Password protected content - A legal question

[deputyjones]

Hello,

I was wondering if any of you could provide any information on the legality or illegality of distributing content (pictures) from a password protected portion of a website. The pictures are owned by the organization that owns the site and they were distributed to a third party without consent, but not for profit.

Specifically, I am interested in actual citations anyone could provide that would show this type of activity to be illegal.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

[felgall]

The password protection is irrelevant. Pictures are owned by the copyright holder (usually the person who took them or made them unless they sell the copyright to someone else). Anyone else using those pictures is subject to whatever restrictions the owner requires.

Many people seem to assume that everything on the internet is in the public domain where in fact less than 0.01% of it actually is.

[LeeU]

I was wondering if any of you could provide any information on the legality or illegality ...
Just for the record, please note that all the information given here is not actual legal advice. You need to seek an attorney for that.

That aside, if the company owns the pictures, and can prove it, then they have a copyright, whether it's actually registered or not doesn't matter, at least in the U.S. See "What is Copyright Protect?" (http://www.whatiscopyright.org/). What felgall said is correct. Just because it's posted on the Web doesn't mean it's free. Aside from contacting the offender yourself, the only other option is hiring an attorney.

[Corey Bryant]

Jeffrey Cohen of Internet Litigators (http://www.internetlitigators.com/) might be able to help you. I also suggest you consider looking at maybe some adult boards. They can sometimes offer some good advice since a lot of times that industry is way ahead of these issues.