Action to take on breach of copyright

[jslady]

I've read related posts and I see there are a few ways to protect yourself from copyright theft.

However, assuming that someone does go ahead and use your photos/images that you have copyrighted:

1. How likely is it that you will find out? What can you do to monitor what happens to your image if it gets taken?

2. Is it easy to sue someone who has breached your copyright? (in terms of time and cost) or does the hassle mean its just easier to demand they remove your images and only if they don't then threaten legal action.

3. Do most victims of copyright theft pursue legal action and sue even after the individual/company agrees to take down your images/photos.

4. How many cases of copyright theft on the internet end up in court with companies being sued? Can you easily sue big and small companies?

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who knows more about this than i do.

many thanks in advance.

JsLady

[PeOfEo]

If you find them on another server I would contact the server admin/isp. Say your images wind up on a server at, idono, lets use http://hosting.parking.ru as our example of some random host. Well you contact them, tell them what happened and be ready to produce documentation and the odds are the person's acount will get closed or they will get a warning and parking will delete the images. You can do this because most hosts have copyright infringement in the list of nonos in their TOS, along with other illegal activites.
parking.ru tos
3.3. Parking has the right:
3.3.2. To stop providing services to Subscriber in the following cases:
...

- posting or/and publishing via Internet any information infringing international law, morality standards or impairing the rights of third parties.

...

- making actions targeted at posting, publishing transferring, reproducing or distributing in any way, and also using software or/and any other materials obtained through Parking services fully or partially protected by intellectual property or any other rights without the permission of the owner.

[ray326]

1. In general it's extremely unlikely you would ever know.

2. I like the old maxim, "Never assume malice when an action can be explained by incompitence or ignorance." The *vast* majority of these cases are simple ignorance and the person will cease using your material as soon as they're notified.

3. No

4. For the situation you describe it's almost zero. You can sue anybody.

[jslady]

thanks PeOfEo and ray326.