Simply said, copyright laws exist to protect the rights of the creators of information, industrial or cultural works. Not ideas themselves but, rather, the embodiments of these ideas.
What are these rights? They may vary from country to country but, basically, they deal with the right for acknowledgment, compensation and restriction on usage. If you appropriate something that is not of your making (creation) and use it without permission, you are basically profiting from someone else’s property without their knowing. This is a NO-NO. Similarly, if you grab a graphic or a photo on the Internet and modify it a little (or a lot) to become your own, it is simply not OK either. You see, it is like fair play, a huge ethic dimension is involved in copyright.
This is all too heavy, let’s get practical: I bought these photos from a professional photographer they should be mine… should they not? Yes, you bought the photos but not the right to use them. That is impossible! Then what is the use of these pictures, if I can’t use them? That is exactly the point, you cannot use them, unless you clear up the usage restriction with the photographer and this is what you have to do to make it OK with the copyright of the creator. One basic thing to keep in mind is that a good photographer can only survive if paid, and that is the very reason you can hire this photographer in the first place.
Topics ahead:
• Here is what you can do, if you commission a photo shoot
• The photo credit
• Your copyright rights
• Counterproductive copyright jargon
• A change of attitute toward copyright – avoiding the fiasco of the music industry
• Does Facebook own you?
Posted by cleanpix 
- Adding some zest and pizzaz to your caption (20-40 words).
What is the real value of photo copyright?
February 26, 2009Here is an actual case that just made the news and offers a lot of good insights. We’ve talked about photo copyright before. In fact, it is one of our most read stories. In an article by the National Post on Thursday, February 26, 2009, there is a story about a famous photographer, Annie Leibovitz, has pawned the copyright and ownership of her photos for around $16 million US to an art-based lender.
Her photographs are seen frequently in Vogue and Vanity Fair and throughout the public space. In this digital age it would be easy to find a copy of one her pictures and put it up on a website. Some would see it as petty theft, but the copyright and ownership of those images are worth a great deal and are not for the taking. This event illustrates unequivocally the value of copyright, without the need of legal jargon.