Ok, so from what I've researched and acquired; If you plan to go into semi-professional or professional photography, it's best to copywrite or mark your pictures. This way, no one should be able to use your pictures without proper payment or your consent.
You can pay a $45 fee through the US government and after sending in physical copies, they can record your works. However, they provide no searching services to find possible misuse.
You can sign up with a few different companies (some commercial, some consumer) that give you software to "fingerprint" or "watermark" your photos. Most of the ones that I've seen stand around $300 annually NOTE: you can download free software if you just want to mark works (no searching). Some of these companies then use comparison image searching technologies to find possible misuse of your art.
Conclusion; Most of these marking programs, near expensive, will hold up in court as long as it is a rare one that protects against resizing or cropping, or that the picture wasn't defaced. However a slightly better case in court, going through the government again does not offer search services, so you have to stumble upon your misused art yourself.
Some image marking software is free. is there an image comparison search engine that's low-cost//free out there that I haven't found? Better solution?
You can pay a $45 fee through the US government and after sending in physical copies, they can record your works. However, they provide no searching services to find possible misuse.
You can sign up with a few different companies (some commercial, some consumer) that give you software to "fingerprint" or "watermark" your photos. Most of the ones that I've seen stand around $300 annually NOTE: you can download free software if you just want to mark works (no searching). Some of these companies then use comparison image searching technologies to find possible misuse of your art.
Conclusion; Most of these marking programs, near expensive, will hold up in court as long as it is a rare one that protects against resizing or cropping, or that the picture wasn't defaced. However a slightly better case in court, going through the government again does not offer search services, so you have to stumble upon your misused art yourself.
Some image marking software is free. is there an image comparison search engine that's low-cost//free out there that I haven't found? Better solution?