I can't answer your question, and this may even be off-topic, but copyright law is never so simple as it may at first seem.
I don't know the law in any country but my own (Britain), but here in Britain, adding a watermark does NOT make a picture copyright. In Britain, what makes a picture, or a novel, or a piece of music, or any other creation, copyright, is the simple fact that you've published it. In other words, simply putting something on the web _automatically gives you copyright_. Unfortunately, the problem then becomes proving it. If two people both claim to be the creator of the same document, the "winner" - the copyright owner - is the one who published it first. How do you prove this? You can't. So the courts get full of people saying "I wrote this", "No, I wrote this", etc.. To safeguard against this, recommended practice is to seal several copies of your work in a envelopes in which all the edges have been signed and dated and selotaped over, and then send them by registered post to a number of trusted parties, including yourself, at creation time (i.e. _before_ you first publish it). The recipients should be instructed _not to open their envelope_. In the event of a court dispute, the postmark on the still-sealed envelopes is considered proof that the work was known to you on or before that date. The message "Copyright <name> <date>" is just a warning. It carries no legal weight. Nor does a watermark. If I create (and publish) a picture, and you steal it and watermark it, the copyright remains mine. The law will doubtless be different in other countries. Check on the internet for the law in yours. In any case - I seriously doubt that a watermark is unremovable by a talented hacker. There's another interesting legal point to consider. If your work is created by a PROGRAM, do you still own the copyright? (Says I, scarily venturing into the realms of AI rights here). This is actually a very complicated issue and one which is likely to remain unresolved for the forseeable future. Jill -----Original Message----- From: Achilles Maroulis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 1:06 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PHP-WIN] Help with gd is if there is way to print a watermark on a picture in order to make it copyrighted. -- PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
