Digital Camera World » copyright photos

Photographers’ copyright under threat by Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill?

jmeyer — Thu, 02 May 2013 10:00:46 +0000

If you upload any of your photography anywhere – and we’re going to assume you do since you’re reading a photography website – you’ll no doubt have heard about the recent changes to UK law which could have a profound impact on every photographer.

The new Enterprise and Regulatory Reform bill has somehow managed to arrive without too much uproar from the photographic community – until now.

Amy Davies, of our testing team, takes a look at some of the issues around the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform bill that should be of particular concern to photographers.

What it states is that anybody can use “orphan works” – or photographs and other artworks whose author isn’t obvious after a “diligent” search. Quite what constitutes a diligent search isn’t yet known, but, it sounds like something which could be pretty damn hard to prove either way in court.

If the metadata from your image has been stripped and somehow ended up floating about the internet without your name attached to it – then somebody could end up using that for commercial gain.

Let’s face it, the chances of an individual photographer having the time, energy or funds to chase after huge corporations is pretty slim – could this open the door for photographers to be ripped off, leaving the rest of us in less demand as “free” artwork becomes easily accessible.

Of course it’s also true that the vast majority of people may never know they’ve had work effectively stolen and used for this purpose, but the knock on effects for the rest of the industry could be pretty severe.

It would seem the best way to protect your photography is to attach a watermark – something which many photographers are against since it can distract the overall image, or to register the work as your own… something which costs time and money.

With the speed at which uploads are made to Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and the like, it’s a pretty unrealistic scenario for the majority of ordinary photographers.

Although it’s been over 30 years since the government has done a U-turn on legislation such as this, the photographic community certainly isn’t taking this lying down.

A new e-petition attempting to force a rethink of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill has so far garnered over 14,000 signatures (at the time of writing).

Who knows what the outcome of the petition will be, but if you care about your copyright, then we suggest you attach your name to the ever growing list.

We’ll keep you updated with any progress that’s made – but in the meantime, let us know what you think about the new legislation over on our Facebook page.

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Are photo-sharing websites deleting your metadata?

jmeyer — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:42:34 +0000

A new in-depth study on the use of images by photo-sharing websites and other social media suggests that some of the most popular names are removing photographers’ metadata from photos.

A new report from the International Press Telecommunications Council has revealed that some of the biggest names in social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, are removing metadata from the images they host.

Even the wildly popular photo-sharing website Flickr scored poorly and ranked as one of the worst offenders in the IPTC tests.

Google+, however, was the top performer, achieving a near perfect score in every category of testing. Social blogging site Tumblr also scored highly in protecting photographers’ data.

What is metadata? Click here to find out

According to the IPTC, the study began by uploading a reference picture embedded with Exif metadata in an Exif header and IPTC metadata in an IIM header and an XMP header to every popular social media and photo-sharing website.

The IPTC then conducted four tests to check whether the website displayed the metadata correctly, included what it calls the 4Cs (caption, creator, copyright notice and credit) and whether it preserved metadata when downloading the image both via the website’s user interface (such as a download button) or using File > Save As in your web browser.

You can read a full break-down of the testing process and see the full rankings for each of the photo-sharing websites.

“Professional photographers work hard to get specific information — like captions, copyright and contact information — embedded into their image files, therefore it’s often a shock when they learn that the social media system they chose has removed the information without any warning to them”, said David Riecks of ControlledVocabulary.com, a member of the IPTC test team.

He added: “Since some countries are in the midst of passing ‘Orphan Works’ laws, any files that are ‘stripped’ may be considered potential ‘orphans’ without having any copyright protection.”

Via: British Journal of Photography

Should you watermark your photos?

jmeyer — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 01:00:29 +0000

Recently our friends at Photoventure asked the question, ‘Should you watermark your photos?‘ Watermarking has long been seen as the best way of protecting your copyright – but is that actually correct?

The question of how to protect your artistic work is hardly a new one.

Art historians are continuously discovering lost prints beneath another old master’s paint, and we’re fairly certain that if you were around then and spoke Neanderthal there were plenty of shenanigans among early cave artists.

And just to prove that the more things change, the more they stay the same, the question of whether to use a watermark when sharing photos online remains a burning issue for photographers despite being well into the digital age.

There are many camps in the watermarking debate. Some photographers absolutely watermark everything with impunity – the bigger and bolder, the better. But at some point your impassioned logo starts to detract from the essence of your image. And it’s finding this thin line that has troubled artists from Miss Aniela on back to Michelangelo.

Protecting your images
But let’s get one common misconception out of the way right now. The argument that watermarking photos will protect your intellectual property… well, it doesn’t hold water.

From today’s Clone Stamp tool to the dodgy Renaissance painter’s ‘borrowed’ canvas, it’s always been relatively easy to remove another’s signature from their work.

As a form of protection, a watermark is like bringing a fly swatter to fight Lennox Lewis: it will annoy him, but not really stop him.
Your watermark’s only usefulness in terms of protection is that it provides an extra step for people to go through to steal your work if they’re dead-set on doing so.

For other people with less sinister intentions, like a lazy blogger, it’s simply part of your image, a reflection of you as an artist, so using something subtle will better promote ‘your brand’.

Sharing high-res photos
So let’s stop thinking about watermarks as forms of protection. The only way to protect your IP is to not share your photos online. And we really don’t want to do that, do we? The best way to protect yourself is to refrain from putting high-res versions of your photos on your website or photo-sharing website.

If you keep your uploads to 1000 pixels on its longest edge and 72dpi, it’s going to make it very tough for someone to take those images and print them or use them commercially.

Now, someone may right-click and save that image and present it as their own somewhere else, but there are a number of sophisticated apps now, such as TinEye, that can do a reverse image search and find other versions of your photo that have been posted on the web.

Even a quick search on Google Images can help you track down where your image has been shared.

Keeping your metadata up to date also helps in any internet ‘He said, she said’ debates. But also – and perhaps most importantly – it’s worth accepting the fact that when you post an image online, wherever it may be, you are setting it free in some ways and there are a few unfortunate consequences that come with the vast rewards of sharing photos online.

Promoting your photography
But back to watermarks. Now that we’ve dispelled the common belief that they will protect your image copyright, let’s take a look at where they’re most useful: promoting you.

As we alluded above, most people who do take your photo and re-post it somewhere else aren’t doing so to present your work as their own.

Most often it’s a blogger collating his or her favourite found photos from the web (this is very common on Tumblr photo blogs and Pinterest photography boards), and your inclusion is meant as a compliment.

If the blogger is using proper web etiquette, he or she will have included a link back to where they found your photo, but they don’t always. And that’s why a simple url for your website can be a nice, subtle watermark to include at the bottom of your image.

Watermark the right way
Your watermark should serve as a way to reach out to other photographers and consumers of photography and let them know who made this awesome image, not treat them all as suspected thieves and distract them from your carefully crafted composition.

Let people enjoy your work. And then if they want to see more of it, they’ll know where to find it and who it was made by.

Sure, some people may crop or clone out your watermark. But these people were never going to be your friends in the first place.

What you should be concerned with is all the potential friends you might never make by using a watermark that completely overwhelms your image.

When it comes to watermarking photos, less is more. Now stop hitting us with that fly swatter!

Pinterest, Flickr join forces to improve photo credits

jmeyer — Thu, 03 May 2012 06:00:47 +0000

A new joint effort between Flickr and social networking site Pinterest aims to improve the attribution of photographers’ images.

Flickr announced the move on its blog, stating: “We’ve worked closely with Pinterest to make it even easier for you to share to Pinterest in a way that will ensure that your Flickr photos are properly attributed, regardless where they are pinned from.”

Every image shared on Flickr will now be attributed with the name of the photographer, the image title and a link to the photo page.

This attribution cannot be edited, so “photographers can rest assured that pins and repines of their images will be credited and linked back as well, ensuring people can leave comments, face the photo or contact you directly on Flickr,” the blog post adds.

Pinterest has also gone back and added the proper attribution to all photos that have been pinned from Flickr so far, the company added.

There is now a Pinterest button in Flickr’s share menu, as seen above. If a photographer does not want their content to be shared, the share menu can be disabled.

What is metadata: copyright photos in 4 steps

crutter — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:45:33 +0000

What is metadata? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. It confuses many photographers at first.

The metadata definition generally used is that metadata is simply a set of data that describes and gives information about other data. For photographers, that ‘other data’ is your images. Your digital camera will embed information in each photo it takes that identifies what camera created the file, the exposure information and more.

If you’re like the 90% of photographers who share their photos online, one of the best photography tips anyone can give you is to enhance your metadata and add more personal details such as descriptive keywords and copyright and contact information to clearly identify the image as yours.

Adding your name to the mass of other information stored inside your digital images doesn’t sound like a big deal, but there are plenty of reasons why it’s worth setting this up on your camera. With online storage, sharing and galleries, it’s possible that your images could be used without your knowledge. Adding your personal information to the EXIF data to copyright photos means that you can prove the image is yours. It’s not a foolproof security device because a determined user can get into the file and strip it out, but it’s better than nothing.

Search engines can also help find your images using this data. This may not seem important today, but with more and more digital images stored on hard drives and online, it’s a great way to make sure that you – and potential clients – can find your shots in the future.

Not all digital cameras enable you to edit EXIF data, but it has been available on most Nikon DSLRs since the D3 and on most new Canon cameras since the EOS 7D. Many older cameras enable you to input an image comment in-camera, but unlike the copyright information this would be stripped out if you use the Save for Web function in Photoshop.

How to enhance your digital camera’s metadata and copyright photos

Step 1: Enter the menu
Press the Menu button to bring up all the options on the rear LCD. Using the navigation buttons, go to the Setup menu, scroll down to the Copyright or Copyright information option and press SET or OK.

Step 2: Add the copyright
In the copyright section, scroll down to the artist or author setting, press SET or OK and type your name. Press OK to save. Scroll down to the copyright setting and enter your name or your company’s name.

Step 3: Attach the information
Once you’re happy with the information you’ve entered you need to activate the setting so the details are stored in every image. Select the Attach Copyright Information option on a Nikon camera or simply press Menu on a Canon.

Step 4: Find the EXIF data
Once you’ve activated this setting, each image will have your details recorded in the EXIF data. Check this by opening an image in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Select File>File Info and you’ll find the information in the description.