Copyright

Copyright is most often infringed simply because it is misunderstood. Therefore, we’ve added this information to our site to help understand copyright and how we utilize it. We thank you for taking the time to review our copyright policy and invite you to contact us at anytime with any questions that you might have.

This site and all of the images are copyright Cowboy Images. It is illegal to scan, copy, or reproduce in any way a professional copyright image. All reasonable requests for images usage will be considered please contact us with your requests.

WARNING: We vigorously protect our copyright; therefore all images are REGISTERED with the US Copyright Office. In the event that an infringement is discovered, the infringer will be notified and invoiced the industry-standard of TRIPLE the standard FEE for unauthorized usage and/or prosecuted for Copyright Infringement in United States Federal Court where you may be subject to paying Statutory Damages in the amount of $150,000 as well as court costs and attorney's fees.

Possession of a photo or electronic image does NOT constitute the right to scan, copy, reproduce in any way without expressed written consent of Cowboy Images. We may be contacted at 605.388.2015 or orders@cowboyimages.net. We sell a limited license use on most of our images please see our price list for current pricing.

Some quick tips about copyright:

• ALL Photographs are copyright the moment they are taken, no matter who takes them, and no copyright notice is required.
• If an image is used without permission, Copyright is violated whether money is charged or not.
• Postings to the Internet are not public domain, and therefore does not grant any permission to do further copying.
• The "fair use" exemption to U.S. copyright law was created to allow things such as commentary, parody, news reporting, research and education about copyrighted works without the permission of the author, anything outside of those areas is considered a violation.
• Copyright is not lost because you don't defend it; that's a concept from trademark law.
• Work derived from a copyrighted work is a copyright violation. A derivative is defined as any form of changing an original copyright piece, i.e. lighten/darken, crop, rotate, filter, combine with other images, artist rendition, etc. still a violation.
• Copyright law is mostly civil law however, recently in the U.S. commercial copyright violation involving more than 10 copies and value over $2500 was made a felony.
• Don't rationalize that you are helping the copyright holder by advertising their work for FREE; it’s stealing if you don’t have permission.