Stopping image theft

[sheila]

After reading this article by a photojournalist, Sion Touhig

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/29 ... copyright/

on copyright, image theft and the Web, I am asking Slug and PBase (through this forum) if its possible to help us protect our work in our galleries in some form.

I do upload low res and I also watermark images but this does not really stop those stealing images for website use or where the image does not need to be high res. Anecdotal evidence suggests that theft of images from PBase is endemic and I have found my work on various sites, without my permission, all over the world and I am sure others have also experienced this.

Is there any way that saving images to the hard drive File>Save As can be thwarted in some way! Is it that difficult? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Sheila

[dougj]

One of the major photo hosting /sharing sites has/had a somewhat sophisticated way of overlaying basically a transparent ‘image’ over the actual image when viewed. This results in a ‘right click, save as’ producing a useless blank image.

Javascript, hacks, etc. seemed to be relatively useless with this technique. Viewing the page source for the code and image URL were somehow defeated as well, or at least minimized.

I don’t recall which site this is, but it was one of the top 10, perhaps someone can point us to this. The original post for this was not on Pbase as I recall, but I expect Pbase management/admin know this technique and the site as well.

[sheila]

The site is SmugMug of which I was a member awhile back. If they can do it, I am sure PBase can.

Cheers
Sheila

[srijith]

The site is SmugMug of which I was a member awhile back. If they can do it, I am sure PBase can.

Technically it is easier than it sounds. PBase should be able to do it if they want to.

[dougj]

This seems like a reasonable countermeasure for those that are intent on downloading low-res, relatively small images for commercial purposes.

[ctstone]

There is always a way to circumvent these "protective" measures. In Windows, all one needs is the Print Screen key to copy the entire contents of the screen to the clipboard. The Mac has a similar utility called Grab. Furthermore, any image that is loaded in a browser is physically downloaded to the browser's cache (Firefox users can type about:cache?device=disk in their address field to view the contents of their cache).

Because these circumvention techniques are so trivial to use, it is not worth implementing a "hack" such as overlaying transparent images that could adversely affect the page layout of an older browser that may not understand the overlaying technique.

Furthermore, anyone who does not know about these techniques probably also lacks the wherewithal to significantly profit from images obtained from a simple right-click/save-as.

[andrys]

Anecdotal evidence suggests that theft of images from PBase is endemic and I have found my work on various sites, without my permission, all over the world and I am sure others have also experienced this.

Theft from everywhere, but PBase is probably key as it has so many good
ones. And they don't even have to be good of course. I was browsing
a subject and found one of mine in a tourist site blogorama and the
person even titled it "By" him.

I wrote the host of the site and they removed it. Most siteowners don't
want their people stealing images, so if you can show them your original
page, they'll take care of it.

I don't mind an 800x600 being NON-commercially, on a website
that's legal, if they give name credit and link back. It amazes me when
they even add info that they shot the picture.

Bear in mind people can use the 800x600's for cards they sell. Some
things are just a risk.

In stats, I see users going through humongous numbers of pages of
photos in new galleries.

===
Say, I was browsing tonight and saw a HUGE picture and pbase didn't
force it to 800x___ ... Have they changed the policy?

[goislands]

One of the major photo hosting /sharing sites has/had a somewhat sophisticated way of overlaying basically a transparent ‘image’ over the actual image when viewed. This results in a ‘right click, save as’ producing a useless blank image.

And how do they protect against plain "ole good screen dump?" This may prove very difficult. Precisely this ability to "read the screen pixels" is the target of the counter-copy measures imposed now by the movie industry. They want to enforce a crypted video interface, in which case any tampering would be in violation of the Millennium Copyright Low.

I think that the transparent image trick would still help in some cases. Many people are not persistent enough to start spending their time on overcoming such obstacles. But whoever does this for living, will not have any problem in getting the image... Probably only an aggressive large area watermarking would help. But do you like to view such images? I do not, I say Ade instantly if I see some cross-image watermarks.

[tim32225]

There is always a way to circumvent these "protective" measures. In Windows, all one needs is the Print Screen key to copy the entire contents of the screen to the clipboard. The Mac has a similar utility called Grab. Furthermore, any image that is loaded in a browser is physically downloaded to the browser's cache (Firefox users can type XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX in their address field to view the contents of their cache).

Because these circumvention techniques are so trivial to use, it is not worth implementing a "hack" such as overlaying transparent images that could adversely affect the page layout of an older browser that may not understand the overlaying technique.

Furthermore, anyone who does not know about these techniques probably also lacks the wherewithal to significantly profit from images obtained from a simple right-click/save-as.

Chris....
While you are certainly correct about workarounds being available against stuff like blank overlays, I'll bet it would deter most of the image theft from the 'average joe' users who probably are the ones doing most of it.

I realize that a blank overlay is not the ultimate solution, but I'd be willing to bet it would deter a huge percentage of these downloads.

You may disagree, but I think the majority of the users here would welcome some sort of deterrent. You can probably determine better than we can, what that might be. With all due respect, to say there are ways to defeat the measures is IMHO, sort of a cop-out.

[sheila]

Thanks Chris for the prompt response but that said I agree with Tim. Washing one's hands approach is not a good look Surely there is enough expertise in PBase which could at least go some way to stop image theft.

Cheers
Sheila

[matiasasun]

Surely there is enough expertise in PBase which could at least go some way to stop image theft.

Sorry to say Sheila but there isn´t and it has nothing to do with the expertise of the PBase Team. Since you can do a screen capture (easily), and that simply cannot be defeated, there is absolutly no way to stop it.

M.

[artlessbeauty]

For a long time in this forum we have a debate whether to have it or not....

I feel better we should make it as safe as possible.... there might be risks and many ways to nullify our security but still....
There are many hackers around now a days.... but still we try to keep our valuable data as safe as possible, isn't it ?? Even if your lock is breakable, still you lock your door, right ??

regards,

[matiasasun]

Right... And we do look at both sides when we cross the streets. But this is different; When somebody does see your uploaded images with their browsers they ALREADY downloaded your image. So, actually, the real problem is how to avoid them saving the photo to their hard disks.

To explain my point of view better; itÅ› like everybody has a free public masterkey that works everywhere easily. It`s not a matter of being a hacker or a thief, itÅ› just something that everybody, everywhere, anywhere could do with no real difficulty.

I suggest we all that the best possible advice: If youŕe gonna upload, upload small with low resolution. Also, add a good copyright/copyleft declaration that allow others to contact you in case they see something they like.

HTH
Matías

P.S. My advice? Share your stuff with creative commons.

[goislands]

There is always a way to circumvent these "protective" measures. In Windows, all one needs is the Print Screen key to copy the entire contents of the screen to the clipboard. The Mac has a similar utility called Grab. Furthermore, any image that is loaded in a browser is physically downloaded to the browser's cache (Firefox users can type about:cache?device=disk in their address field to view the contents of their cache).

Because these circumvention techniques are so trivial to use, it is not worth implementing a "hack" such as overlaying transparent images that could adversely affect the page layout of an older browser that may not understand the overlaying technique.[...]

There! Amazing easy. But, I did not knew that albeit my profession is software architecture and design, I just do not do Web products. This was unknown to me regardless the fact, that this all is well documented at Mozilla pages!

Thus, maybe we could have this transparent image as an option?

Thomas

[rocketman2002ca]

come on pbase I will pay more if you can make alot harder to copy..