Hey guys, <BR>I was wondering if anyone knows what is involved with setting up copyright protection on your photos. Is it just a matter of posting your name and a copyright symbol on the photo or is there like a registry that they need to go through? I would just hate the idea of putting a bunch of work into stuff and having it copied off the internet and then being usable. I have heard of things called watermarks but i dont really know what that entails. <BR> <BR>thanks <BR>Josh

Josh- <BR> <BR>This should get you started: <a href="http://www.copyright.gov/" target="_blank">http://www.copyright.gov/</a> <BR> <BR>Basically, using © doesn't give you much legal protection. For better protection, works need to be registered.

Josh, to start with you should always watermark your work and keep both the originals and the watermarked images that you publish. <BR> <BR>If you are serious about it, let me know. I have a *few* Lawyer friends. <BR> <BR>~AQ

If someone wants to steal your photo they're going to...regardless of what kind of hideous watermark you put on there. The best thing you can do is to get the in's and out's of things from a lawyer who has done photo-related work in the past.

Scott is right about the watermark and the bottom line is if it's on the web someone will steal it.

I am not really so concerned with people downloading it and useing it for personal use or whatever the only thing is that I wish to have them registered so that if i ever did run into a case where my work was being used for in a case where someone was profiting from it i would like to have my bases covered. <BR> <BR>also how do i go about doing watermarks

Best place to start.. <BR> <BR><a href="http://cameras.about.com/od/printing/ss/watermark.htm" target="_blank">http://cameras.about.com/od/printing/ss/watermark.htm</a>

scott a, how the heck does someone remove a water mark from a flattened jpeg image?

You might be amazed at how good some people are with Photoshop. There are dudes out there who can create an image in photoshop from scratch and it looks exactly the same as the photo that they copied. <BR> <BR>Plus, if your watermark is small and opaque it's not all that difficult to remove I'm sure.