At 9:35 AM -0700 6/17/02, Alan Zinn wrote: >I am offering for sale a version of the picture suitable for printing - say >a 250 DPI TIF. A contract declaring whatever restrictions I want to put on >the use of the picture would then be agreed upon by the buyer and seller. >Violation of the contract would be dealt with conventionally. This seems to >be typical for this kind of business. > >Why wouldn't stating on the web page or where ever "All rights reserved," or >some such, have sufficient legal merit if it clearly means using the 72DPI >web page picture other than fair use is restricted? Certainly a statement of the sort you are proposing should appear on every page, and in fact, many pro shooters put a front page on their sites which requires a log-in and then a click on an agreement button to boot. Aside from the "warning" aspect of your proposed message I believe there's scant legal protection to be gained from it, however. The legal protection comes from something more agressive, like what I described above - namely the presentation of a contract which requires a log-in/password and agreement before one gets to see the goods. There are ways to move a 72dpi image up to printable quality, of course. Genuine Fractals is one, printing on a high quality inkjet printer and then rescanning at high resolution on a flatbed is another. Thumbnails, really aren't salvagable, even by those methods, I suspect. So 72dpi really ain't a whole lot of protection. So it comes down to trust and good will. If the pix are of your immediate family, and the only people actually likely to want to print them out are your immediate family, I guess, if I were you, I'd measure the value of good will pretty generously. >Like printed documents >a web page is copyrighted intellectual property. But, of course, the return from pursuing the penalties aren't worth the effort and cost unless the IP is registered. Just burn the site to a CD and send it off to the Copyright Office. It's cheap and simple. But keep in mind the value of the good will. -- Emily L. Ferguson elf@cape.com 508-563-6822 New England landscapes, wooden boats and races, press photography Beetle cats on the web at: http://www.beetlecat.com/gft-pics/ef-notes.htm http://www.beetlecat.org/results/99champs.html http://www.beetlecat.org/store.html#yrbook
