What are the copyright laws governing photos of politicians? I have taken photos of a politicians during a political rally. The rally occurred inside a stadium. Some of the photos have a billboard advertisement in the background, but other than that, there is very little, if anything that can identify the stadium.

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If you take the picture, you own the copyright. (With a *very* few exceptions, mostly to do with "work for hire", that wouldn't apply here.) If a billboard appears in the background of a photo, that is not an infringement of the billboard companies copyright. Richard

Yeah, I agree if you take an original photograph, then you own the copyright on that photo, but it might be hard to prove it if someone rips you off... In 163 countries copyright exists the moment you make something original, like a photograph. The problem is when someone rips you off and then you have to prove that the copyright was yours and not someone elses. It's not good enough to have a dated version on your own or a friends computer or send it in a letter because you could easily alter that. It has to be independent. You can upload them to a special webpage and they fingerprint them and record the time you uploaded. This means that you have an independent record showing when you made it. You can use the US copyright service which costs about $45 per application you make. This takes about 4 to 6 months to get registered. You can also use an international online service called http://www.provemycopyright.com. You get an account with 5Gb of space to upload lots of your photos, even if they are in demo format. When you make a new version, you can just upload that one too and it doesn't cost you anything extra. This one kind of acts like an independent third party which helps to prove that you were in control of the copyright before you send it off to a publisher or post it on the web. Hope this helps!