Pictures copyright?

[lionhead]

never understood the Copyright on pictures. Untill last week i didn't even knew there where copyrights for Pictures.

Heres the story, on the online encyclopedia wikipedia.com(dutch version) i Uploaded some pictures of Dragonballz Characters which i found on google (one of nappa, vegeta, krillin, bardock). But then one of the Bosses over there sayed there where actual Copyrights on those pictures and i had too delete them. what is that all about?

i asked too them what was the deal but they never gave me a clear answer on the matter. So my question still stands open: How can a picture on the internet can have a Copyright? Can't everybody just simply Save them on their hard drive and do whatever they want with them? Is there a Signature that is used for Copyrighted Pictures?

The strangest thing was that i later made a screenshot of the Character Nappa on my computer from an episode i had on Video. It looked almost the same as the pic i posted before and this time they didn't say it was copyrighted. How do they see that? there wasn't any extra text on the pic (like Dragonballz is on the Pics on dragonballz.com). Whats going on?

Please give your opinion on my experience and if you can, please explain the copyrights.

thanks.

[superwoman]

In theory you allways have to ask the person who owns the page... or whatever, if you can copy it... I think.
...but *cough* I usually don't care about that. Well ok, it depends who have taken the pic... and what kind of pic it is.

I don't care about star trek pics for example... I mean those pics are everywhere and it's not like I'm making any money on using them... and those dudes probably earns... enough money... more then enough money.
If there's one person who've taken a pic that's more... in the art gener... a pic I really do like... then I don't use it. I download it to my computer, but I would never use it.

See... I do have some morals after all.

[Sonic74205]

If you see a picture on the internet then if you use that on your own website then you have to ask permission. However if you copy that picture to your computer and then alter it yourself then it becomes your picture and you are free to put it on the net. etc etc.

My Hardware & Software teacher told me when i showed him my very first website and he realised i was violating copyright laws with my pictures so he told me

[Hitchhiker]

Indeed. Copyright is a law that is meant to deter people from redistributing others' intellectual property indiscriminately. There is no physical way to prevent someone from downloading a picture: if it's on your site, someone can find a way.

A lot of the time, artists will put text on their image to make it known it is copyrighted. But unless you explicitly know otherwise, you should assume that the image is copyrighted. This doesn't mean you must avoid using it; you're allowed to save it to your hard drive for personal use.

Wikipedia is weird, of course. Being a free and open-content encyclopedia, anything on the page is public domain. That's why they don't allow copyrighted content, because it goes againt their very own doctrine.

(And no, I don't know how they know. They're watching you . . . )

[lionhead]

Thanks for the info all. Its a really wierd thing isn't it?

[Natira]

Not really. How would you feel if you were a photagrapher, and everyone just took your pics and sold them and made tons of money? A picture is like any other creation. It's the property of the creator.