Best way to LOSE page rank and web presence !

[H2O]

Is swiping “© All Rights Reserved” photographic images from the web worth losing your page rank and entire web site?

1 simple email sent to the ISP, Google, Yahoo, AOL DMOZ, AltaVista, Alltheweb, Overture, AskJeeves/Teoma... and a web site (maybe yours?) will entirely DISAPPEAR from the web.

“The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) grants owners of copyrighted material who have published that material on the Internet special protections, enabling copyright owners to have violators' web sites quickly removed from the Web. By sending DMCA notifications to the major search engines and Web directories, you can cause a web site to be de-linked, and by sending a notification to the Webmaster's ISP, you can have the site taken down.

Download a PDF version of the DMCA from the Library of Congress web site.
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf

Please Note: that you will be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys' fees) if you materially misrepresent that a product or activity is infringing your copyrights. Accordingly, if you are not sure whether material available online infringes your copyright, we suggest that you first contact an attorney.”

I LOVE The DMCA!
What do you think of photography © laws?

[topsites]

The same thing I think of anyone who believes anything and everything should be protected in a medium that is primarily and inherently an open source design, when all you have to do is watermark your pictures ...

[H2O]

© is important for protecting photo's you legally own on the web and in printed materials.

For example: when a printed © image from an ad or brochure is scanned and illegally uploaded to a web site for commercial gain.

Watermark, © mark, embedded file info in your web and print images is indeed an easy and important thing to do. It provides the necessary legal proof to file DMCA Copyright Infringement.

All to often photo © is ignored, downloaded, and digitally altered.
DMCA is an incredibly easy way to enforce your rights. © owners no longer need to file law suits in a court of law. © owners can send an email, and the giant search engines and directories will deal with the issue on your behalf, at their own expense, and POOF, a web site illegally containing © images disapears from the web. Those who swipe © images have a difficult time geting their banned web sites back on the web.

Those who build web sites with swiped © photos think they are saving $ by not hiring a photographer, and/or not purchasing photo usage rights. When caught, the $ invested to create the web site is instantly gone.

Think twice before swiping © photos from the web!
Always ask permission from the copyright owner.