, and others who
copied images without permission.) We retired from that in 2006, when
it was apparent where the industry was going. Coincidentally, that was
the year before the first iPhone was released. By that point, anyone
with the slightest bit of skill could reproduce any image, regardless of
the copyright ownership. Legal? No. Enforceable? Not without a
financial loss. People stopped buying actual photographs when they
could show, send, e-mail, text images on their phones.
Think that wasn't significant? Anyone remember Kodak? And film?
Frankly, the image thieves won. Not because it was legal, but because
it quickly became rampant. The professional photographic industry was
decimated. You may see a watermark on some images these days - the
owners of those images are hoping that will protect others from copying
and using the image. It doesn't.
If you post it, someone can "grab" it. Unfortunately, there isn't much
you can do about it. You can make a fuss, even hire a lawyer to go
after the image thief. Unless you can show financial "harm," don't
expect it to go anywhere. And, in the meantime, another 1,000 people
have copied that image and use it as if they own it.
It's the times we live in. Like common sense and good manners, the
consideration of "owning" an image you post is a thing of the past.
Sometimes, I miss those "good ol' days."
His response: Jim, You are Sooooo right. And you picked the right time to get out. Good to see you here, now, though.
My response: Thanks, Harvey. I still check in here regularly,
just don't post as much. Lest someone think I'm an old curmudgeon
regarding digital imaging: we were early adopters of digital technology
in our studio. We converted from film back when a digital camera cost
about as much as our first house. We had a full digital lab, capable of
making prints from wall-size to wallets. It was a real boom to our
commercial work, being able to create digital files that bypassed
clients having to have 4 color separations made for their catalog or
magazine ads. (Whoa - remember catalogs and magazines? 
I brought that ability with us when we bought Wild Blue and started
cruising (in 2006) - we were one of the first ones on this forum to make
posts with images in real time... look through the "Cruising Adventures
of Wild Blue and Crew" thread on the Grand Adventures sub-forum here
(and on the "What I did on my C-Dory" thread before that). At that
time, I intentionally reduced the size of images posted to eliminate
them being copied... well, copied so they would look decent.
These days, I am making 360 videos for the fun of it. Interesting
perspectives and views when out on our scoots. But, I know when I post
an edited, narrated, music added (royalty-free) video, that took me
hours to produce, that anyone can copy it.
Joan and I were talking about archiving digital images last night. With
so many people only using a phone to capture images, what happens to
baby books? There is value in a photographic image you can hold, beyond
"Hey, look at this photo on my phone!" Oh, sure, you can save photos
from your phone on the cloud or a memory stick... will you pass that
stick down to your grandkids? Will they have the antique technology to
pull up those images? 
We can easily copy images... how do we create "lasting value"? One of
the participants here once called me "a fame whore" because of the
images I posted. I look back at those being like a digital diary. I
started our blog back in 2008 so I'd have ownership of those posts and
images. Most are slices of daily life that no one else would have any
interest in copying. And, if for some reason someone would copy any of
it, it is no loss to me. You have to go into it with that understanding
if you post anything online.
TLDR version: many of us like to look at fun/interesting images; just
consider them "free for the taking" if you post them online.
2 comments:
The age-old issue about content and intellectual property. Everyone likes to see the images but could not care less about the effort that went into getting them, nor the technical skill and costly equipment. I get it. My part-time job during the last three years of college was as a photographer for the university, the yearbook, and the school newspaper (don't call me a journalist - them's fighting words these days). I also did a few weddings and other corporate gigs on the side, and even sent a couple of images out on the AP wire. Anything to hustle up dollars for equipment and film (and beer money) as a starving student. While my friends were saving their pennies pining for the latest & greatest Nikon lens or body, I bought Sigma lenses and Minolta 35 mm bodies and made them pay for themselves.
I've often wondered what people will have for images and even archival newspapers 100 years from now. We have pictures of my wife's grandmother as a child in a covered wagon heading to Oklahoma around 1905. When I had access to a chemical darkroom, I printed some old glass plate images of my great-great grandfather and an uncle. The family loved the images, but I have no idea what happened to those glass plates. We recently scanned some late 50's wedding photos of her parents and shots of adorable little Alice from the mid 60's.
Good to hear from you, Early. Archiving client negatives was a big deal in our studio days. Occasionally, we would have someone come in who had a fire or other situation that destroyed portraits we had done. We were able to pull their negative files and make new images for them (I called it "memory insurance"). I know there are still active professional photographers, but the business has changed - many of them give the customer the digital files, so there is nothing to archive. When we made the change from film to digital, we archived their ordered images on CDs. We used a negative scanner to make images from the "olden days" of film at that point.
We had an full color lab (film and E6 processors, package printers, custom enlarger, large roll capacity paper processor... digital obsoleted that. I really appreciated getting away from the chemicals and having to work in the dark when we installed a full digital lab.
Personally, we had switched to digital several years before doing so in the studio. Archiving was a changing technology: we went from the small hard (floppy) discs to zip drives to CD burners. I just looked - yes, you can still buy an Iomega Zip Drive to USB... who knew? ;-)
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