Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Copyright...friend or foe?

I stumbled across a fascinating lecture by a Google employee that I think would be beneficial for anyone in our field:

The lecturer is speaking within the context of the internet and focuses mostly on illegal music sharing and Google's indexing methods, but it provides great background information and raises some interesting philosophical questions about copyright law.  

I can't help but wonder what kinds of distribution methods might work for photography in this utopian (read: copyright-free) world.

3 comments:

Kelly Gorham said...

Copyright is an ongoing issue. There are many companies like Google that are working hard to change the laws regarding copyright. They stand to make a lot of money off your hard work and you won't receive compensation or credit. As photographers, we should do our best to learn the copyright law chapter and verse and do what you can to defend your copyrights. asmp.org has great, factual, information about what the law is and how to register your photos. You can also visit copyright.org which is the library of congress website regarding copyright.

Camden Hardy said...

Correction: copyright.gov

Kelly Gorham said...

Yes, thank you. Copyright.gov. Also, asmp.org has an excellent tutorial for registering your copyrights. I'm also happy to help anyone going through the process for the first time. The paperwork seems daunting but isn't that bad and really only takes a few minutes. The time to register is before your images have been published (includes website) so you can submit them all as a group for one $50 fee.