For amateurs and professionals .. How to protect your photos from being stolen on the Internet?

If you publish your photos on the Internet, the possibility of their theft is very likely, preserving the copyright is not easy, but it may be worth it.

Author Harry Ginas said in his article - published by the American "Public Science" - that his photos were indeed stolen and posted on websites.

Guinas stated that you should know that any image you take is theoretically protected by copyright, and this means that there are some measures that you can take, whether to prevent anyone from stealing your work, or imposing this protection in the event of the theft.

The ABCs of Copyright

The author stated that copyright is created automatically when it produces original creative work, and in the United States - at least - copyright is ineffective if you do not register the work with the US Copyright Office, but this process is not simple, as it costs between 35 and 55 dollars per request Recording, but many photographers do not record, especially amateurs.

He called for imagining the hypothesis of an awareness that a person stole one of your photos and republished it on his website without your permission, in which case if your work is registered with the copyright office, you can sue him for legal damages before the Federal Court.

Compensation ranges between $ 750 and $ 30,000 per work, and may amount to $ 150,000 if copyright infringement is intentional, in addition to paying legal costs, but if your work is not registered, you are restricted to being sued for actual damages caused by the violation (such as loss of profits) .

Filing a lawsuit is a thorny matter, as things can get more complicated if the person or company that infringed your copyrights was outside the United States.

Although there are international treaties that protect copyright across borders, trying to enforce them is costly and difficult.

Accordingly, photographers are advised to take proactive steps to protect their work to reduce potential harm rather than relying on the judicial system to enforce copyright.

Register your work

The easiest way to register your work with the United States Copyright Office is through the office's website, and you can register up to 750 unpublished or published photos in one application for $ 35.

All you have to do is download a digital file for each image you copy, which is a process called technically "depositing", in addition to a list that includes the titles of the photos and the time of publication, and requests are usually processed online within three months, but this may take up to 16 months , According to the copyright office.

"Although most of the images are protected by copyright, the office does not record images that lack sufficient creative expression," the copyright office confirmed, "and according to this standard you can take a good picture of a flower, but the possibility that your image is protected by copyright remains low, there is a process. An appeal you can make if the office determines that your photo is not original enough, but the word “separation” remains for it.

According to the recommendations of American lawyer and business counselor Coco Sodic, the best way to obtain protection is to register your photos within three weeks of their publication, including posting to your website or social media accounts, and you can also register them before they are published.

Sodic noted that if you do not record your photos during this period, your legal options will be limited.

While SODIC recommends that recording images represent a "minimum" of the protections that a photographer should take, it may not work if you are an amateur and will not use increased protection.

If you are still worried about some people using your work, consider sending one application at the end of the year that carries your best photos to the copyright office. Otherwise, it may not be worth the time and money to lose it if you just post your photos on Instagram only.

Include copyright metadata

Another way to protect it from theft is to include the metadata for the copyright of your photos before sharing them on websites.

In fact, digital mono lens and mirrorless cameras are equipped with this feature that automatically activates while taking pictures, in which case all you have to do is enter your name, contact details and any other copyright information in the settings, and you can also use two processing programs After shooting "Lightroom", "Photoshop", or any other photo-editing program.

In the event that someone deliberately steals your photos and manages to reveal that they have deleted the embedded copyright, then you will be able to prove a charge of willful infringement. Unfortunately, websites such as Twitter and Instagram delete the metadata.

Facebook is the only social networking site that maintains copyright information. Similarly, Google arranges and indexes images without having their own metadata, and many content management systems work to delete this data.

Put a watermark on your photos

The writer indicated that the watermark is more effective compared to the embedded metadata for copyright, because it is part of the actual image file and cannot be deleted without cropping the image or altering it in another way.

However, the downside of the watermark is its poor appearance, as a large mark can contribute to distracting the image in general, not to mention that small marks can be easily cropped.

There is widespread debate in the photography community about whether seeking copyright protection necessarily spoils the aesthetic of images with the watermark.

And if you want to put a watermark on your photos, you can add "Photoshop", "Lightroom", or any other image-editing program. There are also mobile applications that run on the Android and iOS operating systems, such as "Easy Watermark".

Do not download files of large size

The writer explained that deciding not to share your photos on websites is not a viable solution to protect your images from theft, but you can be careful about the quality of the images you upload on the Internet.

And if someone wants to steal your photo to print it, put it on a shirt, or use it in an ad campaign, they will need a 1200px HD file, so downloading quality as a “jpeg” image will not be good enough.

The writer pointed out that social networking sites are working to reduce the files to be downloaded, as both Facebook and Instagram compress your photos and change their size automatically, and although Facebook gives you the option to upload your photos with higher quality, it is better to ignore it.

The writer pointed out that you should be more careful when it comes to downloading pictures and files on your website. It is tempting to download pictures with high accuracy and to use a content management system to handle all resizing operations, but that would make the original file available for anyone to download and enter. Some changes to the Unified Resource Locator.

And when it comes to protecting your work, it is best to change the size of your photos yourself using the image editor of your choice, if your website uses 1000 pixels width then upload 1000 pixels wide pictures, and it is true that this will not stop people from stealing your photos but it limits the exploitation of low-resolution images and converting them Into products and sell them.

Find out for violations

The author mentioned that violating copyright is a silent crime, meaning that unless you search for people who steal your photos, you are unlikely to find them.

The simplest way to do this is by using the services provided by "Copitrack" or "Pixi", where they search on the Internet for people who use without your permission your photos that you included with the copyright data.

And if we can track someone who uses your stolen photos, then you can send a notification to delete them and also demand compensation.

Therefore, if your photos are subject to system theft on a regular basis, the "Copetrack" or "Pixi" service is a great option, as the former does not require payment of fees in return, while Pixie charges a monthly fee for using this service.