Vista made stealing your images easier than ever.

[David Drummond]

There is one, very effective method for protecting images-display them in macromedia (sp?) flash files!

Nope sorry. The below image I clipped with the Vista Snipping tool from an adobe.com flash window demonstration here: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/productinfo/features/

I launched the demo, then the snipper and there it is!

 

[Anthony Silver]

Dang! I know the flash thing worked pretty well against right clickers and a few of the "image grabber" programs. Shame to see that microsoft came out with a highly sophisticated tool that caters to copyright infringers.

 

[Skip Talbot]

Dang! I know the flash thing worked pretty well against right clickers and a few of the "image grabber" programs. Shame to see that microsoft came out with a highly sophisticated tool that caters to copyright infringers.

It's not highly sophisticated, its simply a convenient interface wrapped around the old Print Screen functionality. By the way, you can press Alt-Print Screen, and it will capture just the active window, which can save you some cropping work. Its also not a "shame" or a tool designed to "cater to copyright infringers," its a nice feature that makes working on the internet easier. If you don't want your photos stolen, then don't put the valuable, high resolution prints online. Use web resolution, and put a watermark on them. Sure that watermark can be taken off, and the web prints stolen, but those who steal these images weren't going to buy them in the first place, nor were the people they are displaying them to. I know some game developers are following this "let it go" approach now, as any sort of theft prevention gets in the way of the users, and the pirates weren't going to pay for it anyway. These developers found that their sales aren't negatively impacted at all, as the pirate crowd, which increases the user base, is not a part of the customer base. In fact your sales can actually be hurt if your theft prevention is too intrusive.

 

[Dann Cianca]

So, the print screen function or image clipping tools do not work if you're watching a DVD ... Try it ... (well, at least they don't on my computer)

 

[Jim Saueressig]

Just as an additional note, I think one picture website (Flickr, I believe) sends a useless image file to someone who right click/saves, so if you're looking for some online storage Flickr at least minimally increases the theft security if you don't have your own space.

Firefox plus Adblock.... Block image spaceball.gif, and its the end of Flickr security.

I had the same thing, and people complained too. Then one person took several larger images I had like that and completely removed the faint large watermarks I had on them, just to show me it was stupid to place them across the middle. I was impressed they made them vanish as well as they did. No traces of them, and believe me, it would take some serious cloning abilities to do what they did. At that point I just said screw it, put the little ones in the bottom and let whatever happens happen.

Yes but luckily most people wont get that far because they will move on to another persons picture unless they really want yours, in that case they will still get it anyways. At best you can just hope you are able to stop some people from using your work as their own to "sell" something.

What about hiding your copyright on the image? Maybe blending it in so it's very hard to see, but can still be distinguished by zooming in on the image.

It is kind of pointless.. Do you really have time to run around the web looking to see if someone stole your photos because they didn't see the copyright in the first place? I figure the best way is to deter them in to do it right from the start. If its something you want to make money from you really need to destroy the public picture with a complete covering watermark.

 

[Shane Adams]

This is simply the backlash to the techno-explosion era of chasing. With so much technology that chasers more or less depend on now for today's chasing, comes the ability for casual fans to rip anything off they want. This is exactly why I never bothered to learn the "center bevel" trick that was so popular a few years ago; if someone wants your stuff, they're gonna take it.

If I was one of you who make your living off photography, I'd stop spending money on chasing, grab a good attorney, and rest on your laurels for a while. At least that way you might actually get some money out of it the next time someone takes your stuff.

I'm so glad I don't have to worry about this crap.

 

[Terry Tyler]

that kind of technology has been around for a while...

personally, i dont understand why people are having this problem...if i ever took a picture i thought was good enough to steal...i would either put it up in piss poor quality or watermark the hell out of it...

wouldent find me putting it up there in its original form...your pretty much just letting it up there for God and everybody to see!

if you put up a really good high-resolution picture or video that people are going to like there going to take it thats all there is too it.

i thought jason had a great idea...if suing somebody would bring you more money then you would ever make off a picture or a video...why not just lure them into stealing your stuff to set em up???

 

[David Drummond]

i thought jason had a great idea...if suing somebody would bring you more money then you would ever make off a picture or a video...why not just lure them into stealing your stuff to set em up???

Because most of us the sell photography/video seriously have something called "business ethics".

 

[Ben Holcomb]

If you put something on the internet, expect for it to be stolen. There's no way you can stop someone from stealing it. There are a number of ways to steal things, including taking a screenshot, using wget to pull the image file, etc.

Anyone fighting technology instead of embracing it is going to be left years behind the game. That can be said for just about every industry out there.

 

[Jason Boggs]

i thought jason had a great idea...if suing somebody would bring you more money then you would ever make off a picture or a video...why not just lure them into stealing your stuff to set em up???

I didn't have that idea to lure anybody into stealing anything. So please don't go there. I just used it as an idea to prove the photo was mine in case it got stolen and the visible copyright was removed. Anyway, I really seriously doubt that I will have to worry about getting my images stolen in the first place.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

Anyway, I really seriously doubt that I will have to worry about getting my images stolen in the first place.

Lol, you never know Jason, it may not be the perfect picture you end up with but a picture of the perfect situation that no one else got in any quality that would make it invaluable. Its not always the quality of the capture but the actual capture itself that does the trick.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Yea, you do have a point there. Just like most have said here, you can't really do anything about the theft. It's going to happen no matter how much you try to prevent it.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

Just like most have said here, you can't really do anything about the theft. It's going to happen no matter how much you try to prevent it.

Yes, and it will only get worse with technology. Hackers and other people who want stuff for free can stay so far ahead of even companies like Microsoft (so far that when they release a hacker proof version of their software the hackers have generally been using it for up to a year already) that they will always have a way to get what they want for free if its available to them to do so.

The only way you will not get your photos and videos stolen is to not post them at all or make them of such a poor quality that the public versions are not worth stealing. The disadvantages to not displaying them at all are of course no exposure for you or your pictures.

Here is a couple of ideas for sharing a sensitive picture without much loss of your photo stock. Both are simple in photoshop and possibly other paint programs.

Cover it with your copyright or URL

Or just show a part in higher quality, noise the rest to give them a teaser:

And while on the theft of photos topic: For those of you who have people hot linking (linking directly from your site to theirs) your pictures to use them....

Duplicate and rename your picture(s) they are using and change the links on your site to reflect the new duplicate. Then replace the original one with a nasty porn picture or a nasty anti theft note of the same name and size that will then display on the thief's website......
That usually stops them once and for all time from ever hot linking you again. LOL

 

[Ben Holcomb]

You don't even really need to rename them. You can setup a simple rewrite rule in .htacess like this:

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer stormtrack\.org bw_stealer

<Files ~ "\.(gif|jpg|png)$">
Order deny,allow
Deny from env=bw_stealer
ErrorDocument 403 /nastypornpicture.jpg
</Files>

<Files ~ "nastypornpicture.jpg$">
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Files>

 

[John Wetter]

Leopard has a similar web clipping feature in Safari, so it isn't just Vista. The advertised use of course is to be able to easily grab a page element for display on your computer. For instance in Leopard, you can take that web clipping and have it be a live widget on your dashboard. I have this for the outlooks on the SPC site, makes for a nice heads-up display for when I'm stuck in meetings.

-John