incrediBILL - 6:11 pm on Mar 4, 2012 (gmt 0)

Watermark all your images..if you didn't already..

The flipside is to put some good old fashioned anti-leech javascript code in your site. There is javascript that makes it damn near impossible to steal an image off a page unless you're real serious and got some basic computer skills. Some photographer sites pop up messages like "IMAGES COPYRIGHTED, DO NOT COPY" when you attempt to right click so people are at least warned.

One of the most hysterical anti-theft devices I saw was a site that put images in the background of table cells and then put a 1x1 transparent gif in the actual cell and stretched it to fit the size of the image. If you were stupid enough to copy his images you ended up finding out, after all your hard work stealing, you had nothing but a big bunch of 1x1 transparent gifs for your efforts.

Don't forget anti-hotlinking code in your .htaccess file. I had some idiots leeching one of my sites to use on eBay once and my anti-hotlinked images I sent as replacements were really bad, they would make anyone blush, and violated their TOS with eBay and got them booted. From what I read of Pinterest TOS, the same naughty images tactic would get people booted as well.

Lastly, one of my faves, a simple big red lettered flashing animated gif that says nothing but "IMAGE THIEF". Had a client once that had his Canadian counterpart literally steal his entire website but left the images, including background images, all linked back to the clients site. We replaced all those images with big bold words like "I'M A WEBSITE STEALING CROOK" and my clients domain "VISIT THE REAL SITE AT EXAMPLE.COM" so on and so forth, and the idiot didn't notice for over a month. LOL

That's how you educate the public with cancelled accounts, annoying pop-up messages, fake transparent images and major league embarrassment. :)

[edited by: incrediBILL at 7:33 pm (utc) on Mar 4, 2012]