For me, the vultures have been circling on this topic for some time. Three things happened last week to finally make me take action. I talked with a another photographer who does it and I have only the highest regard for her. I watched The Grid (you’ll need to watch the whole thing to understand). And then I lost a potential sale cause of it. So ya, I changed!
What happened to push me over me was, a photo that I had given permission to use on the web was used in a web column. Under the photo was the caption which clearly stated my name as the photographer. What in the past has always worked failed this time. That’s because the person looking at my photo DIDN’T READ the caption so didn’t see my name! It boggles my mind but this seems to be a growing trend. We have forgotten to or lost time to read. In my day, turning a magazine side ways to read the photo credit was a full day sport. Now, we don’t seem to have time to read captions. I have no clue if this change if implemented sooner would have made a difference. But I don’t want to always be wondering.
Then there are some out there always picking at the bones for a freebee. You have things like this that popped up over the weekend. We’ve had our run ins with newsmedia grabbing our images in the past. This makes it seamless. Will this stop theft? Not even and that’s not the point!
Now understand, I’m not running around the office screaming the sky is falling. I’m not really thrilled with the “panic” the copyright enlightenment discussion has caused amongst photographers. WRP has never had to go to court, ever, to solve any type of anything, avoiding it by simple good, solid, business practices. Ya, we’ve had our copyright infringed and it was dealt with it professionally and equitably for us. And those incidents don’t dictate our business decisions. Missing a potential sale, that most certainly does! So after this week, my name now is in white type, microscope in size, in the corner of my images at only 25% opacity. Will it make a difference? Only time will tell.