Property rights

[Wheelbrace]

If I post photographs on my website for sale to the public is it legally possible for someone to access my website and download the pictures.

Is he or she entitled by law to do this or am I protected by intellectual property rights?

Thanks to anyone who can advise.

[Aloysius535]

I found this text on jisclegal.ac.uk website:

"Copyright is one of the key branches of IP law and it protects the expression of ideas. For a work to gain copyright, it has to be original and should be expressed in a material form. Copyright is thus effective upon the creation of the work. It arises automatically and in the UK one does not have to register the copyright in the work before it is protected."

The next question is whether publishing on the internet is a material form.

It is relatively easy to protect photos on websites from copy-pasting.

[Aloysius535]

I found the following useful also:

http://www.is4profit.com/business-advice/gener al-advice/copyright-basic-facts.html

[Wheelbrace]

Thank you Aloysius535 .

[Ethel]

It is impossible to protect images on a website - big companies have tried and failed.

You can make it a little more difficult, but it can be done.

And enforcing your rights is nearly impossible - and expensive.

If you don't want others to steal your photos, don't put them on the web.

[Wheelbrace]

Thank you Ethel - it seems a no win situation other than relying on peoples sense of ethics and morality!

[Buenchico]

As Ethel says, it's impossible to protect pictures on a website. There are various ways which, to the novice user, appear to disable the ability to save a picture to a hard drive but all that anyone has to do, to overcome this, is to save the entire web page and then look through the files which make up that page and find the picture.

Yes, it's a breach of copyright but you can't stop it and (because, in most cases, you'd never know that it had happened) you can't take action against anyone who does so.

The best techniques to protect saleable images are to use small low-resolution pictures (which won't print well) on your website and/or to add a watermark to your pictures.

For example, look at these photos offered for sale by Getty Images:
http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx? src=quick&contractUrl=1&family=editorial&phras e=new%20york#
Pictures taken directly from that page are too small to be useful to most people. To see a much larger picture, you simply have to click on the required image. However, the picture you'll see will have a prominent watermark added. You can't get the 'proper' picture without payment.

Chris

[Wheelbrace]

More thanks In a Pickle and Buenchico. Again very helpful.

[BiswajitIplaw22]

If anybody tries to download those pictures from your website without any prior permission and without paying any royalty or consideration then it would amount to copyright infringement under Section 63 of the Copyright Act, 1957. However, if the person is downloading these pictures and not commercialising it and/or is using for its personal use then it would not amount to copyright infringement, as it would be marked as an exception under Doctrine of fair use. More Info:- https://www.biswajitsarkar.com/