If it's your original image you should have an image file with a creation date that predates any other use.

My question isn't about documenting who created the image, the question is once the image has been removed from the offending website, how do you document that the offense occurred?

Since you are talking about hiring a lawyer to file the lawsuit, the lawyer is the best person to ask about how to do this.

My lawyer advised me to file a federal copyright of all content, including all images, on my website. If you have to sue and see things through to the end (which can be a brutal self-destructive process if/until you prevail) you will then have relatively phenomenal teeth in the evidentiary and statutory damages departments. Consult a lawyer, yes. But this unsolicted layman's advice is: although you may perhaps end up powerless in this current instance as a victim of intellectual property theft, think of the future and copyright your content. You can do it yourself and the fee is only 30 bucks.

My question isn't about documenting who created the image, the question is once the image has been removed from the offending website, how do you document that the offense occurred?

Assuming you didn't have the basic sense to document the theft by printing out and/or downloading an electronic copy of the offending content, you might get lucky on the Wayback Machine, though to be frank it's probably a longshot.

fee is only 30 bucks

It's $45 now. But in any case, it's more than worth it.

>>Assuming you didn't have the basic sense to document the theft by printing out and/or downloading an electronic copy of the offending content<<

Isn't this type of documentation easily faked? I would have thought that any lawyer could cast a cloud of doubt over this type of evidence (even in an instance where the documentation was 100% legit). If I can make a website how is it I couldn't fake a print out, screen shot, or downloaded copy of a website.

By the way 100% of my site's content does have a registered copyright but that has nothing to do with documenting an act of misappropriating material, it only has to do with proving ownership of material.

[edited by: Broadway at 4:32 pm (utc) on Oct. 10, 2006]

Isn't this type of documentation easily faked? I would have thought that any lawyer could cast a cloud of doubt

Well, anything can be disparaged in court - testimony, evidence, timelines, signatures...but generally speaking, I'd assume that kind of attack on credibility would be way more likely to sink than fly. Anything's possible, sure. But my bet is that, if you actually end up in front of a judge and/or jury, the odds are on the guy with the printouts.

The larger question regards the futility vs. potential to prevail, of pursuing content thieves. Thinking that one out, deciding whether or not it's worthwhile to fight can be quite a quandary. You can end up with a 'Pyrrhic victory': you win, but lose so very crippling much via the process of getting to that win. Believe me, I have a little experience. Whenever a lawyer merely sneezes you've just been billed another $500...

In the end, I do what I can: mostly DMCA complaints I mail off myself. Pretty effective, actually. The threat of being permanently banned from all major search engines can be a tremendously effective bogeyman.