Photographers Get Teeth through New Legislation

The Secret that the General Public did not know when it comes to copying Images Online

There has been a kind of a loophole in the copyright system specifically when it comes to photography. If you copied a photo from a photographer’s website and put it on your phone and shared it with friends on social media (etc.) there was very little that the copyright owning photographer could do about it legally or even financially. When push comes to shove the photographer could only talk up a good bluff about their copyright ownership of the image and the fines involved should they be violated.

For the photographer to use copyright law to get compensation for infringement, they would have to go to federal court to do so. That would cost them a minimum of $20,000, on average, for the lawyer to even take their case! For example, unless their photo was used as an advertising image that made a company a lot of money it was not worth the effort to go to court.

The best that could be done was if the image was copied and illegally put on someones website the photographer could contact the webmaster of that site to have it removed. No harm no foul.

New Case Act, attached to the recent stimulus bill, created by congress and signed by the president, is filling the loophole helping copyright owners retain control of their work by creating a small claims court

The CASE Act ( Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act) is now Law and has created a “Copyright Small Claims” Court. It covers all copyright owners - but I just want to limit it to photography (look up the whole Case Act , if you want to know who else it covers).

In a nutshell it creates a three judge panel within the existing copyright system. Damages will be capped at $15,000 per claim and $30,000 total. Both plaintiff and defendant have the option of taking the case to federal court instead but you can see how for small compensation cases that would not be likely.

So What does this mean for both Photographers as well as Consumers of photography?

Photographers, if they haven’t already, need to start educating consumers on the legal use of their copyrighted images. They also need to include a license when they sell the use (not ownership) of the image.

Consumers of photography need to learn some copyright basics and help educate others so that they don’t put themselves in jeopardy and stay within the bounds of the photographers legal rights. Rights the photographer has had all along but have not been taken very seriously until now.

To learn more click here on my previous blog posts starting with: Learn digital file use when it comes to photography and copyright