The resources to learn good photography skills – composition, lighting, film development, digital editing – are just a Google search away. It’s easy to post your photos online and get feedback to hone your skills, and even sell your photos online when you get to a professional level.
But as easy as it is to share photos online, it’s just as easy for people to steal them.
From the moment you snap your photographs, they are protected: you don’t have to register them or mark them as copyrighted; they belong to you.
Unfortunately, there are many people out there who will use your photos without permission, whether it’s because of ignorance or malicious intent. Anyone who is reproducing your photos, displaying them publicly, distributing them to others, or creating derivative works from them is violating your copyright if they don’t first have your express permission.
While stealing online photos may not have as much of an impact as someone stealing your physical belongings, it does hurt: photographers whose work is stolen lose out on income and recognition.
If you’re into photography and sharing your photos online for any length of time, sooner or later it’s likely to happen to you.
Luckily, there are countermeasures you can take to keep your photos from being stolen, and measure you can take to recover losses if they are stolen. If you do find your photos being used without your permission, you can try to get the photos removed, get compensated for your work, or even bring a lawsuit against the guilty party. Violating copyright is a crime, and those who do it should have to answer for it, whether they did it knowingly or not.