Quote from: RT on November 05, 2011, 15:53

@ holgs - You're right I made it all up off the top of my head, please accept my appologies, I suggest in the future everyone listens to an ex employment lawyer, such as yourself, who seems to understand IP law so well.
 

Thanks for the sarcasm, but you still don't explain where your idea of the "copyright identity" being different from the copyright holder or owner comes from, or why you seem to think naming a party that isn't in fact the owner of the copyright, and only has an indirect relationship with the copyright owner, is better than naming the copyright owner.

If people are really seeking advice there's some useful online sources:
UK: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-about/c-auto.htm
US: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.pdf
Australia: http://www.copyright.org.au/admin/cms-acc1/_images/3525355584d00168563bdf.pdf

The sarcasm comes from the fact that even now, even after you link to three documents all supporting exactly what I've said from the beginning i.e. 1. They are not breaking the law because there's no legal requirement to put a copyright notice. & 2. That the purpose of the text entered after � is to identify the copyright holder and that it's doesn't by law have to be the copyright holders name, and that by having � Thinkstock under your images on their site, they are not doing anything illegal. Even now you still don't seem to get it.

And please note I have never said that I think it is better than having my name, I have only ever said that it's not illegal. In fact on two occassions (quite clearly I thought) I have stated that I would personally prefer to have my details.

Try and look at this from a different perspective. Do you understand what the purpose of a copyright notice is? It is not there to serve as a way to advertise the holders portfolio, neither is it there to give you a buzz when you see your name in print, the whole purpose is to aid the protection of the copyright:

The � is an internationally agreed symbol for 'Copyright', when displayed on/in/against any legible piece of work there can be no legal defense for an infringer to claim they weren't aware the work was copyright protected, or as gets banded about a lot nowadays, that is was public domain work.
The purpose of text after the � is to identify the copyright holder - or in other words something from which the copyright holder can be identified, their name, initials, psuedonym or agent all satisfy this purpose, obviously from a protection point of view the clearer the better.
The date is obvious.

However I do have one final thing to say over this whole thing, and that is I've made a huge mistake - the mistake, always check the validity of the statement.

�cclapper - Yes. Anyway, isn't it illegal for distributing agency to place/require just "� agency name" for whatever images contributors hold copyrights to?  Or, when contributors do business with agency despite it, does it give some sort of implicit consent to hijack copyright notice?

I've just checked one of my images on the Thinkstock site, there's no copyright notice on it anywhere, in fact all they're doing is saying the images are from the iStockphoto collection which has absolutely nothing to do with copyright whatsoever. And as you (holgs) pointed out earlier the licensing agreement is encouraging buyers to to include a copyright notice identifying the photographer, which goes beyond what they have to do anyway.

Geez what a complete waste of time this thread is 

Geez what a complete waste of time this thread is 

Maybe for you, not for me. I learned some good things from it.

Writing   (c) Agency Name     is a Lie.

I think Ann is correct. What is used is "photo credit: agency/photographer", in editorial usage. IS may have written to require � in that situation, but that is WRONG. They can not claim any copyright, and we do not transfer any kind of rights to them.