Stolen Images on Web -- Pls. Help

Aderes Devorah · 15 Sep 2014 at 17:20

Hi all

A good friend of mine has had multiple images that she posted on the Web stolen (copied and pasted to another site). She is now stuck in legal stuff which will go on for about a year.

Are any of you aware of any way of posting images on the Internet in a form so that they cannot be stolen? Such as IMDb... where you can't copy and paste. Or any software that blocks this disgusting activity.

Any help would be incredible!

Regards

IronWarrior · 15 Sep 2014 at 17:31

Impossible to stop people downloading images, all you do is make it harder for them to download for example like blocking right click, but personally that really annoys me and I avoid sites that use that and on top of that... it's easy bypassed.

I could just hit the "screenshot" button on my keyboard and take that image.

The best thing they can do is add a copyright mark to the image, there is lots of software out there that can do batches.

JonJ678 · 15 Sep 2014 at 17:59

Is the legal stuff related to someone copying the pictures? It's difficult to imagine any images being valuable enough to justify litigation.

Searching for "watermark image" finds many, many choices for embedding copyright symbols which are a pain to remove. Otherwise don't post the images online.

Aderes Devorah · 15 Sep 2014 at 19:32

Thank you.

Aderes Devorah · 15 Sep 2014 at 19:36

Well some of it has been published and other stuff is simply stuff she enjoyed taking.

Thanks for the advice, but I'm not going to tell a good friend not to do what she enjoys doing. People don't really like that kind of thing in my experience.

AHarvey · 15 Sep 2014 at 20:18

legal stuff? contact the hosting provider and tell them that one of their customers is hosting copyrighted material without permission.

At the end of the day, put it online and kiss goodbye to any rights etc. There's no getting it back once its digital and out there. Watermarks help but can be photoshopped out.

This is coming from a photographer too, its not worth getting your knickers in a knot about because it happens all the time. It also depends on the usage of the photos. If its a blog etc, ask to be named on them and get more traffic for your work, if they are using them to make money, send them an invoice

Rroff · 15 Sep 2014 at 20:21

Yeah other than watermarks not much you can do really - any website that tries to stop it is just wasting their time - I can just right click go into debug mode and sidestep any amount of scripted protection, etc. besides which if I can see it on my screen I can scrape the color data and rebuild the file if I'm really determined to steal it.

AJK · 15 Sep 2014 at 21:00

Aderes Devorah said:
Thanks for the advice, but I'm not going to tell a good friend not to do what she enjoys doing. People don't really like that kind of thing in my experience.

You didn't give any details in the OP about what kind of images had been "stolen" or to what effect. Are you really surprised that one of the possible solutions offered to you was "don't post them online"? It's a wise suggestion, after all, if the images' online presence offers you no particular gain, but their theft will cause significant distress. Perhaps you should at least pass this on to your friend?

kaku · 16 Sep 2014 at 11:50

I'm guessing they're a photographer or something?

Pretty much all you can do is watermark your image. People will still crop/photoshop them out, I guess it depends how far you're willing to go and how much it will spoil the image by adding an intrusive watermark.

The best thing your friend could do would be to host their images on an online portfolio (with watermark or whatever) so they can at least call people out who are attempting to pass the work off as their own.

D.P. · 16 Sep 2014 at 13:53

If you are really worried then don't put them online. If you put them online expect someone will steal them. If someone exploits them commercially then invoice them.

If you still put them online then don't make them view able to the public. Put them in something like dropbox in a private mode, and within a password protected zip file. Share credentials with family/friends.

Otherwise, just put a smaller version online and forget about it.

asim18 · 16 Sep 2014 at 16:15

Aderes Devorah said:
Hi all

A good friend of mine has had multiple images that she posted on the Web stolen (copied and pasted to another site). She is now stuck in legal stuff which will go on for about a year.

Are any of you aware of any way of posting images on the Internet in a form so that they cannot be stolen? Such as IMDb... where you can't copy and paste. Or any software that blocks this disgusting activity.

Any help would be incredible!

Regards

If you simply "post an image on the web" consider it "stolen" the second you post it mate.

If you're a professional who's photos come with a price for licensing, contact the people in charge of your billing to send relevant invoices. Such as your stock photo base, it's down to them to handle licensing issues. If your photos are worth money and you want to make licensing is available, this is where stock image sites come in very useful in chasing people using images without permission.

Also, where was the "posted" image? Is it a stock image, a personal photo gallery website or on facebook/social media?

Solnyshko · 1 Oct 2014 at 16:52

I am rather tired of hearing "if you don't want your images stolen, don't put them online". Pretty redundant advice if you are a working photographer. You can, as other posters have suggested, take steps to make it more difficult. Also remember to digitally 'sign' work by captioning and copyrighting using the IPTC metadata fields (although this is easily stripped, it can sometimes help with tracing and contesting so called 'orphaned work').

Simply invoicing companies who have misused an image without permission is a good suggestion - as they are often keen not to invite commercial embarrassment and will settle without quibble. See this article published by the National Union of Journalists. Shorter version here.

I recently found a couple of mine via google reverse image serach that were clearly watermarked but have appeared online as book covers and aviation industry company banners. I'm not sure just how I'm going to tackle it, but really if another entity is making money from your work it is clearly worth pursuing - larger companies will often shrug off the issue saying that they licensed the image from a picture broker/image library whom they do not have responsibility for. However in such cases it's worth arguing they should not be be dealing with dodgy outfits, and the buck stops with the end user. But then again even monstrously huge stock photo agencies such as Getty Images have been accused of wholesale copyright theft.

Hope this helps - still worth fighting for copyright even though substantially eroded in recent times! (more here on this landgrab act)

Sasahara · 1 Oct 2014 at 21:19

Try password protected PDF files. Though it may be possible to break. And they can do a screen grabs of the image.

Or only post low res with watermarks etc.