--- Dan C <leicaman@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> I have found myself in a situation where someone in Turkey has
> copied
> several of my photographs, incorporated them into his artwork,
> and is
> claiming them to be his own work. He denies copying my work,
> essentially
> implying that I stole the images from him. I have the
> original negatives
> and outtakes, etc., and it would be obvious at a glance to a
> judge or jury
> that I am the original photographer.
>
> However, I live in Canada, and it seems totally impractical
> for me to
> travel to Turkey and argue in front of a Turkish court (in
> Turkish) my case.
>
> He is ignoring my emails now, his ISP (Turkish) claims they
> can do nothing
> without order from Turkish court, and the ISP of another site
> (Turkish)
> where his images appear have ignored my emails.
>
> Can someone suggest some action that I can take that can
> resolve this
> situation?
>
> Dan C.
Dear Dan:
I don't know about Canada but under US Copyright law any
image you create is your property at the point of creation.
Namely, you own the copyright. However, if you want to take
someone to court here for copyright infringement, your work must
be formally registered with the Copyright Office. That's my
understanding, anyway, and I think the Copyright Office states
exactly that on their website.
I registered a calendar I did last October (images and
poetry) so I can now take someone who rips me off to court.
Whether that would be worth the time, expense, and aggravation
is another story. By the way, my copyright went into effect last
October but I just got the Certificate 2 weeks ago. They're a
little slow on that.
The reality is that ripoffs are a fact of life in this
business and it did not begin with the Internet. Doesn't mean we
should just sit still for it, though.
By the way, I'm curious as to how you even found out about
the guy in Turkey.
Richard
=====
Richard Martin specializes in Cityscape
and Waterscape stock photography.
E-mail: marphoto@yahoo.com
Web: http://www.marphoto.com
