It is a relatively untested legal position; meaning that challenges and enforcement are even less likely given the cost. It’s more expensive to chart new territory than already discovered land.

It is the solution to a problem that never existed. As an IP holder, I am freely able to give my work away. Or sell it. Or trade it. Or do whatever I want within the law. But I have to be the one to agree to allow its use, or make use of it myself. I don’t need CC to do that for me.

With CC, the idea is that works treated as such don’t come with any ‘ask the owner’ strings attached.

Hey, it’s fine. If people want to give stuff away, more power to them. Cube jobs are going to India faster than ever. They’ll learn about being undercut from somewhere, just as the rest of the economy is right now.

But CC isn’t needed to give stuff away. It just makes it easier for big companies to spend less (no) money on obtaining art. And with many things legal, the terms applied are vague, imprecise and subject to interpretation.

Never mind that even if someone did have a problem with the way one of their CC images was used, they’d have an awfully hard time providing a preponderance of evidence in court that they are, in actually “pixilgrrl” on Flickr. That is, if pixilgrrl was even aware of the use in the first place.

CC is a bad joke played out on stupid people by evil men.

When I was a kid, a friend came over with a name engraver and asked us if we wanted to borrow it. I thought it would be cool to put our name on everything, but my dad said, “That the only thing putting your name on stuff does is tell the people who they stole it from.” Putting a copyright symbol on an image is merely telling someone that the naturally copyrighted image has a copyright.

You may want to put your info into the metadata, however. The removal of that date could help prove that the infringement was malicious.

And for God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t listen to me. Contact someone like Carolyn Wright for the Gospel Truth.

According to Q2, you dont need it. And my feeling is the © symbol is a way to encapsulate/summarize the copyright law. So when someone sees it, they know right away what it means.

But then the questions of “When was it created?” comes into mind and i think registering it would solve it.

1. What is the answer to a question that starts out: “Do you think I need a…”
a. If you have to ask, you should have put a pen into someone’s hand.

My commercial liability insurance company made it abundantly clear that I need to have an established history of signed releases.

Whether copyright or releases, put out a fire before it ever starts.

Someone should do a “Is a model/property release required?” test next.

I see more misinformation in that area more than anywhere else.

Electronic registration has made copyright easy and is now a part of my work flow. When I quote a job, I add a line for copyright registration. The few times it has been questioned, I simply tell the client that registration is part of the process and this small fee is a lot like the “hazardous waste disposal fee” when you get your oil changed.