With the growth of digital photography the photographic industry is experiencing the same copyright infringements as did the music industry with the event of digital files and so called "file sharing". The general public will see nothing wrong in sharing image files whether the copyright belongs to them or not, they all have digital compact cameras and/or phone cameras and are used to sharing images. So unintentional and intentional image theft is now very common place and is very difficult to prevent unless you are some one like Getty Images who have rightly spent a small fortune enforcing their image copyright all over the world.
So what about the rest of us ... ? Certainly this old chestnut keeps coming up time after time again for me, and I am sure it must for other photographers ...and how many of our clients out their understand copyright ...?
I suspect it will dependent on the the main market in which you work, and one would expect most commercial clients to understand copyright, but when working with the general public from my experience not only do the clients no understand copyright, neither do the majority of photographers working in this market sector.
The progression of digital photography hasn't taken long to spilled into the area of wedding photography and some couples now want their wedding images shot by a wedding photographer, but then given to them on disk to create their own picture books etc. I personally have concerns about this trend because with the very odd exception wedding clients have no understanding of image file types, file sizes or colour profiles, and the result of this "DIY" approach could end up as a total mess of the skilled photographers work.
Whether like me you disagree with this trend or not, it is nevertheless a growing one which as photographers if we are going to offer such a service, we should also be interested in the protection of our copyright. It seems a lot of the photographers and public alike use the term "copyright" without any understand of what it means ...so please fellow photographers read these next few lines and then use the correct terminology with your clients and help protect the industry and your future incomes.
Although copyright law is about to undergo a drastic overall as the law stands right now in the UK the Copyright, Design & Patents Act of 1988 (amended 1988) applies to your work. By the act of capturing an image the copyright is with you, whether you are known or otherwise, not only for your lifetime, but up to 70 after your death. This therefore means that if anyone else uses your images without your consent or that of your estate you are able to legally seek compensation and damages for such misuse.
Therefore those photographers who offer their clients images to disk and the copyright to those images as part of their wedding package are quite simply"barking" mad. Copyright should never be released, what should be released in such circumstances is the photographers permission for the client to use these images, and the best way to formalise this is by releasing the images under license to the client for personal use only . The stress on the "personal use" is so that the client my not commercially prosper from the photographers work. The only exception to this may be something like a celebrity wedding where the couple wishes control of all images, in such case significant financial consideration is given to the photographer to release the original images and their right to them. So unless the client is paying you in excess of £10,000, I suggest keeping the copyright and allowing use of the images under license. So if that person ever does become famous and the images are of commercial value, you as the photographer will be in the driving seat now isn't novel ?
Labels: marc byram photography photo tips advise how to copyright what is it ? and the photographer uk licence don't give it away
