there is a constant debate going on about wether our published pictures here are public domain (i.e. everything published on the internet has lost it's privacy, including any enforceable copyright) or still belong to the author's private crypt (i.e. are protected by his/her personal rights and are only provided for viewing, not downloading or saving).

myself, i consider this site to be a community of sharing and shared values. with other words, pictures, i wouldn't want to be seen by this community - i wouldn't upload. on the other hand, whatever i upload - i give free to the community, no matter what it will do with it.

i wonder what you position is about this. do you feel you "own" your pictures? do you see any risks when you publish them?

any opninion appreciated... as open as possible to the topic.

In case one has strong feeling of ownership over one's photos, there are be two ways of keeping them private to some extent - either one can add watermark to the precious shots, which will screw up optoin to use them by someone else (again, to some extent) or allow only your fiends to see them. The first option would be usable if one's photos could possibly be used to make money or gain free publicity followed by becoing stinking rich. The second option could be OK, if one is absolutely fine with one's creation and is not interested of possibly larger feedback.
Following the two scenarios you could say, there is somehow closed set of viewers and possibly one's shots will not be published under someone else's name.
On the other hand - if one is interested of peronal development (I do believe, the more one shoots, the better results one will get), one should deffinetely post one's photos to a public domain or not restrict them to a list of people only. Although, in order not to be thought of as a real tosser, one should have a strongly developed self-criticism and photos posted should be really the ones that are "viewable". By viewable, I mean that they should not make viewer to close one's eyes and sigh deeply (no, no, not as if you would be somewhere you have always desired to go, but as are to become fustrated of stupidity). The photos posted should be tied to a theme and follow rules set to the theme - news, fashion, nude art, architecture, etc.

So, in conclusion, if you publish your photos you and do not want to give others an explicit permission to download/modify/republish under different name, mark them as yours (several ways of protecting your creation); if you are OK with them possibly being used by someone else, be just happy that you were the one to capture the shot. Possibility of finding your photo being used by someone else is tiny and as long you save have the original and post your shots in 800x600 or 1024x768 which are used in some local newspaper or web page, I actually could not be asked to worry about it!

Regards,
Taavi

In addition to previous post - http://www.photoblog.com/forum/post/131/ should give some views on this as well.