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Images stolen from flickr
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I’ve had an image downloaded from flickr, my watermark photoshopped out and the (albeit small and pretty much unusable for anything else) result posted elsewhere. The culprit has owned up (privately and very publicly) and bough the picture and paid a sum in compensation.
Is there a way of stopping this happening, ie a right click does not give a “copy image” option?
Thanks all,
Andy
If it was taken from your flickr then im not sure.
I know if you have your own website you can ‘place’ a transparent image or something similar over your photo so they cannot ‘save link as’.You have limited your image size and do have a fairly big water mark, so they wont be selling your prints anyway.
Those are probably the 2 easiest things to do to deter theft, well I think at least.
So dont know what else you can do.It is very difficult to stop people stealing your digital images once you post them on the internet
That “right click” doesn’t really work. There is a fairly simple work around.There is a company called digimarc
I am not fully informed about how it works. It involves embedding a special code on in your image file
which cannot be removed and will trace your images if they appear elsewhere on the internet.
It is however quite expensiveMaking your images small files – say 500 to 700 pixels on the long side renders them not very useful to others other than for web / blog images.
You can water mark them as well (as you already do) but I find that takes away from other viewers enjoyment!
Bottom line is if you post on Flickr or other sites you run the risk that some of your images will be stolen and there is not a lot you can do
:(Unfortunately, the reality is, is that there is SFA you can really do.
There is always a way to copy down any image that is viewable. Where there is a will, there’s a way.
Thankfully, in this instance, you found the person responsible and they paid up. Well done for that.
I’m a mountain biker and enjoy looking at other MTB photogs work, so I was browsing an online gallery (hosted by a club) from a race i’d taken pictures at and there it was. Not too impessed, I set up an account, contacted the guy and put a post about stealing images on their chat forum. Private and public apologies followed, and the matter was resolved.
Thanks for tye replies, I’ll hopefully have my own site soon so will look into that clear mask idea!
I read about that Andy. What a chancer!
You can set flickr to place a clear image over your photos. I think it is in the licensing options..
I was thinking of maybe putting the images in little flash containers (thus getting rid of the save as option) then putting a little code in the flash to keep clearing the clipboard data (thus stopping them taking a screengrab) Not sure if that would work, just a thought. Doesn’t do much either to help with Flickr.
The way I look at it, it’s a trade off. Sure some people will steal your image and it’s damn annoying but the exposure you get through Flickr makes it worth it IMO.
I was wondering myself how you found out.
It seems to me that the chances of finding out would be next to
0!I think if you make the image file size fairly small like 50KB’s they are really limited
as to what they can use them for when they are stolen. the file sizes dont need to
be massive for viewing over the web on monitors.‘If it can be made by man, it can be broken by man’ or woman better balance it up there!
it certainly is an ongoing annoyance.
good call you found out.
A colleague of mine who works in a Newspaper tells the following story:
Before the smoking ban hit Ireland all the papers were carrying stories about what it would be like in Ireland. The Paper’s picture researcher went on-line to one of the stock agencies and found a good image of a Businessman in New York standing outside his glass walled office smoking. The picture was published and forgotten – until the following week when the man’s brother who lived in Limerick rang to order a copy of the picture for the family album!
Researcher was glad not to have taken any shortcut to save a few bob…Hi Paddy, so how does that work then, with the papers re-selling photos? If I supply a picture that is published, does the paper then decide it can sell it if it wants to or does it actually pay attention to usage rights terms/copyright on that image?
Papers only sell their own photographs and the ones I know of will generally refer any enquiries to the owner of the photograph (Freelance or agency)
It’s a harsh reality that’s often made me hesitate on whether to put up my pictures online.
I’ll come to mostly accept it and also hope that people will be honest.
Well done on getting paid in the end. Also the more people are publicly shamed the bigger the deterrent it might become.PeteMcD wrote:
I read about that Andy. What a chancer!
You can set flickr to place a clear image over your photos. I think it is in the licensing options..
I was looking for this option on Flickr, but can’t seem to find it. If anyone knows more, can you let me know please?
Cheers,
Dee
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