[interested_observer]

From other threads, I believe I remember that you are an attorney.

One can still collect statutory damages for the removal of Copyright Management Information, even if the work is unregistered. CMI includes both visible watermarks and embedded EXIF data (remember to set the copyright info in your cmaera body!), as well as metadata appended to original sources with Flickr, etc.

See 17 USC 1202 and 1203.

That is good to hear, however in another forum an IP attorney posted...

• Kernel Records Oy v Mosley held that registration is a prerequisite to bring a copyright lawsuit, and that is a universally recognized tenet of copyright law in the United States.
• You cannot file a copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States without registration for that copyright.
• Kernel Records Oy v Mosley was dismissed because the copyright owner failed to register their work in the United States.

The point the attorney was making was that Kernel Records Oy v Mosley essentially added the registration requirement in order to collect statutory damages for the removal of Copyright Management Information.

Also, unless there have been statutory changes since March of this year, then Playboy v Mediatakeout continues to affirm thatDMCA takedowns and following injunctory relief are still available for unregistered works, particularly where CMI is removed.

As I understand the problem occurs when the recipient of the DCMA pushes back.

if the target of the letter files their counter-notice, you have ten days to file a lawsuit in federal court. Once the lawsuit is filed, the content will be kept off of the Internet pending the results of the trial. Otherwise, the infringing content will be put back up.

• Why you need a copyright registration to do a DMCA takedown - Zachary C. Strebeck: Attorney at Law
• Venable LLP | News & Insights | Publications | Articles | DMCA Takedown? Not Without a Registration

Personally, I would just like to go capture images. For these reasons, I just post very few images.

[rawr]

It is important to make contact every time you find your unlicensed images "in the wild".

You should send them an invoice.

Agreed. Today I found an image of mine being used (website + Facebook and maybe elsewhere) to promote a large local agricultural show.

They just got a stern email from me, saying take down the image, or pay the attached invoice to license use of the image. They had also removed the watermark, stripped out the metadata, and provided no attribution at all to boot.

[CarlG]

Just a note -- post low resolution pictures if that still makes your point. Those are less interesiting for these abusers.

[rawr]

Just a note -- post low resolution pictures if that still makes your point. Those are less interesiting for these abusers.

Unfortunately, even low-res is often enough for (for example) commercial web use, printed posters, T-shirt etc. Most of the images I've posted on flickr are no bigger than 1024px on the wide side, but several abusers have still found ways to put them to use.

For instance, I was at a local club recently and found one of my images decorating a stubby holder [beer can cooler]. For that kind of use they don't need a full-res image. No one had ever asked me about using the image, of course.