How can I copyright or otherwise protect my images online?

How can I copyright or otherwise protect my images online?

Anyone helps? Thanks in advance.

Images, text, media, etc are all automatically copyright when you create them, so you'll alreayd own the copyright to any items that you create. The problem is that there's not to many people out that that respect this.

The ways of setting copyright on an image are:

1. Add a copyright notice to your website. This isn't needed, but can be used to show that items are copyright.
2. Add a watermark or overlay on each image with your sites name and a copyright notice.
3. Hunt down and notify anyone that's found using your images without your permission.

That's about all that you can do. The internet is sort of like a bad neighbourhood after dark... Everything gets stolen (or "copied/borrowed/moved" as some people would like to call it) at some time.

For sure you can, there is many services for this.

To actually file a copyright registration on an image or collection of images the forms and info you need are at (US) copyright.gov

That makes it official, and you have a nice official document to show the judge should you ever want to sue someone for misappropriating your intellectual property.

It is true that work is automatically under copyright as soon as you create it, but proving it is another matter.

Images and other works not displaying (C) notice are still under copyright and the absence of this notice does not make them public domain or entitle you to use them under fair use.

create water marks,low resolution,upload images with zoomfy, and register your images with online protection service.

These are all pretty useless. So far I haven't found one of those so-called protection methods that takes more then 5 minutes to break. Most are 10-20 seconds and you've got the image anyway.

Whatever complicated protection you can come up can be easily defeated with one button my keyboard:

PrtScrn

JavaScript can't protect you from that.

Don’t bother down the legal route, it will break your bank account, consume your valuable time and will add many wrinkles to your face. Through spite, the person copying your work could also anonymously BAD review your images or website on the internet, and that will definitely affect your livelihood.
Don’t bother with fancy coding, since there are many ways to copy an image without the right click.

The simple answer is a watermark. To remove a watermark will take time and a lot of effort and if the person has the skills to mask a watermark then they will have no need to copy your images since their skills will be in use in a more productive and rewarding environment.

From experience, and I help it helps.

Stu.

The fee keeps going up, however, it's still only $50 and $35 if you have a bulk account. You fill out a form (available at copyright.gov) follow the instructions and send it in. If that's breaking your bank account and adding wrinkles then ....

For unpublished works you can also add several to one copyright claim (ie a collection of songs or photographs) once you publish something you should file again with the date of first publication.

Watermarks won't do a thing to protect you in a court of law. While not a bad idea in itself, it's not an end-all solution.

I agree partly with medialint. But time is valuable.
How does one know when their image has been used or stolen.
An image can be altered, cropped blurred. At least if it’s watermarked it becomes useless to anyone planning to steal it.
When you swat a fly buzzing around your lamp, another will arrive very soon. The internet and picture theft is no different. Someone else will come along and steal, and again back to court.

Nip it in the bud and simply make the image useless to anyone planning to take your work.