Copyright in Digital Age - Part 6
<< Copyright in Digital Age - Part 6
Many models of digital cameras of the latest generation specially record into the file much information, serving the purposes of such an identification: the date of photography, serial number of a camera, ordinal number of a photo according to internal counter, sometimes even geographical coordinates of location where the photo was taken (in the presence of GPS-module), this increases your chances to prove your authorship. For example, you didn’t save the original of a digital file, recorded directly from the camera, but you saved the pictures, taken at the same time at the same place. If you present a judge such information about the circumstances of photography, while your rivals won’t have it, and conform it with the data from the analogous pictures, your priority will be settled.
But a question can arise: if specifications of file formats are known, can the malefactor edit the file, being at his disposal, to make an impression that this file was created with a digital camera.
Yes, it’s possible. But it’s rather unlikely. A clever malefactor will hardly do it as he realizes (or his lawyer will explain it to him) that in case forgery is detected, he will lose much more than he could lose, having failed in a suit. The case will simply pass from civil to criminal plane. Giving false evidence and proof falsification are the article of Criminal Code. It’s not very difficult to detect the forgery. If you demand making an examination and enclose to your file the camera, which produced this file, evidently, your rival won’t be able to do the same.
Saving the “original” from the camera is the most simple way. But what to do if you have no original, for example, you re-recorded it? There is another way – to create specific distinctions between the copy, remaining yours, and the copies you put into circulation. Then your copy will serve ad the “original”. For example, you take the image you have, cut the better part of it, leaving, for example, 6-8 pixels along the edges. And you put this part as a photo in circulation. In case someone uses your photo illegally and disputes your authorship, you inform a judge that the work, being a subject of dispute, is the part of the larger photo and present a “whole” photo as proofs. Your rival will hardly be able to do the same.
You needn’t be afraid of losing a few pixels on the edges, while printing from the film the better part of picture is lost, but in court these pixels will be enough to prove your authorship.
The following way to prove your authorship works if you place your photo in the Internet. Everybody knows that in the Internet there are so-called “searching machines”, which regularly look through the content of Internet sites and put down its contents to a large data base, in which later everyone who wishes can find the information he needs and learn the address of the site, on which it’s located. There are special searching machines which index the images and save them in their base as icons.
But few people know that the courts are glad to take the contents of these data bases of searching machines as proofs in disputes concerning priority. In other words, if you show a judge that the object of the dispute was fixed by searching machines on 100 sites, but on yours it appeared two months earlier than in other places, then how the practice of some legal proceedings shows, it will be enough for the court to agree that all the materials are copied from your site. Of course, it will entail definite difficulties and financial expenses. You’ll have to organize the access to the Internet from the court-room and calling of the expert, who will have to carry out all this operation. But how practice shows, there is nothing unreal in it. The most simple decision is laptop, GSM-modem, cellphone. Any mobile operator gives the subscribers the access to the Internet. Even if you have no laptop and GSM-modem, you can find them if you wish or lend it for one day. You’ll have to pay for calling an expert, it’s better if he will be a worker of a searching site or a well-known specialist. However, in case of win all your expenses will be covered. I repeat once again: in spite of seeming cumber and complication of this decision, it’s quite feasible and tested on practice.