Protecting your images from thieving THUGS & LOSERS, part one: Register your images with the US Copyright Office.

Protecting your images, Part 1.

A Loserphotographers.com feature: Protecting your copyright, part one: Register your images with the US Copyright Office.

1. Background & Foreword

  We are all aware of the many problems facing the professional photography industry today. One of the largest problems is the entry of completely untalented losers into photography. Loserphotographers.com/Marc Adamus LIES 2.0 has dubbed these cretins THUGS & MORONS. They usually have good jobs, ie, engineering, information technology, doctors, etc. You’d think these losers were pillars of their communities. They certainly act like it. However, their off-duty activities involve theft, ripping off other people, appropriating the work of honest photographers. They then gloat about it on sites like Flickr/Photo.net/photosig, acting as if they are great artists, inspired master of photography. 

  None of this is true. Their involvement is strictly due to digital photography, which makes it easy to steal the works of real photographers. The parade of “photography” magazines out there only encourages this theft. See Galen Rowell’s work. Get GPS coordinates to where he stood. Now, if someone copied 90% of Microsoft Windows (even if it was Windows 98), maybe added some inconsequential flavor of their own, and then marketed it as their own work, the consequences would be extraordinary. The individual responsible would be strung out to dry, the target of more lawsuits and legal action than he/she could imagine. The public would rightfully jeer and call for a legal lynching. 

  But when it comes to photography, it is unique in the world when it comes to protecting its work. Or rather, it is unique in that it doesn’t protect its work. You can go out there, buy a great large format camera, learn to be relatively proficient with it, and then show up at Yosemite to exactly copy a unique Ansel Adams (for example) photo, like these turkeys (insert link to Ken Rockwell here) did. Now, Ken Rockwell, a straightforward and frank man, called out their bullshit, but who else does? And Ken Rockwell is hated all over the Internet for speaking his mind. And the losers Ken Rockwell speaks of ignore his words, and the words of others like him, because no action is taken. As long as people don’t speak out en masse and make it shameful and financially expensive for these LOSERS to continue their theft, nothing will change.

 

  It’s Marc Adamus LIES 2.0 and Loserphotographers.com’s job to make it shameful for these SCUM to continue what they are doing; it’s professional photographers’ jobs to make it financially expensive. The first step to making it financially expensive is to provide a basis, a strong foundation, for protecting your own images: 

2. Register your images with the US Copyright Office.

 This is the first step to properly protecting your images from unethical clients, first of all, but most importantly, from frauds like Miles Morgan or Chris Moore (MD, of course, about whom we will be writing a lot soon), who want to steal your images pixel for pixel and upload it on their own sites, pretending that they came up with the images all by themselves. 

 We won’t pretend to know about every step in detail; many other ethical photographers/attorneys have talked about this at length. Here’s one website we recommend you start out at:

http://www.peterkrogh.com/copyright/main.html

Visit the US Copyright Office to begin the process:

www.copyright.gov

  We cannot understate the importance of taking the first step to protecting your work, if you are a professional photographer who currently relies on the honesty and goodwill of men to secure your rights. There is no goodwill and no honesty left out there. Frauds like Miles Morgan or Chris Moore MD, flush with cash from their day jobs, and freed of the heavy moral and ethical guidelines that prevent someone from taking something that’s not theirs, scour the Internet in search of images just like yours. They will steal them and flaunt them as their own work. You will have limited recourse without registering your images with the US Copyright Office. Remember, if you were the first to photograph something in even a remotely unique manner, you have first claim to that composition and must protect your rights. 

  On a side note, we have noticed that frauds like Chris Moore MD and Miles Morgan have aggressive “copyright statements” on their sites. These statements are completely invalid. When one of these frauds steals the compositions of other photographers, they have no rights to the resulting image and cannot enjoy any copyright protection. Copyright statements on a Ryan Dyar, Miles Morgan, Chris Moore MD, Kevin Mcneal, or Luke Austin website are equivalent to a car thief who now threatens legal action against any other thief who steals “his” car. 

 The fact that image/composition theft is not considered dishonest among amateur LOSERS is an example of the fundamentally dishonest people that real professional photographers are pitted against. Words alone will not do the job here. You must take proactive steps to secure your rights, before they’re ripped right from your hands and assigned to someone else. Do the right thing; chain your images down!

This is a multi-part instructional series courtesy of Loserphotographers.com. The advice contained in this series is directed at career professional photographers and is intended to protect professional photographers from amateur scum and losers.