Image Protection?

How to protect my images?

[ninanina]

Hi,

I started a site about plants about an year ago, it has about 150 high quality images I did myself. The problem is they are being stolen all the time and appear on many other websites. Some of them even directly link to files on my server, and I pay for the traffic.
I put a disclaimer, on some of the pics I even put a watermark in the bottom, but this does not seem to have any effect - they just remove it.
Is there any way to stop that? I don't mean no right click scripts but something that can really protect my images.

Thanks

[jatar_k]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld ninanina,

There are a few discussions around about options

Prevent remote image linking? [webmasterworld.com]
Preventing hotlinking to images [webmasterworld.com]

These will help protect against linking to your images but as far as people taking them and using them that is much more difficult. If it is on the web someone will find a way to take it. I think the best you can do, ubfortunately, is make it as difficult as possible for them to use and prevent linking to the actual image on your site.

Another thing you might want to do is use robots.txt to prevent listing of images in places like google image search.
robots.txt to block bots access to images [webmasterworld.com]

If anyone else has other ideas I am sure they would be appreciated.

[SlowMove]

You could import the images into Flash files that clearly belong to yoursite.com. It's not 100 percent, but it should stop most of the theft.

It should stop all the hotlinking.

[mivox]

People who link to images on your server can be stopped with a bit of fancy server-side stuff that jatar_k mentioned...

There really isn't any way to stop people from copying the images though. I'd recommend creating a "watermark" with your website address to overlay along one side of the images. That way, even if people steal them they'll be giving your site some free advertising while they do it. ;)

[hveld]

I had a similar problem which I solved with an app called
HTML Guardian [protware.com] . Their image protection works like this - the images included in some page are splitted into several pieces each, and those pieces have randomly generated names like qwerty.jpg. Then the html code is encrypted so that you can't see the url's of the pieces in the source. The encrypted page with splitted images look as the original one. This will surely stop direct linking because to display some image you have to link to let's say 10 different files - I don't think a normal person will do this. And you can't get the images from the browser's cache directly because there are only pieces of them there. You can still search for all the pieces and join them to have the original image, but this takes too much time and I don't think somebody will do it.
HTH

[xeerex]

I hate to say if folks but it is virtually impossible to stop the theft of images. Watermarking is one way but watermarks can be removed/covered up with by anyone halfway decent with their graphics software. Disabling r-clicking doesn't work. Slicing the images doesn't work because all someone has to do it screen print the image. That same deal applies to Flash animations, which for the most part can just be imported into Flash anyway.

This topic has been debated everywhere.

[davis]

If i want an image, and right click is disabled, its in a flash thing, annoying alert buttons popup, etc etc etc.

I'll just screenshot the page, spend 20 seconds cropping it, save it out. bam. I copied it.

I can also View > Source... See the source of the file, append it to the url, and bam. I have the image again.

I don't think theres much you can do, aside from taking my computer away :)

[peewhy]

The very nature of images are that they are easily removed. You could turn a lemon into a lemonade and post a note asking people to use a link back to you if they use your image.

The truth is, thieves will steal whatever conditions apply.

Honest folk will honour your request for a backlink.

Have you considered using a PDF format?

It's a bit extreme but could solve the problem.

[xeerex]

There are potential problems with pdf files---mainly that it requires reader, is an extra step, loads reader to view the pages, etc. Now I am a fan of pdf files don't get me wrong, but that is not a solution.

Besides if I wanted I would just screen shot the pdf file or use Acrobat to copy/paste the image out. Again, there is no solution. Want to password protect the pdf file? It can be cracked in under 5 secs.

This doesn't mean that I go around pilfering images. I just have a lot of experience with software.

[BravoTwoZero]

Hello Nina,

Linking to your images in your server are known as bandwidth theft. You paying for it but somebody using it. I would recommend highly to use flash to prevent any body copying your images. Lot of flash tutorial exist on the net. For the time being try this.

[wildlifephoto.net...]

[BravoTwoZero]

I agree that it is very easy to take the pictures and redo it either by software or screen shot. That does not imply that you just do nothing and let the thief’s to have the pictures. You know that your pictures will be taken but knowing that you make thief’s life less comfortable and it will discourage them and look else where. The fact is that we need good pictures for our site and to buy the pictures is expensive. You can see your self in a diffrent prospective by letting them have your pictures, your are kindly contributing your property to the society. Like charity.

[xeerex]

Great information on that site!

I'm not saying that someone shouldn't employ whatever techniques they feel are necessary for their site and content. Quite to the contrary, a web designer should do whatever he/she feels necessary.

After all, I wouldn't leave my front door unlocked to my house. I also wouldn't open my house up to the entire world either unless I anticipated some things to be used. :)

[papabaer]

Screen captures can defeat any image display whether presented within a Flash movie or displayed as a CSS background image. If you can see it... you can grab it. And that is that.

The only real solutions are to keep the hi-rez versions of your images away from public access and offer lower quality versions for public viewing. You can still offer the hi-rez images as a "members only" option. Collect a fee, sell copies, whatever... but if you want to protect your hi-rez images you need to prevent common "joe-blow" surfers from free access.

If this is against your primary intentions, then you simply must resign yourself to pilferage. That is why offering "less-than-optimized" images, or heavily watermarked copies, might be the only reall option.

I too, have a large number of plant photos, including many rare images. Plus, I have a number of waterfall images and other outdoor shots that are very um, "popular"... It's always a tough call on what to make public and how to present it. Especially when you feel strongly about some of the images and really wish to display them as they should be. It's a compromise call... smaller image size, watermarks and less-than-optimal resolution.

Regarding images that become popular with "hotlinkers"--rather than scripting, I generally edit some of the more popular hotlinked images to include the site URL "www.example.com" and turn the images into mini banner ads. You'ld be surprised at how effective of a traffic generator this can be.... MY bandwidth comes with a price. ;)

[ninanina]

Thank you for all the replies & suggestions!

I think hveld's solution is the best for me, I tested protware's HTML Guardian extensively and it seems to solve all my problems.

Thanks once more to all!