| > If you don't want you picture copied, don't put it in the public domain. Most of my pictures are prints, hanging on walls. But you need a portfolio to attract (paying) clients, so images have to exist! > I understand your perspective: you'd rather buy a proprietary microsoft operating system and a proprietary microsoft webserver so you could run a proprietary Oracle database to keep track of your DRMed photos. So if I said I'm an ex-Debian developer who's released a pile of open-source software, for free? And does so regularly? Seriously you're getting too personal there, and just wrong. Photography started as a hobby because I love people - in the same way that woodworking is a hobby because I like doing things with my hands that are "real". But there are costs involved, I've probably spent close to 10,000 in camera-equipment, to have people steal your work, means that stuff doesn't pay for itself any more. You mention proprietary software? How would you feel if you wrote open-source software and people abused the licenses? That's copyright infringement, and the same thing is a huge deal in the photography world. Sure everybody has a camera, and fly-by-night people will take money for pictures. But that's like hiring a self-taught PHP-programmer instead of a kernel developer. There are skills, styles, niches, and similar involved that clearly differentiate photographers. |
Is it big enough to start deploying the lawyers? That's what software companies have to do. If you're not doing that, then it must not be a big enough deal to you. If you CAN'T do that, then I think you should get out of the biz.
But, I bet you won't because you are probably getting something more than money out of your career. Maybe you enjoy the work. If it were all about money, you would have become a banker, right?
No sympathy here either. You have no natural right to get paid every single time one of "your" images is used. (Oh and who owned the stuff you took a picture of? Should you pay them to photograph it? Should they get paid every time the image is used?) With no natural rights, you have to use the legal system. Nobody cares if you sue some big corporation, but please...complaining about people posting stuff to imgur.com? What money was lost because your image showed up there? Did you try sending them a cease and desist? I bet they'd take it right down. If you don't do that, then you're not trying hard enough.