As you begin to gain experience as a photographer and see your photographs become more and more professional, you will probably begin to consider breaking the barriers of your computer and going out and showing your art to the world. But: what if those wonderful ideas and photographs that cost you so much to build are stolen from you?
The Internet represents an incredible opportunity for photographers because anyone in the world can be seeing a photograph of you seconds after you have published it, you can sell a photo to a person thousands of kilometers away or set up a virtual gallery to that the tourists of the network visit it daily. Internet is the medium and your imagination is the limit, but: is it safe?
There’s nothing better than a map to be able to navigate the sea of Internet possibilities without getting lost along the way (or getting into trouble). Publish, make your own web page and sell your photographs it must stop being a utopia to become a reality.
How to protect your photos?
Despite the innumerable benefits and possibilities that the Internet offers to photographers like you, in order to take full advantage of them without being shocked, you need to know both your rights when sharing your work as well as your obligations towards the work of others. .
Blogs, social networks and online stores can be an excellent way to make yourself known in the world of photography, but do you know what your rights are when you upload your photos and what precautions you should take when doing so?
The photographs are protected by what is known as “copyright and intellectual property” and each country has its legislation in this regard.
Your rights as a photographer
Copyright and Intellectual Property Law:
Both in Spain and in the rest of the countries, the laws are far behind the needs of citizens, and photographers are no exception. In fact, the Spanish intellectual property law, for example, was enacted in 1996 and is still in force today, despite the sudden changes in the medium in which photographers share their work.
In any case, the forms are still maintained, so taking some time to read the law that protects your activity as a photographer and gives you rights as an author is more than recommended.
Here are some of the intellectual property laws for you to take a look at:
With a simple search on the Internet you can access the text of the copyright law corresponding to your country. I recommend that you take a look at it to have a general notion of what your rights and obligations are as an author and citizen.
Birth of your rights:
The moment after releasing the shutter not only means the birth of your photographs but also your rights to them. Intellectual property and copyright law guarantees you moral and economic rights over your works. But what do they mean?
1. Moral rights: are those whose purpose is to protect you as an author and as well as the works you do.
Deciding on how your works will be disclosed and withdrawing them in case of disagreement (compensation to the affected party), demanding that the authorship of your photos be recognized, that the integrity of your works be respected and avoiding total and partial plagiarism are some of the moral rights that protect you against third parties.
These types of rights do not prescribe, they cannot be sold, assigned or donated and you cannot waive them, you will always be their author. The authorship of your photographs is unalterable, but what you can transfer are the economic rights (of use) of them.
2. Economic rights: As the author of your photographs, you are the one who enjoys the economic exploitation rights of them, unless you agree to assign them to third parties for their use.
Unlike moral rights, these can be transferred, assigned or donated and are not eternal, their duration will be throughout your life and up to 70 years after your death, then they will become public domain.
Exploitation rights:
- Reproduction: As its name indicates, it is the power to reproduce your photographs whatever the medium used (books, magazines, printed copies, postcards, etc.).
- Distribution: refers to the right to be able to sell your photographs with the particularity that said right is not transferred, that is, if you sell a photograph to a third party, they do not have the right to resell it to another.
- Advertising: refers to the possibility of using your photographs, provided you give your consent, in public advertising campaigns regardless of the means of reproduction.
- Transformation: the right to be able to modify one of your photos and that it may result in a work different from the original (reframing, color changes, retouching, etc.).
Only you are the one who can decide whether to economically exploit (sell) your photographs and you can do so on your own or by transferring the rights of use to a third party, as long as they pay you for them.
In this way, what you are granting are certain licenses on your photographs, so that the person who intends to use them, whether paying for them or not, knows what you have allowed and what not to do with them.
This is how most of the photo sales pages on the internet work: you put a photo up for sale and they take care of marketing it, paying you for each copy sold.
Types of licenses:
When sharing your photos on the internet, what you should consider are the permissions that you are willing to grant to people who may come across them. Since the authorship is unalterable, the rights at stake here are those of use of your photos, that is, under what license of use will you share them.
• Copyright: It is the most used license of use and in which the author reserves each and every one of the rights to his work: only he can use it, distribute it or modify it. If a third party is interested in using one of your photographs protected under this license, he must request your explicit permission or else he must pay you so that he assigns the rights of use (never those of authorship). Without your consent they cannot use your photos, not even naming you as the author.
This type of license is frequently used among large chains, companies and prestigious photographers, but its popularity is also due to the fact that, if a photograph is shared without any specification about its type of license, it is automatically protected by the license copyright.
If you are a photographer super jealous of your work and you are somewhat reluctant to share your photos on the internet, this type of license could give you a little more security when doing so.
• Copyleft: It is a license where the author allows his works to be used, copied and distributed with the sole obligation to acknowledge their authorship.
Despite being a license that protects the copyright of your photographs, unlike copyright licenses, these do not require any type of authorization from the author for their use. Just mentioning who is the author of them is enough.
These types of licenses gave rise to multiple types of licenses for the distribution of digital content on the Internet, including the well-known Creative Commons.
Creative Commons why not?
If you are taking your first steps as a photographer, you are probably more interested in spreading your photos than making money from them. Believe it or not, the type of license you choose when sharing your photos can influence the diffusion of your work.
Sharing your work under more permissive licenses does not imply that these are not protected, but rather the opposite. It is more recommended and safer to share under Creative Commons licenses than under strict copyright: Why? Because controlling that nobody on the internet uses your photographs without your authorization is almost impossible and carrying out a lawsuit can be very expensive.
On the other hand, offering some rights to your images does not seem like a bad deal if it guarantees you will get more publicity for your work. You can think of it as a “win, win” situation: you gain publicity and those interested can use your photographs, under the conditions that you establish and recognizing you as the author of them.
Explaining each of them in detail is not the reason for this article, but if you are interested in learning about the possibilities that this type of licenses can offer you, I recommend that you read the following article: “I’ll become a creative commons, are you in?”.
A clear example of this is the Photographer’s Blog: the photographs that illustrate each of the articles published here were shared under this type of more permissive licence, allowing thousands of readers to appreciate the work of photographers that they might never have acquired. such care of having chosen a more restrictive license.
The terms and conditions:
The terms and conditions that accompany all the pages when you register are not just for “accept and follow”. I bet you’ve never bothered to read them carefully! If you are trying to promote your work and give it publicity, you should start paying attention to the “terms and conditions” if you do not want to be surprised later.
Depending on each of the platforms where you share your work (FlikrFacebook500px, etc.) you may or may not assign the rights to use your images. Each site has its own policies regarding the photos that are uploaded to them.
If you are seriously thinking of putting your work on the Internet, I recommend that you take your time to read the terms and conditions in order to understand what licenses you will grant to each of the platforms you choose to do so and which ones you will not, so that You can decide if you are willing to give up certain rights to your work.
In each case, make sure you know where the companies that own the social networks or platforms where you are going to share your images are based, so that you can learn more about the intellectual property laws in force in those countries.
Assignment of rights of use:
This type of contract is the instrument used by photographers like you to transfer the rights of use, modification, reproduction and distribution of the photographs they take to a third party according to the terms agreed in the same contract.
Said transfer can be in favor of a person or a company and once the agreement is signed, which can be on paper or…