news:41efb615$1@news.povray.org...
> I suppose this is an excellent reason to clearly put a copyright on
images,
> wouldn't you think so?
> Not sure if that would really help, though..... :-(

In the incident related here
http://news.povray.org/povray.general/thread/%3C4048fb4a%40news.povray.org%3E
the "thief" erased the copyrights, or pasted his own name over the original
ones when he couldn't do otherwise. So, no, putting a copyright doesn't
technically protect the image. For this you need giant, defacing copyright
notices like the ones Zazzle puts on the large size pics.

However, the presence of the copyright forced our thief to deface the images
to assert his "ownership", at least by removing the names of the original
authors. This was a clear proof of bad intent since he couldn't claim it to
be a mistake. Because of this, we had no trouble convincing his school's
administrators that he was guilty of something more serious than uploading
copyrighted material and being forgetful about attribution.

So my opinion about copyright notices (or more precisely about visible
signatures) is that they at least can act as a deterrent for small-time
thieves, and, when they don't, they can make the case clearer, not legally
speaking, but for third parties like website admins, school admins etc.

G.

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