Copyrights - how do I do it?

I have been asking the same question but nobody bothered to reply to my discussion..I can only suppose that any picture you find on google you are free to download and use it if you chose to... I know that some sites specify that the images or whatever they have there,are under their license or something and that they should not be copied or used...and maybe those are the ones we should avoid..
I have been using some pictures here that i've found on google,and didn't have any problem so far... like for example if i was speaking about cheese I would google image cheese,and copy a picture from there and post it here..
I think the ones that would make problems would be pics of other people,or something because you are using their image but not even then because people often use celebrity pictures here and I saw they didn't make any problems...
I hope more people will reply to this and give us a clue

Hi Mare73,
You can go to www.myfreecopyright.com and there you will be able to make a copyright for your photos.
Always remember that anytime you take a photo of something it belongs to you, therefore, you are the owner of that photo.
However, with so much evil in the world today. If you want to publish your photos or videos on the web it is a good idea to copyright them. Then there is a record so if you see that one of your photos has been copied then you can send an email to that person immediatley and they are to stop and deceist then. And if you ahve to sue them myfreecopyright.com will make you a copy of your copyright to take to court with you showing that the photos, all of the photos that you took and will take in the future are copyrighted. Does this make since? I hope so.

All of your images are already copyrighted. As soon as you take a photo, you are automatically the copyright holder. So unless you sign some sort of agreement where you give your rights to someone else, your images are copyrighted.

If you want, you can file a copyright for extra protection. I believe this costs around $75 per image. And all that does is makes it easier for you to prove that you created the image in court. You do not NEED to do this since your images are already copyrighted.

Other ways you can protect your images is by adding a watermark. Also, add copyright information in the meta data of your images. This can also help prove that you're the copyright holder and can let others know that your images are copyrighted.

Make sure you read all of the terms and conditions to any website you submit your photos to! Some sites (like Facebook for example) have a rights grab clause in their TOS agreements, so when you join the website you agree that any photos you submit are owned by that site!

I love it when people answer based on 'guessing' what the right way to go about this is.

Ok, first off.. as mentioned before, the moment you create something, it's copyrighted. The second your pen hits paper, or your brush hits canvas, or your finger presses the shutter, you've created something that YOU OWN.

Now, there's an exception to that rule already. (Yes, there will be a lot of those.) If you were working as an employee or a work for hire, you will not own your work. Your employer would. Unless of course you negotiate the copyright ownership details into your contract with them.. but that's a separate issue all together.

For now, I'll assume you created whatever it was you created, in this case a set of photographs. At this point, your probably wondering what the big deal is. You already own the copyright, so you're safe. Right? NO!

If someone swipes your photo and uses it, you have different levels of protection based on whether or not it was registered. If it's not, you'll have a very tough time getting anyone to hear your case, and the most likely outcome is that you'll simply force the infringer to stop using it.

On the other hand, if you register it before the infringement, you have a LOT more power legally. You can sue for actual and statutory damages, and that's huge when compared to what you'd get without registration.

You have several options for registration, however the copyright office is moving towards an electronic registration portal. Go to the US Copyright website, and follow the easy to follow instructions for how to register copyright. Last I knew, you could send hard copies to them in duplicate, or you could send electronic copies. I opted for electronic. $35, some time filling out basic info, and a little time uploading, and you're done. It takes some time for them to get to the application, but if they accept it, that's it. You're all set.

There have been some good stories out copyright at the photoattorney blog as well, for anyone interested in looking.

Now, as a side point away from the topic of copyrighting..
When you put an image on the web, there is always a chance people will steal it. Regardless of whether you're putting the full resolution original un-registered and unaltered or you're putting up a registered watermarked low-res web thumbnail, people may still take it. If you want to be 100% certain, you just have to not put them up. That's not an option for most of us.

Ways to protect your image (aside from registering the copyright to pursue infringements) is to disable right-click over the images, watermark them if possible, only post lower resolution images (so as to limit print size of stolen versions), and consider embedding the work in displays that are more difficult to take images from (such as flash galleries).

Good luck, and hope this helps.

Having your photos copyrighted is such a tedius process and costly too! if you know photoshop, just add a watermark on it so that others won't be able to just copy it. it is very hard to remove the water mark on photos.