Digital BW, The Print

Alan Zinn writes:

> 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

The major winners in copyright law are large organizations or wealthy
individuals who can afford to aggressively pursue infringement.  If you
cannot afford a good lawyer and the infringement is not worth tens of
thousands of dollars or more in order to make it worth an attorney's
while, there's really no protection for you at all.  You can try to
intimidate infringers with strongly-worded letters or something, but
that's about it.

As in all other domains, you get only as much justice as you can afford
to buy.