Daniel Woolsey is being sentenced for felony in California. He was caught selling pirated copies of Autodesk’s AutoCAD(R) software. Additional counts for selling other pirated software, including Adobe PhotoShop, were dropped as part of a plea bargain agreement. “This case should be a wake up call to copyright violators that they can face serious consequences. Autodesk will continue to work closely with law enforcement agencies . . . to protect our valuable intellectual property . . . .” said Sandy Boulton, director of Piracy Prevention at Autodesk.

You can transfer the copyright to an image, either by selling it or giving it away. If so, you give up all rights that you had in the image as if you never took the photograph. But the only way to give up a copyright to an image is in writing.

Even when copies of a photo are distributed, the photographer retains the copyrights to the image. If you give your client copies of the digital files, without more, you are not giving up your copyrights.