I've been advised that someone said a picture of mine is hanging in a studio. I work part time at a fire department and was able to take pictures at a recent fire. I posted them on facebook for the firefighters to see and make prints if they wanted to. One of the pictures of one of the firefighters has ended up on the wall of a local studio. I haven't seen it yet because of the holiday weekend.
How should I handle this if I actually see the shot on the wall?
Posted by Jack Garrett on April 7, 2012 at 10:30 AM
You have a double edged sword here. Yes, you own the copyright to the photo and your best hope is to go directly the studio, show them your photo with the metadata attached and either ask them to remove it or pay you a commission.
The other side of the sword is that you posted it on FB and allowed other people to make copies. If you didn't specifically state that it was copyrighted and copies couldn't be made without express permission, your case might be hard to prove in court...assuming you are willing to go that far. It would cost you more money than you would get for the picture to fight it legally.
In the future, watermark anything you don't want copied and put a copyright disclaimer attached to the post whenever you put in FB. It may not stop folks but at least they will see it. You might also consider putting it up at a low resolution so it can't be enlarged for print.
Finally, it would be nice to see some of your work in the forum
Discussion
1 repliesHow should I handle this if I actually see the shot on the wall?
The other side of the sword is that you posted it on FB and allowed other people to make copies. If you didn't specifically state that it was copyrighted and copies couldn't be made without express permission, your case might be hard to prove in court...assuming you are willing to go that far. It would cost you more money than you would get for the picture to fight it legally.
In the future, watermark anything you don't want copied and put a copyright disclaimer attached to the post whenever you put in FB. It may not stop folks but at least they will see it. You might also consider putting it up at a low resolution so it can't be enlarged for print.
Finally, it would be nice to see some of your work in the forum