Stealing My Pictures
It seems that a number of people take the pictures I have in my image gallery and place them on their own websites. Some of these people simply hotlink to my gallery, meaning they load the image from my server, thus using my bandwidth without the image being viewed in the context I intend it. I don’t mind my pictures being viewed by others, of course, but what I do mind is people seeming to take credit for the pictures when they are mine. I take great pride in having taken some nice pictures. It brings a smile to my face when I download an image from my camera and find it has captured the scene exactly as I envisioned it. To have them appear on someone else’s site without my permission–or at the very least some acknowledgment–is frustrating. When one does this in a paper, it is called plagiarism and it can get people in a lot of trouble. So far, I know of two such cases:
- A sunset picture I took in New Zealand appears in this person’s personal weblog where the person mentions a love of sunsets. No credit is given to me.
- In what I perhaps find to be the worst example, some guy posts a picture of my drumset lit with Christmas lights with the message “its christmas time so light up ur drums.” He makes no attempt to mention the fact that the person in the photo is not him. It is obviously misleading some people, as one of the comments even says, “is that you??”
You will notice that on those pages, a copyright message appears on my images. This is thanks to the photo library program I use; it allows me to place a watermark on images that are hotlinked. However, I wonder, how many people have downloaded my pictures and placed them on their own websites for use without credit or permission? These are cases I cannot discover by looking through my access logs. Can I stop them from stealing my pictures? From what I can tell, I have a couple options:
- Use Javascript to prevent right clicks on images. First of all, I hate websites that do this, so I don’t think I’m about to do it myself. Secondly, any user can get around this by disabling Javascript
- Watermark all my pictures in the gallery. I find that watermarks on images can be very distracting and take away from a nice picture. Plus, I don’t want to “punish” all of those who view my pictures because of a few people who don’t care about my copyright. Ideally, I’d be able to watermark an image only when it is downloaded, but the software can’t do that.
There was a time when I was the kind of person who would just use any image I found on the web freely, figuring that anything I found through Google must be in the public domain. Now, I think I understand the frustration of people who want to share their art with the world, but find that using the internet to spread that art to a wider audience comes with a price. People can use my images whenever they want; all I am after is a mention of my name or a link to my website, indicating where the image came from. Am I overreacting here? Should I just be happy that people like my pictures enough to use them?
November 10th, 2005 at 2:27 am
It’s all about the steganography, my friend. Embed some secret messages in them, then you can prove that they’re yours when you find them, and sue the person for damages.
Or, um, if steganography doesn’t work, just throw in some extra tags. There’s gotta’ be a way to add tags directly to the jpgs. I mean, the camera data is there, so there should be a way to add custom fields. Sure it doesn’t stop it, but at least when you see something that looks familiar, you can prove it really IS familiar.
Or, you could license them with creative commons.
November 10th, 2005 at 3:33 pm
People actually thought you’d posted that drum-set-with-Christmas-lights picture on that xanga site? Impossible. Everyone knows you’d never write “ur” for “your.”
Whatever you decide to do, don’t give up on your photography. I think ur getting pretty good at it. It would be a shame if some high school xanga users chased you off with their thieving.
November 12th, 2005 at 4:08 pm
Hey man,
When I had a pictures website, I used ImageMagick (specifically, the Perl library) to make watermarks that were a lot less obtrusive than the ones your software seems to generate (the background was transparent). It still detracted from the image, no doubt, but possibly not as much. I just asked people to email me if they wanted a copy of the original. But it’s still sub-optimal, no doubt.
There’s no real way to get around Print Screen if people really want the image, except some hard core DRM solution; but let’s be honest, even if it existed we’d all hate it.
I would honestly go nuts if I saw people stealing my pictures without referencing them, so I completely understand your frustration. I’d say a small unobtrusive watermark is the best compromise… good luck man.
November 13th, 2005 at 6:03 pm
i’ll take the other side here because I actually like the idea of free use of photos for everyone. i would feel flattered if people took my pictures to use for their own webpages.
of course, i also like the idea of free music, too.
I think that people will create without monetary incentive because it is a natural thing to do.
for promoting enterprise, I do believe that there should be intellectual property rights when using images/art for profit (i.e. taking your picture to advertise an event, etc.), but for general internet content, I’m all for art freedom.
sorry that I differ in opinion from everyone else on this, but it is what I think about this issue.
November 17th, 2005 at 12:50 am
Yo K-man,
Call me a rookie if you like, but if someone copies an image from your site and saves it on his or her computer, will that still interfere with your bandwidth?
I consider myself guilty of using an image or two of me from your gallery, strictly because they are the only digital pics of me that exist. I was in need of a pic at the time and I am extremely thankful for your gallery. I thought this process was just a matter of copying and uploading. I was unaware that this could create a burdensome ‘hotlink.’ Consider this an apology.
Are we still buds?
November 20th, 2005 at 5:45 pm
Mr. Spicer….No, saving the picture to the computer does not steal the bandwidth. Downloading is definitely the preferred way to go. And given that you were in the pictures you used, I think you are more than welcome to take them. My main concern is not charging for my pictures or preventing those I know from using them. It is only to stop people who don’t understand copyright at all and who just use my images without knowing or crediting the original source.
So yeah, we still buds.
November 26th, 2005 at 2:30 am
http://www.signgenerator.org/watermark.asp is an online web application that lets you take any JPEG or GIF file from any URL and put dynamic watermarking and an optional custom caption ;)
February 4th, 2006 at 10:41 am
people stop stealing my logos
February 26th, 2006 at 11:55 am
My jury is still out. I do curriculum development and am torn about posting my own material online, or lesson plans adapted from other websites/webpages for free/fair use. I’m all about IP (intel prop) rights and making a buck, but also want to make life easier for all. So, please take what is posted, but place a noted in the image tag field, or in the html, or on the actual document, that the material is not yours. The funniest one I saw was someone noting on his site that the work he copied was used “without permission.” Thougths?
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:24 am
I’ve been reading up on how to prevent image theft. I think ‘they’ call it hotlinking.
Do some searches on hotlinking, and you’ll find a variety of ways to combat it. I even came across someone who embeds the image on the offender’s site with a very fast flashing script that makes the offender’s site hard to read. Serves them right!
October 5th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
I’m quite sad that you’re experiencing this. There are just people out there who don’t want to exert any effort taking their own picture for their own blog. But then we can’t avoid this. One relief is the thought that your pictures must have been really nice that all people who come across them wants to take them.
My suggestion is do something in your pictures. I’ve come across this blog one time – I forgot the URL, sorry for that – which really has a collection of breathtaking photos. I tried to click one so I could save it in my PC but I couldn’t do it. I posted a comment and tried to ask how did the owner do it but until now I didn’t receive any response. It must be a top secret for him.
In your case, why don’t you do it too? Other than it can protect your photos it can also protect you from feeling so low because your treasures are taken away and labeled as owned by others.
John
November 3rd, 2006 at 3:35 pm
I am also trying to figure out away around this - posting photos of my contestants and was wondering if you had figured out how to do this? I searched the subject and found your site. I have thought of putting them in an image gallery in Macromedia flash? Will this work? Just curious what you have found out. Sorry to post on your site. By the way, GREAT photos!!!
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Hi all! I got mail the other day from someone saying that they saw my pics on another fake profile, and asking if I was the *real one* or not. As I cannot find the profile, is there some way to find out whose page it is that is stealing my stuff?
Thanks!
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February 28th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
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