Images and Watermarks

Those of you who follow these articles and the accompanying web site regularly will notice some recent changes.

As you know, this web site not only describes all of Chuck Berry's recordings and where they first appeared. I also show images of all these original records, CDs, and books.

Every image is contained twice: Within the text there is a smaller version working like a thumbnail image, when you click it you get a higher resolution image full of details. I spent a lot of work photographing the covers, enhancing them, repairing damages and so on.

Unfortunately I find this work misused all over the Internet. The copyright notes at the bottom of each page tell explicitly that the rights to all original covers belong to the corresponding record company, publisher, and their artists. It also says that the copyright to the enhanced digital photographs of these covers as shown on these pages belong to the author of this web site and the company owning it.

The copyright note says that you may use these images within other web sites if (1) you link to the original image (and not copy it) and (2) YOU TELL WHERE YOU GOT IT FROM. However, I find more and more websites using my work without telling the origins and at least linking back to the original pages. Interestingly these web sites pretending to show my work as their original contents (and thus stealing my work) are not only those who also offer to download the corresponding music (and thus stealing Chuck Berry's work). I also find many blog entries such as mine which talk about a record or another and simply take the image from my site. Which would be OK if they follow the rules listed above.

I know that Google and the like make it perfectly easy to find any text or image and to pretend that it would be yours. However, every web author knows that digital contents (such as photos and texts) is copyrighted just like any book or song. If you use foreign contents, you must have the original author's permission and depending on the use must pay them. I offer free re-use of the Chuck Berry-related texts and images on this site at no charge, but you must ask and you must tell the origin.

As most people do not ask and do not tell the origins, I decided to place the origin into the image itself. Thus in addition to the hidden copyright notes in all of the images here, every photo now has a watermark which tells where it comes from. I know that this makes the images useless for reprints. So if you want to use some of the photos from this site in a publication, such as Fred and Morten did with their books, let me know and I will provide you with an unmodified digital image. All others need to live with the watermarked images, sorry.