Forum Moderators: not2easy
I read with interest an earlier discussion in this forum about copyright and digital photography, but unfortunately it started and ended without addressing some how-to questions I have as a beginner.
How does one implant the copyright notice into the photograph?
Is there an option to make this text visible or invisible to the viewer?
There seems to be a way to disable the right-click function on a page. How is this done?
Can anyone help?
How does one implant the copyright notice into the photograph?
This is done using a technique called "watermarking" - it's available with most standard graphics programs like Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc.
Is there an option to make this text visible or invisible to the viewer?
In a web browser, the viewer cannot see this however if they were to save the image they could see (and alter or remove) the watermark in a graphics program.
There seems to be a way to disable the right-click function on a page. How is this done?
DO NOT do this - I can't stress this enough to people. First, there is more to right-clicking than saving images. Often times third party page utilities, printing functions, etc. are accessible by right-clicking and when you disable that you're just going to tick off your visitors. Second, making right-click unavailable WILL NOT prevent people from taking your graphics. They can still view the source of the page and link to the file directly, or download one of many programs that will spider a website and AUTOMATICALLY save all images to their local hard drive.
The truth is that there is no way to force-protect your images - the best thing to do is just make sure you actually DO have a copyright and enforce it when necessary.
Next to it you could show a thumbnail of a "portion" of the photo in full resolution, kind of like you held a magnifying glass over the small one, so people could see the quality of the photo they would be ordering. Just a thought.
As for the copy protection, send me a sticky with your URL Legos - I haven't found a site that Blackwidow couldn't save for me, would be curious if you've successfully made one :)
You may just want to put up a low-resolution or smaller-sized version of the actual print
common sense at last! I've read a bunch of these 'how to protect my precious images' type threads, all these difficult methods gone through when just dropping jpg resolution to around 50-55, maybe even lower, 30-40 is still fairly useable, on photoshop will make the image basically worthless, then throw on a watermark if you're extra paranoid in a place where if you try to delete it it will look bad, ie put it where the most details occur.
That said, people will download and use your pictures not matter what you do. Most will be harmless, Joe downloads a picture from your site to use as his wallpaper. Some will be more problematic. Bob downloads your picture and uses it for profit (magazine article, web page, etc). All you can really do is try to limit its damage.
One of my sites is advertising for my photography company. I've got an album page setup where the client can go and view their proofs online. Obviously it would be bad for me if they were able to download these pictures and print the out on their Epson. So, I take several steps to limit this.
My thinking is that if whoever downloads the file wants to spend the hours fixing these files to print they probably wouldn't buy anyway.
I use ImageMagick with a VBS script to do an entire directory at once. I hit go and it makes both sized thumbnails and puts the watermark and web address. I could also put the copyright notice in the EXIF, but I don't because it would add to the file size and I doubt anyone that would think to look there for copyright info would follow it. Most articles I've read on watermarking use actions in Photoshop, but I like ImageMagick - it's free.
- Ryan
I have found a site that BlackWidow couldn't spider.
Change the user agent to a vanilla one - tunnel requests through a cascade of anonymous proxies - the circumvention list is endless...
Change the user agent to a vanilla one
any protection that depends on user agent detection is worthless, tunneling through proxies sounds vaguely interesting, how many people know how to do that though, is that placing one http request per proxy, is that a standard option on site downloaders, or do you have to do custom setup to achieve that, if it's custom setup there's nothing to worry about as far as I can see, at that point you're talking about a miniscule number of people on the planet.
Obviously if someone is willing to spend enough manual time to get something, they will, just save pages one by one, save as web page complete, but as for the other 99.999999% of the users of the web, protection is pretty solid, the thing to stop is easy automatic downloading when there is no real warning of protection in place, that's quite easy to stop.
I'm going to look into combining the simpler solutions, including the software mentioned and followup w ith Forum later.
Thanks for your help!
So we are left with the remedies only. We must be prepared to take actions to protect the value of our assets.
Definitely display © name with the content and include a copyrights page on your site. Education is a powerful tool. These things circumvent any idiot defense - I didn't know I was stealing your honor.
Actually this is an excellent defense position. To get significant damages we have to prove that the infringement was intentional.
I know that it is frustrating but an artist/cartoonist friend of mine said it brilliantly "we are presently involved in a legal campaign to educate webmasters in this area so as to protect the rights and earning potential of the artists." We are using the courts and the DMCA as their teachers!
There is no prevention for copyright infringment but the remedies are significant.
