Digital BW, The Print

At 10:05 AM 12/20/03 -0500, you wrote:
>Mark Hahn wrote:
>
> >  Think people
> >should worry more about selling prints than worrying about copyright
> >infringement.
> >
> >
> >
>Not these days, when things are so easily copied...
>
>And did I mention?  A print could be a few hundred or so dollars.. Do
>you know what statutory damages are in the US for copyright violation on
>ONE registered image?  Without ANY necessity to show actual damages?
>
>A statutory damage of $500 to $20,000 for each instance of copying. For
>statutory damages, if there's willful infringement, the court may
>increase damages to $150,000. Whereas, if there's a finding of innocent
>infringement, the court may lower the damage to $200.
>
>
>That's without any showing of actual damages to the copyright holder by
>the usage.  Even in a case here the copyright violation might actually
>have provided more exposure and sales for the artist, statutory
>penalties are NOT mitigated by that fact.
>
>You also have the option of suing for actual damages, up to $100,000,
>instead of the statutory limits mentioned above.
>
>Without a copyright notice, you'd almost axiomatically be reduced to a
>case for innocent infringement.  Accordingly, someone could make copies
>of your image, sell them, and you could potentially recover only $200.
>That's why a copyright notice is so important..
>
>
>Keith Krebs
>
>"Just some guy," caretaker of the Multiverse's largest EPSON printer
>User Community (highly recommended by Vogon Poets and MegaDodo
>Publications), at:
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EPSON_Printers/
>and  the Multiverse's largest Canon printer User  Community at:
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Canon-printers
>"For the rest of you out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together
>guys"
>
>
>
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Kieth,
How many times have you resorted to legal means to protect your pictures 
(or email???)  copyright?  How many resulted in compensation over the cost 
of the legal action? Given that pictures are automatically copyrighted, 
having the (C) registered or not, should be enough "protection."  I would 
like to see data on successful copyright infringement suites with regard to 
pictures, particularly outside the realm of journalism - not just judgments 
but real cash to the plaintiff.  I would wager that they are extremely 
rare, certainly not worth the bother to the average picture-maker  or 
emailer :-).  Also any suite filed in the U.S. against a non-U.S. violator 
would be infinitely more unlikely to proceed past the snicker test.  AZ


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