Image theft is piracy too

The idea of a picture being pirated is a stretch. If you post a picture on the web without a watermark then in a sense it becomes public domain; thus it is open to the public. With the amount of material (pictures) on the net it becomes hard to determine what is piracy of this type of Media (pictures, Photos). Pictures of paintings belonging to an artist and that painting is copy written then it is piracy. Example: Lee Bogle or Thomas Kinkaid, their painting are copy written, thus to post them could be considered piracy.

Now I am not sure if any one as one been sued or brought before a court for using pictures of paintings on the internet. There are so many artist who's paintings have been used as postcards, on calendars, wrapping paper, etc. So again it becomes a lawful nightmare as to what is piracy of picture media.

The best you can do is to use common sense. Also for some artist/photographers this is a great way to become better known.

z3r010 said:

It's too hard to police images, so if somebody complains their image is being used without their permission, we remove them.

Agreed.

However, I frown on image theft too. I've had a few girlfriends that do GFX for a living, and the amount of work they put into some images is astounding. They should be protected as well.

Lee said:

The idea of a picture being pirated is a stretch. If you post a picture on the web without a watermark then in a sense it becomes public domain; thus it is open to the public.

Actually, that's a common misconception, and isn't the case at all. I thought the same thing until I looked into internet copyright laws. They are actually more strict than many people think. I owned a website that did coding, and graphics for ProBoards [a message board community] so I was forced to familiarize myself with GFX copyright laws. One of the real safeguards for the artist is to retain an original copy of their work in the software format of the program they used to create the image. For instance, if you save a Paint Shop Pro, or PhotoShop image in their native extension [.psp or .ps] it will have all the layers still in it. When it's converted to .gif, .jpg, or .png for instance, it's only a single layer image. This can be used to prove your the original creator. The original creator of an image does indeed reserve the right to refuse to allow you to use the image on the internet, and is protected by international copyright law.

Let's not forget that graphic artists should have the right to protect their creations just as much as software creators. A lot of hard work can go into making an image. Believe me.

My general rule of thumb is to simply ask the GFX designer if you can use the image. More often than not, they are flattered that you asked, and consent.

MadMaxData said:

My general rule of thumb is to simply ask the GFX designer if you can use the image. More often than not, they are flattered that you asked, and consent.

LADYPINKtomato1 said:

Any pic or tags I post .. feel free to snag if you like. I'm flattered that anyone would like what I post.

Thanks for confirming my comment.

Hi there

Professional Photographers will generally Water mark them or state in the image that it's private property and in general have a Copyright symbol.

The website will state that use of images is subject to permission of the owner or asignee - such as a magazine - for example Sports Illustrated in the case of some professional Sports photographers.

Once a Pic is uploaded to the web without any "disclaimers" then generally it can be treated as Public Domain - so long as these images aren't used for commercial products or sold.

It's a grey area but if you don't want stuff copied (images) then the only safe rule is don't publish them on the web.

As an example again from Sports Illustrated

Am I in Breach for posting this link (publicly acessible) which contains a picture.

I think not -- but I would be if I "snipped" the image and posted it on a site without explaining where it came from.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mul...content.1.html

Cheers
jimbo

Some (vBulletin) forums disallow in-line attachments (hot-linking) for this very reason. It also increases server-side traffic on the site that you are hot-linking from I believe.

No, my comments were not intended at you or anyone else. I was merely throwing in my 2 cents