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By: Gene BradfordI'm prompted to write this short article due to a recent spate of image thefts from Photo-Genesis. People have been downloading the images and using them without the permission of the artists. Whether on their blog or on their own website, use of any of the images here, or anywhere else for that matter, is a violation of the artist's copyright. We here at Photo-Genesis make every effort possible to show a copyright on every image we display. This is for multiple reasons. The main reason for doing so is to protect the image from theft and to give the artist legal recourse against the individual who has stolen the image. Another very important reason to me at least, is to give proper attribution to the artist for creating their works of photographic art. A lot of talent and hard work have gone into each and every image here and it's only fair the creator of the image receives full credit. P-G doesn't have exclusive rights to any of the images on the site. Only the legal owner of the image has that right. The legal owner being the person who created the photograph. By showing the copyright notice on each image, we had hoped to make it quite clear that these works are not in the public domain. Before any use can be made of them, permission must be granted by the photographer. Even in the case of using a favorite image as a background on your computer, permission should be obtained from the photographer who made the image prior to the use it. All of us here at P-G are understanding and willing to work with the visitors to the site under the proper circumstances. Just ask us...if it's for personal use only, we don't have a problem with that. And are flattered for that matter that someone likes our work enough to want to see it on a daily basis. In other words; common courtesy is appreciated and rewarded. However, "proper circumstances" are not among the following: 1) Use on blogs without express permission and attribution, 2) Use on any website without permission and proper attribution, 3) Claiming the image as your own and 4) The sale or inclusion in packages intended to make money for the person selling the images. Our system administrators follow the log files created by the server very carefully. One important piece of information in these log files is the IP address of individuals downloading images. (I hasten to note here that we do not use the IP information for any other purpose than to make sure we aren't being attacked and spammed...or having images stolen.) With this information available to us, we have a very easy time of finding any images being used. Unfortunately some people haven't even had the courtesy to outright steal the images. They've created a link back to Photo-Genesis to use it. This type of thing in no way eliminates the requirement to obtain permission from the photographer. It's still an open and shut case of copyright violation and theft. Theft on two fronts at that point, theft of the image and theft of P-G's bandwidth. Thus far we've been lucky in the respect that in each instance when we informed the offending person of the violation, they've removed any images immediately. We all appreciated that very much and have personally thanked them for doing so. However if that proves not to be the case in future instances, Photo-Genesis will not hesitate to pursue this further. We will notify law enforcement and will take it to court if we have to. Whether it's a penny or a grand...it's theft and the principal involved is worth the time and effort to protect the outstanding artists on Photo-Genesis. While it's a long read, and full of the typical legal boilerplate unfortunately, a link to the copyright laws of the United States is listed at the end of this article. There is also a link to the International Copyright convention as well. Just glancing at these documents will show you that they are very specific in what they consider copyright violation. In addition to these links, there has been a link in the Contact section of the Atrium all along. If for any reason you want to use an image displayed here on Photo-Genesis, use this link. It's there so that we can avoid misunderstandings and conflict. There's enough of those in the world today without adding to them. In closing, I want to thank the overwhelming majority of visitors to Photo-Genesis. Thank you for coming here in the first place. And thank you for being good net citizens as well. Without you, there'd be no reason for P-G. This article is certainly not directed at you. Even those few who have taken images without permission, have done so innocently. They intended no harm and just didn't realize the implications of their actions. All we ask is for those people, and others like them, to put themselves in the artists' place and think about how they'd react to this being done to them. International Copyright Law Link for image inquiries ***Or by emailing him at the above link.*** Copyright © 2005 - Gene Bradford & Photo-Genesis.net |