Copyright in Digital Age - Part 5
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A digital photo is good for all: and for comfort of use, and for quickness in getting things done, and for easiness of correcting-editing, and for cheapness (of course, in case of using it exclusively in digital format).
Just one thing is bad. A photo is very easy to copy or simply to steal. It’s enough to send someone a file or simply place a photo in the Internet, and no guarantees that your photo won’t be spread, won’t be published somewhere and that someone else won’t get money for it instead of you.
Actually, the author of a digital photo has many ways to prove and substantiate his authorship on the grounds of technical details.
First of all, a wide-spread opinion that the copy of an electronic photo can’t be distinguished from the original one, is not true. To be precise, it’s half-truth. The images themselves can not be really distinguished. But the files, which contain them, can be quite distinguished. That’s why if you succeed in proving to a judge that your file was created earlier than the file the defendant used, and that your file was created with a digital camera in the course of taking pictures and the file the defendant used was created with computer programme, then you will substantiate your priority in image creation, proving, as a matter of fact, that it was you who took this photo.
The fact is that any file contains not only the image itself, but also so-called technical information. In particular, a digital camera while recording the file places there the information about conditions of photographing, camera settings and also the information about the producer and the model. At any alteration of the file this information disappears and is substituted by the technical information of the programme, which substituted this file. Thus, there is always a possibility to define the way this or that file was created. And the image, saved in it, the result of photographing with a digital camera or the result of the work of computer programme.
That’s why the first and the main rule of a digital photographer should be the following: “don’t let the original slip out of your hands”. Give your friends, publishers or place in the Internet only pictures resaved on your computer. Then you will always be able, if something happens, to present as your proofs “file from the camera”, which will play the same role as a negative of an ordinary photo.
Unfortunately, almost no one knows about it and few of us keep the original files from the camera. Usually, having copied the file from the camera, it’s made better, rotated, framed and re-recorded. You should not do it. Copy the file and make all the manipulations with the copy. And save the file from the camera on CD and never give it to anyone.