Right Click, Copy and Paste

Images often times express more than words.  I, for one, very much enjoy including images with my blog posts to compliment the topic of the post.  I certainly do not take my digital camera out and take my own pictures but do a Google image search to find that perfect picture that embodies my post, I right click on the image and place it in my post.   I admittedly have a nonchalant attitude towards intellectual property on the Internet.  Perhaps that is because I came of age during the Napster revolution or I am accustomed to copying images and text from other websites and including it in my work.  Digital technology has revolutionized how society views IP rights online.

The California Assembly is taking steps to protect photographers and public figures whose images are used without consent online.  AB 632, introduced by Assembly Member Davis, would require a social networking site to prevent an image of a person that is posted on the site from being copied or reproduced by another person without the permission of the user who posted the image.  In a further measure to protect unauthorized reproduction of a person’s image; social networking websites would be required to create a mechanism for users to flag images for removal of images of that user that are posted without their authorization. (more…)