That's not how copyright works legally, not by a long shot. Photographs automatically (in all countries that are party to the Berne Convention, at least) gain the copyright of the photographer (not, interestingly, those photographed). This copyright can only pass into the public domain either by its expiration after several years or by the photographer's placing it in the public domain; and this latter option is not necessarily valid in all jurisdictions. The photographer is, of course, permitted to license or transfer his or her rights to others, as with most any sort of property.JimmyRiddle wrote:There might be question surrounding how they came into the public domain, a link is shared, pictures are reposted, other people see and share them, and there you are… you’ve lost your copyright. Whether right or wrong, that’s the harsh reality of it. I would suggest if you really wanted to keep your pictures private, you wouldn’t upload and share them on the internet in the first place.
Infringement of a copyright emphatically does not cause it to be dissolved; indeed, if that were the case, copyright would be useless and purposeless. Even if a work is widely infringed, the copyright holder can receive damages from infringers.
As a practical matter, of course, posting a photograph publicly on a web site makes it much harder to prevent infringement, even if it doesn't affect the moral rights of the creator. Under some cases, there may be various implied licenses to use the photograph, too; one rather obvious and noncontroversial example is when someone here posts one of their own pictures, which implicitly gives Libra Dreams and the forum users a license to reproduce it when viewing the post.
