They're your images, all yours. Shot by you and nobody else. You've received compliments on them, they're one of a kind, they're your pride and joy. Are you concerned about people stealing them from your website? If you are, what do you do to try and prevent that from happening? I'm curious because I like photography and I anticipate building my first website using WP.
Question for photographers and image lovers: stealing images off your website (10 posts)
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Jessica C-1
Posted 1 year ago # -
Images aren't the only thing routinely get stolen off websites. There are people in this world who will respect your intellectual property and others who won't. It's just a fact of life, and there probably isn't much you can do about it.
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Sadly, there is no way to really stop people from stealing your images. All the fixes can be easily worked around. For starters, you could make watermarks on your images and also license them. I will be going into photography real soon too.
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Taly
Posted 1 year ago #The only way to prevent people to steal your images is to not publish them. It sucks, I know, but most people just don't understand the concept of copyright or licences. They think that if it's on the net, it's free.
As Darran said, watermark is a good solution.
Also, you'll probably want to disable hotlinking. I noticed people like to decorate they own blog posts with images and they don't care about stealing others bandwidth.
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redhousepainter
Posted 1 year ago #Jessica C-1,
I have a little art gallery site with about 2000 images. The issue of theft comes up from time to time - but not a lot.
I tell my artists to limit the size of the image. Once you have built your site, limit the images to a size that looks good with your theme.
Depending on the gallery software there may be an option to click the image for a larger size. Use the smallest size that looks good as people are less likely to steal smaller images.
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Ogre
Posted 1 year ago #Hot-linking is especially annoying. It steals my bandwidth along with my images. When I notice increased traffic due to hot-linking, I change the picture's filename on my site, and replace the original image file with something "fun", like an image with just text in big letters saying "I like sex with sheep". I used that one on someone who used one of my images for his profile picture.
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Posted 1 year ago #Ogre! Very funny!
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Yeah. Mostly I would not put full size images online (by full size I mean anything over around 6-800 pixels across the long side). Anything smaller than that is not of much use commercially, and frankly if someone wants to steal an image for their myspace page or whatever then there's not a lot you can do about that if you want to put your stuff online at all.
People will suggest various ideas from the archaic (disable right click) to the more modern (use flash or similar) but at the end of the day if your photo is online someone can steal it. Even a simple screen grab defeats most "protection".
Hot-linking is another issue, because generally that's stealing bandwidth you are paying for. In that case, I tend to use .htacess to prevent hot-linking other than through google cache or other authorised sites.
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Jessica C-1,
They're your images, all yours.
In that case, why bother publishing them? You can always enjoy them offline. Publishing your work is supposed to be (at least partially, in some way) a service to others. Publishing it on the Internet, doubly so.
You've received compliments on them, they're one of a kind, they're your pride and joy. Are you concerned about people stealing them from your website?
Personally, I am not. But there certainly are people that are concerned. But then, again, there are people who are concerned about alien invasion, too...
If you are, what do you do to try and prevent that from happening? I'm curious because I like photography and I anticipate building my first website using WP.
It's hard to accept (especially for an artist), but the fact is, the world is drowning in art. Every decent museum in the world (and most half-decent ones) has a collection that is between three and ten times bigger than what they have room to display (so most of the world's art today languishes in back rooms). With photography, it's even worse, as there are way more people that snap cameras than people that draw, paint, or sculpt. As a result, there is very little money in art, and what money there is is mostly earned by (or, more precisely, falls into the lap of) very few artists who happened to become fashionable in their lifetime. So while I do understand the annoyance factor, I also think that trying to protect images on a Web site is not worth the effort, as the effort seems to be more expensive than the assets being protected.
As to stealing bandwidth through hot-linking, is it really that big of a deal, especially if images are watermarked, so you get to display your credits no matter what? Not to mention the fact that you can always make it someone else's bandwidth by hosting your images on any photo sharing site...
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Anatis
Posted 1 year ago #I find mostly that images are stolen by "Tubers" - people making PSP tubes.
Renderosity has trouble with it as well, and frequently members alert others that their images are used to make tubes or are on a backgrounds site.
It's annoying, but mostly because you receive no credit whatsoever for a stolen image, and any watermarking / signature is usually being edited out.
The thing is, it's not so much about the images being stolen, it's about name recognition.
As for "Why do you put them up?" -- if you are trying to get work doing art, and you don't have an online portfolio these days, people will usually discount you as not being serious about it.
Small images are being stolen as much as big ones, the people who steal them are usually not concerned about distorting the image by increasing the dimensions beyond what they should be, making your stuff look like crap. That's not exactly a good advert for the artist.
As for bandwidth... well. I've had it, I've enabled my hotlink protection, but mostly I use a gallery that won't let you save an image easily. (There are always ways around it, but most people don't bother if it involves more than right clicking and saving.)
There is too much other stuff to steal out there which isn't protected that way.
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