A new issue has arisen with the ever grey area that is Social Networking image copyright. It seems that there as been an increase in the trend of Facebook users in particular using professional photographers images in their accounts, a break in that photographers copyright.
There has been a rise in the public taking professional images and posting them on their Facebook accounts, allowing them to be shared on the web without credit for the original photographer. Cases have even been found in which people use proffessional images as entries in competitions.
"People aren't knowingly breaking the law, they just need to be made aware," says Hewlett. "Copyright belongs to the photographer. This is unless the photographer has been contracted to take the images with the client owning the copyright." The Law states copyright is granted at the point of creation. It belongs to the photographer unless it is taken by an employee in the course of their work, here it belongs automatically to employer.
So professional photographers are allowed to ask Facebook users to remove their images, and they can take legal action if they refuse.
