In a day and age where the MPAA/RIAA are issuing copyright infringement notices to every man and his dog for using tools like BitTorrent and are pushing heavily for the US Government to treat copyright infringement as a felony with the government also stepping in to police it, anyone who claims to be ignorant of copyright issues is either being deceiptful or living in a tent.
It's a somewhat sad reflection of the world today that limiting ourselves to uploading nothing more than 600 wide or tall is the best we can do to protect ourselves from copyright infringement. It's what I've always done for the very reason that Alain has found out: if you don't, people will use it. I've never had that problem but then again, I don't invite it either. In a conversation with one of my friends on this, the suggestion to put watermarks in the image was scoffed at as people will just as readily remove those as they did Alain's copyright in the image.
But if you consider what's happening in the greater world with photographs and copyright - every photograph uploaded to websites such as picasa/facebook gives the website perpetual rights to use that image however they wish.
So whilst the populace at large on the Internet is being desensitised to copyright ownership as it applies to images, there are well paid lawyers and folks doing lobbying trying very hard to get copyright penalties increased, etc, to try and shore up the walls of a failing business model.
With respect to "(C) AlainBriot.com", if "AlainBriot.com" is a legal entity then it can be a copyright owner. If "AlainBriot.com" is a registered Internet domain name and nothing else that that copyright notice is somewhat meaningless.
Right now, "AlainBriot.com" is not a registered business name in Arizona, so if I were a malicious person, I could login to the relevant website, register the name, pay a fee and then all of the images that are marked with "(C) AlainBriot.com" would belong to me for any trade done in Arizona. It would be a very interesting (and expensive!) matter for lawyers to discuss if he has registered them with the Library of Congress under a different name.
I suspect that Alain still has some learning to do with how to properly use copyright marks.
A domain name by itself is not a legal entity and cannot be used in a copyright message.
If the image in question that got Alain upset was so marked then how has the student done anything wrong? They've removed a copyright notice that was invalid. So it is arguable about whether or not a crime was committed.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Universal_Copyright_Convention#Article_III:
1. Any Contracting State which, under its domestic law, requires as a condition of copyright, compliance with formalities such as deposit, registration, notice, notarial certificates, payment of fees or manufacture or publication in that Contracting State, shall regard these requirements as satisfied with respect to all works protected in accordance with this Convention and first published outside its territory and the author of which is not one of its nationals, if from the time of the first publication all the copies of the work published with the authority of the author or other copyright proprietor bear the symbol ©
accompanied by the name of the copyright proprietor and the year of first publication placed in such manner and location as to give reasonable notice of claim of copyright.
I'll repeat again, at present, "AlainBriot.com" does not appear to be a proprietor in Arizona and nor is any mention on alainbriot.com made to there being any company name registered in another state (such as Delaware.) Therefore you could argue that "© AlainBriot.com" does not refer to the name of a proprietor and is thus not a valid copyright stamp, rendering the copyright invalid/unenforceable.
I'll add that I'm not a lawyer but having worked in the software industry, I have been trained to be careful about how I use a statement of copyright.
Finally, I'll ask one question: was an intellectual property lawyer consulted in the drafting or editing process of the article?
Because parts of this article amount to the offering of legal advice by someone that is clearly not a lawyer and clearly has insufficient schooling in copyright matters. One might wonder if Alain and/or Michael could be sued (for providing what is questionable legal advice regarding copyright matters without making any statement about their capability to do so) if you followed Alain's advice and found yourself thinking you had a valid copyright stamp but in fact did not.
This is a serious matter (not waffling on about image resolution or composition) and attention to detail is mandatory.
