[thelist] Staving Off Photo Thieves

viveka me at karmanaut.com
Fri Apr 27 10:04:16 CDT 2001


At 8:51 AM -0500 27/4/01, Green, Janet wrote:
>Viveka wrote:
>  >>>Photographers happily allow their images to be
>published in print. The better the quality of the
>image, the happier they are.<<<
>
>Photographers (and other creative folks, like writers) are happy to have
>their work appear in print as long as they get compensated - that's how they
>make a living.
[snip]
>IMO, creative folks have every *right* to control the use of their work, and
>should be VERY wary of putting high-resolution (reproducible) images out on
>the web.

OK, evidently I didn't express myself properly.
I'm not arguing about whether creators have
a right to control the use of their work in this
thread. I'm pointing out that it's just as easy
for someone to make an infringing copy of a
work from a book, magazine, catalogue, or any
other print as it is to copy from a web page -
so why the sudden fuss?

I realise that there are products available to
invisibly watermark hardcopies as well, but it
just doesn't seem to be an issue; people are
used to print, they know someone could scan
their work, and they realise that 1. it's rarely
a problem, and 2. if it happens, the infringer is
breaking the law, so you have legal recourse.

On the web, however, it always seems to come
up as an issue. Why are photographers more
wary of putting a high-quality image up on a
website than they are of publishing a higher-quality
image in a book, say, or a stock photo catalogue?

V.
-- 
|  Viveka Weiley, Karmanaut.	 http://www.karmanaut.com
|  hypermedia :: virtual worlds :: human interface :: truth :: beauty
|  http://www.planet-earth.org :: http://www.MacWeb3D.org
|  http://www.sydney.siggraph.org.au





More information about the thelist mailing list